Butler stays in the family: New coach is LaVall Jordan
David Woods, [email protected] Published 6:36 p.m. ET June 12, 2017 | Updated 10:55 p.m. ET June 12, 2017
INDIANAPOLIS — Butler did not promote an assistant coach this time but still stayed in the Butler family.
The university is bringing back LaVall Jordan as head basketball coach, the school announced Monday night. Extensive talks with with athletic director Barry Collier began Sunday.
Jordan will replace Chris Holtmann, who left Friday to succeed Thad Matta at Ohio State. Holtmann was introduced Monday at a news conference in Columbus, Ohio.
(Photo: Dave Kallmann / Milwaukee Journal) Jordan agreed to a six-year contract, a source said. The news conference to introduce him is tentatively set for Wednesday.
“This is a dream come true,” Jordan said in a statement released late Monday night. “Butler is a place that means so much to me and my family, and I am honored and humbled to lead this storied program."
Jordan, the head coach at Milwaukee of the Horizon League, is the first hired by Butler who was not already on the staff since Collier himself in 1989. Previously promoted: Matta (succeeding Collier), Todd Lickliter, Brad Stevens, Brandon Miller and Holtmann.
Jordan, 38, becomes Butler’s 24th basketball coach, fourth in six seasons and ther first black head coach in any men’s sport. He interviewed for the job that ultimately went to Miller in 2013.
Lavall Jordan, then Milwaukee coach, instructed during practice for the 2016-17 season at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee UWM men's and women's basketball media day. (Photo: Rick Wood/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Collier interviewed two Butler assistants: Terry Johnson, 43, who has been part of the staff for 12 years; and Ryan Pedon, 39, a top recruiter. Micah Shrewsberry, 40, an assistant coach to Stevens for Butler and the Boston Celtics, had dropped out of the running earlier, according to a source. • CHRIS HOLTMANN: Ohio State introduces him (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/basketball/2017/06/12/live-blog-chris-holtmann-introduced- buckeyes-coach/388820001/)
• DOYEL: Recruit Cooper Neese is committed (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/columnists/gregg-doyel/2017/06/12/doyel-butler-butler-cooper- neese-says-even-without-chris-holtmann/387515001/)
“LaVall is a tremendous coach who exemplifies the 'Butler Way,'” Collier said. “He has played a major role in successful programs that have competed at the highest levels. LaVall also has a deep appreciation for our university and this program, and will recruit and develop young men who will represent Butler well." A DV E R T I S E M E N T
A source said all three of Butler's full-time assistant coaches — Johnson, Pedon and Mike Schrage — are expected to follow Holtmann to Ohio State. That would leave Jordan to assemble an entirely new staff and attempt to retain what has been the highest-rated recruiting class in Butler history (ranked 27th by ESPN).
Jordan arrived at Milwaukee in April 2016, signing a five-year contract worth $350,000 a year. As a buyout, Butler would have to pay Milwaukee half of the amount of Jordan’s four remaining years, or a total of $700,000. That would be offset by an expected buyout of $2.5 million from Ohio State to Butler.
Barry Collier @BUADCollier
Welcome home Coach LaVall Jordan!@ButlerMBB #GoDawgs! 9:10 PM - Jun 12, 2017 9 166 617 Jordan, a native of Albion, Mich., was 11-24 in his first season at Milwaukee, including a nine-game losing streak to end the regular season. Then he took the 10th-seeded Panthers all the way to the Horizon League tournament championship game. They won three games before losing to Northern Kentucky 59-53.
• JORDAN: 6 things to know about Butler's new coach
• REACTION: it's LaVall Jordan, not LaVar Ball (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2017/06/12/reaction-its-lavall-jordan-not-lavar-ball- butler-coach/390976001/)
Besides serving as an assistant coach at Butler, Jordan has been at Iowa and Michigan. While at Michigan, the Wolverines reached the national championship game in 2013 and Elite Eight in 2014. Also during Jordan's tenure, Michigan had eight All-Big Ten guards and sent six players to the NBA.
After graduating from Butler in 2001 with a journalism degree, he played in Europe and the NBA’s Development League.
When he left Butler, he was the winningest player in school history with 91 victories. He helped the Bulldogs reach NCAA tournaments in 1998, 2000 and 2001. He was MVP of the 2001 Midwestern Collegiate Conference tourney and twice a second-team All-MCC selection.
He was on the Butler team that beat Wake Forest 79-63 in 2001 for the Bulldogs’ first NCAA tournament victory in 39 years. Eventual national runner-up Arizona eliminated Butler 73-52 in the round of 32.
After that game, Jordan told a news conference:
“If we played again tomorrow, we’d have a chance to win, no matter who we played against. We’re confident in our system and our program, and that’s just the way we are at Butler.
“We always think we have a chance.”
Call IndyStar reporter David Woods at (317) 444-6195. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.
• DOYEL: Butler will become a destination job (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/2017/06/10/doyel-someday-soon-butler-last-stop-great- coach/385868001/)
Fullscreen
From Hinkle to Holtmann: Looking back at Butler's coaches
Doyel: LaVall Jordan will close Butler's revolving door at coach
Gregg Doyel, [email protected] Published 7:03 p.m. ET June 14, 2017 | Updated 8:34 p.m. ET June 14, 2017
What else are you looking for?
This is the question he couldn’t answer. This is how LaVall Jordan ended up at Butler 20 years ago, starting a journey that continued this week when he became the Bulldogs’ new basketball coach.
