Last Thursday, Greg McDermott talked with ‘Voice of the Bluejays’ John Bishop on 1620AM about the decision to bring back Alan Huss as an assistant and Coach in Waiting. Monday morning, we heard from Huss at a press conference inside the McDermott Center. While Huss impressed with what he said, certainly, it was the way he said it that made the bigger impact — there was an obvious sense of self-deprecation and humility that gave a peek into how he relates to recruits and players.
Huss echoed a point that McDermott made last week, that the Creighton job has a lot more positives than challenges, and that unlike other power conference jobs he was considered for, he knows exactly what he’s walking in to. CU’s attendance is among the best in the sport, the support from their donors gives them more than enough in NIL to compete for championships, and the expectations are clear.
“It’s awesome that I know the people, I know the process, I know what works here, and I also know what doesn’t. I think it gives me a huge advantage,” Huss said. “Right now we’re just focused on throwing this roster together and getting back to second weekend basketball, which is now the expectation here.”
It’s light years away from the program he committed to in 1997. At that point, the Jays had won just one NCAA Tournament game in the past quarter century, going winless in the big dance between 1974 and 1991. They were still digging out of the wreckage of the Rick Johnson era, a disaster that left some questioning if they should drop D1 sports altogether. But the teams Huss played on from 1997-2001 laid the foundation for what’s followed; without them, who knows where CU would be?
“I mean, I pretend like I played in this Creighton basketball program but I know I didn’t,” Huss said. “I’ve told this story often, but I remember playing a couple of early season non-conference games in my days here where I knew everyone that was in the stands, so everything’s changed. It’s completely different. The expectations, the support, all those things are in a completely different place. I pretend to these players that I was the caliber player they are and that this was the program that I played in, but it’s just absolutely not.”
Last week, McDermott said after 15 years he understands why Dana Altman stayed at CU as long as he did. Over the last 31 years, the two have combined for 677 wins. McDermott said his goal is that down the road, people look at Creighton with awe for having had only three coaches in 50 years.
Huss was there at the start, returned during the Big East era, and in the process learned from two of the most successful active coaches in college basketball.
“Those two guys have both been incredibly impactful in my life. Coach Altman, you know, taught me that I wasn’t a very good player which was a great life lesson — I knew I needed to learn other things. And Coach Mac taught me how to not only run a program but how to treat people, and how to be a part of something bigger than myself. In certain ways, both of them taught me those lessons in different ways. It hasn’t even set in yet just how fortunate I am to be here, and I can’t wait for my opportunity to continue to lead this place forward.”
At present, however, he’s been too far in the weeds to worry about what comes down the road. The roster is mostly set, but carving out roles, figuring out how to tailor their schemes to best fit those players, and how to defend without Ryan Kalkbrenner have consumed his energy.
On the personnel front, McDermott — who spoke to the media before Huss on Monday — filled in a bit more detail on one of the last remaining roster decisions. Speaking about Fedor Zugic, he said “It’s an ongoing thing, and now it’s kind of between Fedor and his family and their representation and the NCAA. We’re kind of out of it at this point in time. He’s still fighting, and we’re still supporting that fight.”
But back to the future. While McDermott credited Huss last week for his foresight on the NIL era early on, Huss deflected that on Monday.
“Fortunately for me, I was in a position where I had a boss in Coach Mac that, while he had done it for a long time one way, he listened to me. I think there were a lot of assistant coaches that went to their bosses and told them what was on the way, and I think most head coaches didn’t (listen),” Huss said. “He gives me credit for that, but he was the one that listened and I think a lot of my colleagues that were assistants around the country fell behind because their bosses weren’t forward thinking the same way.”
He believes that while Creighton’s well-positioned, they can’t afford to be complacent. His office at High Point had a sign above his desk that said ‘CEO — Change Equals Opportunity.’
“I think in this space in college athletics, it’s a great saying to live by,” Huss said. “You can sit there and you can complain about it not being the same game — and it absolutely is not — but there’s still so many positives and there’s opportunity for those that are willing to look deep enough, dig deep enough, and work hard enough to to find those opportunities.”
At High Point, Huss said he wanted to build a version of Creighton in North Carolina. Noting he brought along three people from Creighton to help him re-create the program, “we did our best to replicate everything we could. We didn’t always do it successfully, but we did our best. I think that gives Mac some level of confidence that I’ll try to do the same thing here when given the opportunity.”
He also applied the lessons he learned from two of the best mentors a young coach could have.
“Mac, for as great as he is as a basketball coach, he’s a much better ambassador,” Huss said. “When you see his day-to-day interactions with people, whether they can help him or whether they can’t, he treats everyone the same. That’s a life lesson that has served me well in every capacity, well beyond basketball.”
“I think if you would have told Coach Altman when he was complaining about my lack of playing ability that I was going to someday do the same job he did, I’m sure he would have laughed at you. I’m humbled and I’m honored that it’s me.”