Buy Photo Twenty years ago LaVall Jordan was a senior guard in Albion, Mich., being recruited by Xavier and Marquette, among others. His first official recruiting trip was to Butler, and when it was over – after seeing Hinkle
(Photo: Mykal Fieldhouse and meeting the team and visiting classrooms around campus – Jordan and his father were driving McEldowney/IndyStar) the 3½ hours home. It was somewhere past Fort Wayne, maybe 100 miles from Albion, when Nate Mitchell turned to his son and asked the question that set all of this into motion:
“What else are you looking for?”
LaVall didn’t answer. His dad broke the silence.
“Well, sleep on it,” he told his son. “And if you don’t have an answer in the morning, this is the place.”
More great Butler coverage:
'Wow, we have a goofy coach': Butler players hit it off with Jordan (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2017/06/14/butler-players-lavall- jordan-ive-heard-nothing-but-good-things/395633001/)
7 takeaways from Butler's introductory press conference for Jordan (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2017/06/14/quick- takeaways/397187001/)
Report: Recruit Kyle Young trying to decide whether to stick with Butler after coaching change (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2017/06/14/report-recruit-kyle-young-trying-decide-whether-stick-butler-after-coaching- change/396781001/)
LaVall didn’t have an answer in the morning. For 20 years he hasn’t been able to answer that question. What else is he looking for? Nothing. Butler was where he wanted to play. Butler was where he wanted to coach.
“It’s always been a dream that I might get (this job),” Jordan was saying Wednesday from the Wildman Room at Hinkle, where he was introduced as the 24th coach in Butler history.
You can do it, Barry. Fullscreen
Off to the side, Butler President James Danko was encouraging. New Butler basketball coach LaVall Jordan Standing at the podium, athletic director Barry Collier was introducing Butler’s new coach. It’s something Collier had done three other times, but never quite like this. He introduced Brad Stevens in 2007, Brandon Miller in 2013 and, in a way, Chris Holtmann in 2014.
But Collier had never stood at a podium and looked into the front row of a packed news conference and seen someone he had recruited at age 17. In 1997 Collier was in a living room in Albion, musing aloud about the magic that could happen when a player as talented and driven as LaVall Jordan went to a school and basketball program as special and sturdy as Butler. And magic did happen, with Collier and Jordan laying the foundation of this phenomenon we now call The Butler Way.
On Wednesday, Barry Collier was looking down into the front row and seeing Jordan, now 38, sitting alongside his wife, Destinee, and their three daughters. Ava, 12, and Alanna, 9, are beautiful in their summer dresses. Adalynn, 4, is next to her dad, sitting in her mom’s lap, with a big white bow in her hair. And it's all too much. Normally as polished as White House silverware, Barry Collier loses his composure after saying he had set out to hire Fullscr not justeen a winner on the court, but a good man and mentor off it. LaVall Jordan introduced as Butler “We found that man …” Collier says, looking at Jordan and his family. Now Collier is looking down, fightingmen ’backs bask tears.etball He goes coach silent.
Off to the side, Danko is whispering: "You can do it, Barry."
Yes, yes he can. Barry Collier looks up and forges ahead.
“We found that man,” he says, “in LaVall Jordan.”
The dreading is worse than the doing.
That’s what Aunt Jetha always told LaVall. She owned several rental properties around Albion, and those homes needed upkeep. Someone to cut the grass. Someone to tend the garden. That someone was usually LaVall, and when Aunt Jetha caught him dilly-dallying, she’d shoo him out to the gardening shed with those words.
“The dreading is worse than the doing.”
Born to parents in their mid-teens, LaVall was raised by his great-aunt and great-uncle in a home straight out of 1955. They were from the deep south, in their 60s and they weren’t interested in cable TV or — what was that channel called? — ESPN. So LaVall didn’t watch basketball; he played basketball. And he made good grades … or he didn’t get to play.
If you love Indiana high school basketball, you will love this new book (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/high-school/2017/05/17/love-indiana-high- school-basketball-then-youll-love-commemorative-book/322943001/)
This is where he learned to work, and to work hard. When he got to Butler and was told by Barry Collier that he wasn’t to shoot 3-pointers — they had other players to do that, mainly Matthew Graves — Jordan had to reinvent himself as a defensive stalwart, a pass-first point guard, a guy who did the little things. The transformation didn’t come easily, but with hard work it did come.
By the time Todd Lickliter got to Butler as an assistant to Collier in 1999, Jordan was a junior, a smart and efficient player who would help Butler win a then-school record 91 games. The 91st victory was against Wake Forest in the 2001 NCAA tournament, the Bulldogs’ first NCAA tournament win in 39 years.
A few years later Jordan was finished with pro ball and Lickliter had a staff opening at Butler and, well, you can guess who Lickliter hired.
“It was a no-brainer,” Lickliter was saying Wednesday from the back of the Wildman Room, and I couldn’t decide which former Butler basketball coach, Collier or Lickliter, was prouder of Butler’s newest basketball coach.
Call it a tie.
Our days as a revolving door are over.
James Danko wasn’t at Butler when Collier left for Nebraska in 2000 or Thad Matta left for Xavier in 2001 or Todd Lickliter left for Iowa in 2007. But he was the school president when Brad Stevens left for the Boston Celtics in 2013, and when Brandon Miller left for health reasons in 2014, and when Chris Holtmann left for Ohio State this past week. (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/columnists/gregg-doyel/2017/06/09/doyel-holtmann-told-me-there- some-jobs-you-have-take-ohio-state-one/384065001/)
The names change, Danko has learned, but not the winning ways. Not the Butler Way.
“Things have always had a way of working out,” Danko is telling me Wednesday after the news conference, as Jordan is laughing it up in the Wildman Room with a handful of former teammates. “We always seem to find — Barry always seems to find — the right person at the right time. And LaVall is absolutely the right person.”
Danko is telling me about the impact the Big East has had on Butler, not just the basketball program or the athletic department, but on the whole school. The bar has been set higher for Butler, which is competing in all ways, not just athletically, with Villanova and Xavier and Creighton and Marquette and other Big East schools for students, for faculty, for talent, for acclaim. A few days ago Danko announced Butler's purchase of most of neighboring Christian Theological Seminary’s 40-acre campus. (https://www.indystar.com/story/news/education/2017/06/12/butler-university-eyes-expansion- purchase-christian-theological-seminary-campus/375254001/) “If you’re not getting stronger,” Danko says, “you’re getting weaker.”
More: Doyel: Someday soon Butler will be the destination, not a stepping stone (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/2017/06/10/doyel-someday-soon- butler-last-stop-great-coach/385868001/)
Butler is in the business of getting stronger, and Danko believes the addition of the seminary will get them there. As will, he believes, the addition of LaVall Jordan. Membership in the Big East gives Butler access to more and deeper revenue streams, and Ohio State’s buyout of Holtmann’s contract, for a figure said to be in excess of $2.5 million, is another reason the game is changing at Hinkle.
Factor in Jordan’s standing as an alum — What else are you looking for? — and Danko thinks he might have seen Butler’s last coaching transition for a long, long time.
“I get a sense of confidence listening to LaVall,” Danko says. “I really think now is the time, more than ever before, that our days as a revolving door are over.”
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar (https://twitter.com/GreggDoyelStar) or at facebook.com/gregg.doyel (https://www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel). How did Butler coach LaVall Jordan make his mark? Pay attention.
David Woods, [email protected] Published 3:33 p.m. ET June 21, 2017 | Updated 6:37 p.m. ET June 21, 2017
INDIANAPOLIS – Before LaVall Jordan was the Butler basketball coach, before he was an assistant coach or a husband or a father, before he was the man entrusted with the Butler Way, he was a player. He was a good player – don’t let him say he lacked talent – but he was never going to be great.
So how was he going to make his mark?
Buy Photo Two words: Pay attention.
(Photo: Mykal McEldowney/IndyStar) As young as 8, that’s what he did on the basketball court. As a Butler player, that’s what he did. As an Iowa assistant coach, he once interrupted the Hawkeyes at a practice with this admonition: “Pay attention!”
Don’t rely on instinct. That’s what Jordan told them. Get ready, Dawgs. That will be the message.
“You need to be able to survey the game and see what’s called for. And LaVall was so good at that,” said Todd Lickliter, who had him on staffs at Butler and Iowa.
Jordan, 38, has paid attention all his life.
That is how he navigated a childhood and adolescence in which he was raised by multiple family members. That is how he helped his high school in Albion, Mich., to a couple of final fours. That is how he coped with simultaneous grief and despair, losing a loved one and then days later missing two free throws that led to losing an NCAA tournament game.
MORE BULLDOG BITES
• Coach adds assistant from Michigan (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2017/06/20/lavall-jordan-adds-veteran-coach-jeff-meyer- butler-staff/414002001/)
• Butler recruiting updates (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/high-school/recruiting-central/2015/06/29/butler-university-basketball-recruiting-big-east- chris-holtmann/29457579/)
• Kelan Martin prepares for next season (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2017/06/20/butler-basketballs-kelan-martin-wanted-no-part- nba-draft-i-want-make-year-my-best-year/404084001/)
That is how he grew from bottom-of-staff operations man to assistant coach on an NCAA runner-up to head coach in the Horizon League to head coach in the Big East. He has learned from the likes of Barry Collier, Thad Matta, Lickliter, Brad Stevens and John Beilein. A DV E R T I S E M E N T In 2007, Lickliter was national coach of the year. His Butler assistants were three future head coaches: Stevens (Butler and Boston Celtics), Matthew Graves (South Alabama), Jordan. How could you not pay attention in those staff meetings?
ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla, who covered Jordan’s improbable run with last-place Milwaukee to the Horizon League championship game, has likened him to an NBA lottery pick. The coach is a rising star, in other words, with a chance to succeed. He hasn’t done it yet.
Jordan benefited from running his own program, and in doing so away from Butler. He reminded Fraschilla of Collier, Beilein and Lickliter … but was not them.
“From what I observed, he was very comfortable in his own skin,” Fraschilla said.
***
In the afterglow of an introductory news conference June 14, after the media had asked their questions and taken photos and video, LaVall Jurrant-Lige Jordan finally had time to grab a bite. He turned to his father, Nate Mitchell, and reminded him that if his upbringing was unconventional, he was never without love or guidance.
“It’s always been a team effort,” Jordan said. “It takes a village to raise a child.”
His village was Albion, a working-class town in south central Michigan. Population has declined from 11,000 when he was born to about 8,600 now. Albion is smack in the middle of Big Ten country, 54 miles west of Ann Arbor and 53 miles south of East Lansing.
When Jordan was born, his father was 16 and mother, Karen Jordan, 17. The father said it didn’t bother him that LaVall took his mother’s name because everyone in Albion knew LaVall was his son. Indeed, Albion is the kind of town where if a child was somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, the nearest adult would know it and shoo him home.
Karen Jordan cared for LaVall until he was 5, then moved to Milwaukee. LaVall stayed in Albion with a great aunt, Jetha Jeffers, and uncle, Lige Ridley. LaVall was driven to school by his uncle instead of taking the bus. His aunt was a landlord who required him to mow lawns and tend gardens. In high school, LaVall moved in with his paternal grandparents, Lloyd and JoAnn Mitchell.
Always, LaVall was paying attention.
“Grew up an old soul because of that,” he said.
Mitchell, once a basketball player himself, coached his son and organized summer hoops programs. Mitchell said his son always had a high basketball IQ.
Yet as close-knit as the community was, there were drugs and detours. Some of Jordan’s peers “didn’t make it,” Mitchell said. Roger Stein, an Albion star player a few years younger than Jordan, was sentenced in 2013 to life in prison after a murder conviction.
Closing industries meant the loss of jobs and population, even the loss of the high school. Albion was absorbed in 2013 by rival Marshall High School.
Before that, Jordan was part of an Albion team that reached Michigan’s Class B state semifinals in 1996 and championship game in 1997. In the latter, the Wildcats lost to Detroit Country Day 71-64. The Albion star was Jason Moorehead, not Jordan. Moorehead outscored Shane Battier, the future college player of the year and NBA pro, 29-24.
Fullscreen
What Jordan represented was “The Glue,” as his father called him. Whatever it was that Albion needed, Jordan delivered: defense, rebounding, poise. No tirades, though. That was not his style. From Hinkle to Holtmann: Looking back at Butler's coaches “I don’t know if I ever remember him raising his voice,” Mitchell said.
It might have been high school where Jordan learned the importance of efficiency in this sport. His father reinforced that after a game in which Moorehead, instead of running out the clock with Albion ahead, continued to shoot … and miss. Albion lost. Jordan was mad. So was Dad.
“I’m not mad at Jason. I’m mad at you,” his father told him. “You gave him the ball. What did you think he was going to do?”
They laugh about that incident now. Mitchell conceded he was his son’s toughest critic. On the other hand, his son’s saggy pants and backward ballcap were genuine sources of clashes.
When Jordan’s father accompanied him on a recruiting trip to Butler, the father saw in Collier exactly what he sought for his son: someone requiring accountability and offering straight talk.
“I knew they were going to help him grow up,” Mitchell said.
As a Butler freshman, Jordan was a nonentity. He scored 26 points – for the season. That efficiency for which he later became known? He shot 21 percent, or 7-of-33.
The Bulldogs made a second straight NCAA tournament appearance in 1998, but it was hard to feel a part of all that. He considered transferring. His father listened to him vent but was not sympathetic.
So Jordan labored in the gym all summer, improving his ballhandling and conditioning. Eventually, the 6-2 Jordan could defend every position except center.
“Which is pretty incredible,” Lickliter said. “He had good physical tools. He had a tremendous understanding of the game.”
Jordan averaged 11.7 points as a junior, when Butler returned to the NCAA tournament. Then Aunt Jetha died. She was 87. The day after the funeral in Albion, Jordan was in Winston-Salem, N.C., for a first-round game against Florida.
Butler fans know the rest. Jordan missed two free throws at the end of overtime, and Mike Miller’s off-balance buzzer-beater sank the Bulldogs 69-68. Buy Photo
Butler player Jason Myers, left, consoled teammate LaVall Jordan in the locker room after their loss in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Butler lost on a last second shot to Florida 69-68. Jordan missed two free throws with 8.1 seconds left in overtime that might have won the game. (Photo: Steve Healey/IndyStar)
Jordan said he thought about his aunt throughout the game. Even in the immediate aftermath, he reasoned he would have another shot. “But she won’t be back,” he said at the time. “That’s a loss I’ll have to deal with forever.”
Collier wasn’t back. That was his last game as Butler coach. He moved on to Nebraska, and the Bulldogs moved on, too.
That 2000 loss to Florida galvanized them in a way victory could not have. There was a coaching change – Thad Matta was promoted – but nothing else changed. The Bulldogs made the NCAA tournament again in 2001, thanks to Jordan.
In the Midwestern Collegiate Conference title game, he limited league player of the year Rashad Phillips to 11 points, and Butler beat Detroit 53-38. Butler students who made the trip to Dayton, Ohio, carried Jordan off the court on their shoulders. Buy Photo
Joel Cornette, left, and LaVall Jordan smiled near the end of Butler's destruction of Wake Forest in an NCAA first round game in 2001. Butler won 79-63. (Photo: ROBERT SCHEER, INDIANAPOLIS STAR)
In the first round of the NCAA tournament, the Bulldogs took all the drama out of it. They led Wake Forest 25-3, then 43-10 at halftime. The 79-63 victory was the first for Butler in the tournament in 39 years. The Bulldogs were eliminated 73-52 by an Arizona team loaded with NBA talent, ending a 24-8 season.
Jordan ended his career with 91 wins, then a record for a Butler player.
“We’re confident in our system and our program, and that’s just the way we are at Butler,” he said at a postgame news conference. “We always think we have a chance.”
***
Jordan was not paying attention only to coaches at Butler. That applied to professors, too.
He was a public relations major in the journalism program. Rose Campbell, now chair of strategic communication, said he was a bright student and encouraged him to apply for graduate or law school.
“It didn’t look like he’d have an NBA career, but he explained he’d still pursue basketball after graduation,” Campbell said. “Glad he didn’t listen to me as it looks like he made the better choice.”
There were other life choices to be made.
Mutual friends introduced him to Destinee Overstreet, an Indiana University graduate and former North Central High School gymnast. He was to leave and play pro ball in Norway in three weeks, leaving little time for courtship. She flew overseas to visit, and they remained a couple through that season and one in which Jordan played for Huntsville, Ala., in the NBA’s Development League. They wed in June in 2004.
“Hey, love conquers all, and here we are,” Destinee said. Fullscreen
We turned into three. Then four. Then five. Jordan became father to three daughters as he made theNe coachingw Butler rounds, bask frometball Butler to c oachIowa to Michigan to Milwaukee. LaVall Jordan
The oldest, Ava, 12, took her name from the heart of her father’s name: L(ava)ll. She is a Level 8 gymnast – 9, 10 and elite are the only higher levels -- and finished sixth in the all-around in the seven-state Region 4. Her sisters are Alanna, 9, and Adalynn, 4.
As the family grew, so did parenting responsibilities. Destinee eventually abandoned full-time jobs, first in pharmaceutical sales and later as a Google account executive. Jordan blended work and home lives, bringing his daughters to the office.
The girls were “very much a part of his job,” Destinee said. “They experienced it.”
Jordan’s first job was Butler’s director of basketball operations, an administrative role that Stevens once held. The work required paying attention to detail, something Jordan did anyway.
“The only thing he didn’t have was experience,” Lickliter said
He acquired that at Butler and Iowa under Lickliter, and at Michigan under Beilein. During Jordan’s six seasons with the Wolverines, six players reached the NBA: Darius Morris, Trey Burke, Tim Hardaway Jr., Nik Stauskas, Mitch McGary and Glenn Robinson III.
Jordan developed a reputation for developing guards. Prospects who were “never seen as pros walking in the door” became pros, Beilein said.
Jordan was not a yeller or a screamer. He never had a bad practice, according to Beilein. Drawing upon his own experience, Jordan pushed players to improve. Jordan called it the “intrinsic value” of getting better.
“We were like a perfect match for each other,” Beilein said. “Finding the right guys. We won’t care where they are when they’re 17. We care how good they are when they’re 21.”
Jeff Meyer and Jordan were on Michigan’s staff for six seasons together. Both are devout Christians, and Meyer has been as much spiritual adviser as colleague. Meyer, 63, formerly a Butler assistant and longtime Liberty head coach, has joined Jordan’s staff in a hire of inestimable value.
Just as Meyer mentored Jordan, he has witnessed Jordan mentor Michigan players. Meyer said Jordan’s “servant spirit” allows him to connect with recruits, players and co-workers. People trust him.
Yet that should not override what Jordan was brought to Butler to do: Coach hoops.
“I would add, in real time during games, he sees the game in ways that can help teams be successful,” Meyer said.
Robinson, of the Indiana Pacers, said Jordan was like an older brother and changed his career arc.
As a Michigan freshman, Robinson was playing but complaining about insufficient touches. He said Jordan sat him down, told him he didn’t play as a freshman and that Robinson was getting on the court on a great team in the Big Ten.
What was there to complain about? Get on the court, Jordan said, and everything falls into place.
“If he hadn’t told me that,” Robinson said, “I wonder if I’d be here to this day.”
***
Jordan’s first shot to be a head coach came in his old league (formerly the MCC). He took over at Milwaukee on April 7, 2016 … and soon thereafter lost what would have been the Panthers’ three top returning scorers to transfers.
Milwaukee was undersized and undermanned. The Panthers finished last in the league, losing their final nine games of the regular season, three in overtime. They were 8-23. They endured an 0-8 February.
March, however, was magic, as it has often been for Butler. Jordan’s first shot to be a head Somehow, Jordan’s daughters knew something no one else did. As the family prepared for the Horizon coach came from Milwaukee. He started on April 7, 2016. (Photo: tournament in Detroit, “our kids packed for the whole week,” Destinee said. Raj Mehta, Raj Mehta-USA TODAY Sports) The Panthers were the first No. 10 seed to win a game, beating Detroit 85-60. After beating No. 2 Valparaiso 43- 41 and No. 6 UIC 74-68, they were playing for the championship. Destinee kept calling the daughters’ schools, explaining they wouldn’t be in class.
Fraschilla, the ESPN analyst, observed elements of the Butler Way in Jordan. Not just in games, either. When the Panthers prepared for the championship game against No. 4 seed Northern Kentucky, they worked on fundamentals as much as they did the scouting report.
“Which is the mark of someone who believes in his own system,” Fraschilla said. “One of the reasons they were well-prepared for the Horizon League, despite going 0-for-February, is they stayed with the same basic principles. Not only from a basketball standpoint, but from a culture standpoint.”
Milwaukee finally fell 59-53 to Northern Kentucky. It turned out to be Jordan’s last game with the Panthers. Buy Photo
After being introduced as the Butler 's coach on June 14, head men's basketball coach, LaVall Jordan hugged oncoming walk-on Campbell Donovan at Hinkle Fieldhouse. (Photo: Mykal McEldowney/IndyStar)
Butler is a different Butler from when Jordan left. Since 2007, the Bulldogs have gone to two Final Fours, twice changed conferences, played before Hinkle Fieldhouse sellouts, been on TV every game … and, even after four coaching changes, earned three straight NCAA tournament trips.
Before Chris Holtmann left for Ohio State, his contract extension, with incentives, was going to pay nearly $2 million a year. It is a virtual certainty that Jordan is a million-dollar man, tripling the $350,000 he earned at Milwaukee.
Jordan was paying attention at Michigan, especially the way Beilein ran the program like a CEO. One season as head coach prepared Jordan more so than if Butler were his first such job. His wife saw extra demands on her husband, including speaking engagements and community relations that were never part of former job descriptions.
“He knows what to expect now,” Destinee said.
So far, Jordan has retained four-fifths of a touted recruiting class and shown the “polish and charisma” that Fraschilla observed at the Horizon League tournament.
It was as if that tournament, too, was closing Jordan’s circle. He once endured painful disappointment as a player, then rebounded a year later to be carried off a Horizon court.
Butler is counting on him to find his way. Pay attention. Call IndyStar reporter David Woods at (317) 444-6195. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.
11/1/2017 Old Faces New Places: LaVall Jordan’s return gives Butler a dose of stability – The Athletic Old Faces New Places: LaVall Jordan's return gives Butler a dose of stability
Brian Hamilton (/author/59424) 3 hours ago
hen Butler had an unexpected head coaching vacancy, and when it became apparent that her husband might be the man to fill said vacancy, Destinee Jordan’s demeanor around the house in the Milwaukee suburbs became…difficult to describe. Fortunately, her Wdaughters Ava and Alanna eventually diagnosed it: They said their mom was nervi-cited.
LaVall Jordan, the actual candidate for the gig, was less nervi-cited. Or at least not the nervi- part. It would be an unusually late switch for him after just one year as the head coach at Wisconsin-Milwaukee. It would require packing up a house and putting it on the market. It would involve another round of selling himself to another coach’s players and recruits. These were big changes, yes, but there was no trepidation about the opportunity, because Jordan knew precisely what he was getting into. He knew the job was the one thing that would involve virtually no changes at all.
“Here it’s unique, because it’s not really about all those other things,” Jordan says. “It’s about the Butler Way. Having lived it, and been nurtured in it as an 18-year-old, and now coming back as a 38-year-old being responsible to maintain it and preserve it and protect it — it’s never been about one coach’s philosophy and stamp. It’s doing things the way we’ve done them and being consistent in that. It’s making sure they know it’s not about me.”
In many ways, though, it is very much about Jordan, if only because he is lending a dose of stability for a place in need of one. Though Butler has won 22 or more games in nine of the last 10 seasons, and though its new home, the reconfigured Big East, seemingly is on solid footing, the program is now on its fourth coach in six years. Then there were the caprices of fate that no one could imagine: The deaths of former players Andrew Smith and Joel Cornette, as well as the infant son of staffer Emerson Kampen, within an eight-month span in 2016. However justifiable Chris Holtmann’s move to Ohio State was last summer, it was, inarguably, quite jarring.
https://theathletic.com/137469/2017/11/01/old-faces-new-places-lavall-jordan-returns-to-butler-a-needed-dose-of-stability/ 1/5 11/1/2017 Old Faces New Places: LaVall Jordan’s return gives Butler a dose of stability – The Athletic
Maybe stability isn’t the right word; maybe it’s tranquility that Butler is after. In search of that, it can do no better than hire one of its own, a sharp, affable, imperturbable former Bulldog essentially overdue for a job like this, let alone this job exactly. It's a low-stress arrangement all around: Destinee already knew which neighborhoods and schools she would target. LaVall knew the logistics and infrastructure of the school. The athletic director, Barry Collier, had recruited the coach he was hiring. The whole deal, really, was about the satisfaction and relief of latching on to something familiar. “He knows what the culture is,” sophomore guard Kamar Baldwin says of Jordan. “That’s how it was when he played, and it’s pretty much the same way now.”
Jordan first spoke to Collier on the Friday after Holtmann departed, then again on Saturday, then met with his former coach at a northwest Indiana hotel on Sunday. They talked about Jordan’s ascension into a head coaching role and the vision for Butler in the Big East. By Monday, Jordan had the job. “It was bang, bang, bang, bang,” he says. And if there is any stylistic difference as he begins Year 1, it will reflect on the process that brought him here: Stuff will happen fast. Jordan is offering more offensive freedom and asking his players to run more in practice with the aim of running more in games. “He wants to score fast,” senior forward Kelan Martin says. “When I came to Butler, we played fast, but not as fast as we’re about to play this year.” The Bulldogs registered an adjusted tempo of 65.9 possessions per game last year, per Fieldhouse contributor Ken Pomeroy’s rankings, which ranked 278th in the country. Jordan believes he has the personnel to speed things up offensively — even 6-foot-11 sophomore Joey Brunk and 6-10 junior Nate Fowler, he says, are in better shape and capable of filling lanes.
“This group can push the pace — if we can defend,” Jordan says. “Everybody likes to run, but we’ve got to be able to get stops to do that. That’s kind of the carrot for being a good defensive team.”
The head coach has also been in a hurry to get to know his club. A previously scheduled exhibition trip to Spain created a captive audience; as Butler toured Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia, Jordan engaged his players on what they thought of historic sites, then offered his own thoughts, which were profound enough that the Bulldogs suspected their new coach did some travel-guide prep before the trip. “He was doing all the research,” Martin says. “He’s like a coach off the court.”
It’s now incumbent upon Jordan to continue the program's on-court success. Asked for his vision of what’s next for Butler, he cites the shot that went “eight centimeters” awry — the Gordon Hayward heave at the buzzer in the national title game loss to Duke in 2010, and the idea that the program can reach the precipice of a national championship once again.
So some things do change. This program was no one’s definition of a burgeoning power when Jordan played from 1997 to 2001. Nor were players afforded the luxuries his current batch enjoys. He endured dorm rooms without air conditioning at Ross Hall, walking to communal bathrooms with shower caddie in hand. “Some Saturdays or Sunday mornings,” Jordan says, “you might not even want to go in there at all.”
These days, Butler has just about everything it needs, including the head coach who should make it easy to feel comfortable again. After the Jordans were officially Indianapolis-bound, Destinee put the house in Mequon, Wisc., up for sale on a Wednesday in July. It sold by Saturday. The transaction, and transition, proceeded quickly, as if it was meant to be. There was, in the end, nothing to be nervous about.
(Photos courtesy of Butler University)
https://theathletic.com/137469/2017/11/01/old-faces-new-places-lavall-jordan-returns-to-butler-a-needed-dose-of-stability/ 2/5 Doyel: Big Cat a big teddy bear and one-of-a-kind for Butler basketball
Gregg Doyel, [email protected] Published 9:12 p.m. ET Feb. 20, 2018 | Updated 9:52 a.m. ET Feb. 21, 2018
INDIANAPOLIS – Tyler Wideman is holding a potato and kitchen knife. That’s the forever image Art Furman will carry with him when Wideman is gone, a day coming too quickly. Seems like Wideman just got here,Fullscr aeen big bruiser from The Region, where he led Lake Central to the 2014 Class 4A title game a few months before coming to Butler. Best photos from Butler's senior night against Creighton
Buy Photo But Wideman has indeed been a Bulldog for four years, and Tuesday was senior night at Hinkle Fieldhouse. A full house came to see Butler beat Creighton 93-70, and to say goodbye to Wideman and the Bulldogs’ other
(Photo: Jenna Watson/IndyStar) senior, Kelan Martin.
Martin is the headliner, a 6-7 scoring machine who ranks first in the Big East at 23.3 ppg in league play and fifth on the all-time Butler scoring list with 1,909 career points. Martin is making a run at 2,000, a number that separates the good from the great.
MORE: Capitalize on this special $9.99 a year offer for IndyStar content (http://offers.indystar.com/digitaloffer?gps- source=CPNEWS&utm_medium=onsite&utm_source=news&utm_campaign=NEWSROOM&utm_content=CPNEWS)
Our best deal of 2018: Get a year's subscription for just $9.99. (http://offers.indystar.com/digitaloffer?gps- source=CPNEWS&utm_medium=onsite&utm_source=news&utm_campaign=NEWSROOM&utm_content=CPNEWS)
Wideman has no such number. Oh, he has solid statistics, if you’re into that. He averages 9.5 points and 5.2 rebounds. He’s shooting 67.7 percent from the floor and 80.6 percent from the line. He leads the Big East in field-goal percentage, and approaching David Padgett’s single-season league record (68.3 percent). Some of that is striking, but the beauty of Tyler Wideman doesn’t register numerically. To do his college career justice, to explain why Butler would be lucky to get another Tyler Wideman, we’ll need words. We’ll need images.
Art Furman, a Butler professor in the College of Education, has that image of Tyler Wideman at the Jewish Community Center, where he’s interning this semester. Wideman is majoring in human movement health science education (HMHSE (https://www.butler.edu/coe/human-movement-health-science-education)). Interning as a coach would have been easy enough. He volunteers as a middle-school coach for Indiana Primetime, Brandon Lafferman’s club based in Carmel.
Wideman chose the Jewish Community Center, working with preschool kids and retirees and Special Olympians. The image Furman has of Wideman, it was a few weeks ago. A group of Special Olympians is visiting the JCC to learn how to cook soup. Picture 20 of them cutting potatoes and carrots, bagging them and taking them home to make soup for their parents.
Tyler Wideman helping at Special Now picture a Special Olympian named Andrew Peterson Olympics cooking class, Feb. 2 at (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/2015/07/07/indy-athlete-prevails-fetal-alcohol-syndrome/29818953/), the Jewish Community Center holding a kitchen knife in one hand and a potato in the other. Peterson is unsure what to do next. Picture shown with Andrew Peterson (green shirt). (Photo: Courtesy of Wideman, that 6-8 mound of muscles, leaning down to help. Wideman is wearing a Butler hoodie and a nametag Art Furman) that says: Tyler. He puts his right hand on Peterson’s right hand and guides it to the potato, which Peterson (and Wideman) are holding in their left hand. Now the delicate part … there. A potato slice.
Subscribe Now Join and get (http://offers.indystar.com/specialoffer? st gps- 1 Month Free source=BEAZmar&utm_medium=agilityzone&utm_sou exchange&utm_campaign=UWEB2017)
Peterson is smiling. Looks almost as happy as Wideman.
More: Two seniors aim for movie-like ending to Butler basketball careers (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2018/02/19/two-seniors- aim-movie-like-ending-butler-basketball-careers/351560002/)
“Just a big teddy bear draped all over (Peterson),” Furman says of Wideman. “It’s a whole different picture of a Big East post guy.” He’s not your typical Big East guy. Hasn’t been since he got to Butler four years ago and was given a questionnaire sports information departments give incoming freshman athletes. Schools need info about their players for the media guide. High school accomplishments, stats, that sort of thing. Here’s what Wideman put, and this is all he put:
Reached state championship game.
Nothing about earning All-State or finishing in a fourth-place tie for 2014 IndyStar Mr. Basketball (behind Trey Lyles, Trevon Bluiett and James Blackmon Jr.). Nothing about being named Duneland Conference MVP or Player of the Year by The Times of Northwest Indiana. Nothing about being an Indiana All- Star in 2014, or a Junior All-Star in 2013.
And his high school stats?
“He literally had no idea,” Chris Holtmann was saying earlier Tuesday. Holtmann, now at Ohio State, coached Wideman’s first three seasons at Butler. Holtmann says: “He and Key (Kelan Martin) represent the very best in my opinion.”
And he loves how Wideman didn’t list any personal accomplishments.
“All he knew is they played in the state championship,” Holtmann says. “That told us all we needed to know: He's special."
Dave Milausnic and Marc Urban could have told Butler that. They coached Wideman in high school — Milausnic is Lake Central’s coach; Urban, his assistant then, now coaches Chesterton — and have stories of Wideman gravitating toward kids with special needs, helping them in P.E. class, the Mr. Basketball finalist teaching them how to dribble.
“I’ve never seen those kids like another student like they did with Tyler,” Urban says. “And I’m not just blowing smoke because I love the kid. Tyler really is that great of a kid.”
Pick someone at Hinkle Fieldhouse. Pick anyone. They’ll tell you. Pick Kelly Antcliff, who works games helping Butler distribute tickets to players’ family. Her children, Isaac (8) and Claudia (11), love Butler basketball but Wideman is their favorite. He remembers their names. Isaac gave Wideman a card Tuesday, drawing a picture of Wideman dunking and wishing him “the best I mean the best Senior Day ever.”
He signed the card: Your friend, Isaac.
Pick a woman out of the crowd at Hinkle. Here, pick Anne Wilson. She’s a Butler chemistry professor with two boys, one of whom has cerebral palsy, and partners with the Bulldogs to host a basketball camp every summer for kids with special needs. She says Wideman is a favorite of campers, including her 16-year-old, Miles Cruz. She says her 10-year-old, Malcolm Cruz, “isn’t interested in basketball — except for Tyler. He loves Tyler.” More: 3 reasons Butler beat Creighton 93-70 (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2018/02/20/3- reasons-butler-beat-creighton-93-70/351710002/)
Why?
“Well, he remembers their names,” she says. “And he’s just so nice. When Tyler saw me on campus he dropped everything and came running across the quad to hug me!” Buy Photo
Isaac Antcliff and Butler forward Tyler Wideman. (Photo: Courtesy of Kelly Antcliff)
Ken Richman, 74, wears a cat costume to cheer on Tyler "Big Cat" Wideman (4) for Butler's senior night game against Creighton at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2018. Butler won, 93-70. (Photo: Jenna Watson/IndyStar)
Here, pick someone else. See the guy under the basket? Can’t miss him. Wearing a big cat costume, with “Big Cat” taped on the back. That’s Tyler’s nickname, you know: Big Cat.
“That’s why I’m wearing it!” says the fan, Ken Richman. “He’s my favorite player. I’m hoping for a picture with him.” Richman, 74, owns Broad Ripple Bagel and Deli. He’s been coming to Hinkle since Bobby Plump was Butler’s best player. Says he spent $50 to rent the costume on senior night.
“He’s just special,” Richman says, and I’m thinking: Do people have any idea? Even Butler fans, who know their team so well. Do they know just how special Tyler Wideman is? I need to tell them about the time Art Furman (https://www.butler.edu/directory/user/afurman) asked his HMHSE class for volunteers to teach Butler faculty and staff how to play pickle ball for their annual Olympiad, and how first thing the next morning Wideman was at the rec center holding a paddle.
ADVERTISING
Or show them a picture of kids from the Mary Trigg Community Center stepping off a bus at Butler. It’s July and they’re attending the three-day Hinkle Academy Youth Wellness and Leadership Summit. I’d show folks a picture of the assistant camp director greeting the kids off the bus. Big smile. Big guy. He’s 6-8, 245 pounds. Nametag says: Tyler.
Let’s hope Butler gets another player like that. Let’s just not count on it.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar (https://twitter.com/GreggDoyelStar) or at facebook.com/gregg.doyel (https://www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel). If you like the work we do here at the IndyStar, please consider a subscription. This is an amazing deal. (http://offers.indystar.com/digitaloffer?gps- source=CPNEWS&utm_medium=onsite&utm_source=news&utm_campaign=NEWSROOM&utm_content=CPNEWS)
Butler basketball's backbone: Tyler Wideman has always come up big
David Woods, [email protected] Published 12:43 p.m. ET Nov. 5, 2017 | Updated 5:38 p.m. ET Nov. 5, 2017
ST. JOHN – Brad Stevens recruited him.
Brandon Miller signed him.
Buy Photo Chris Holtmann coached him.
(Photo: Mykal McEldowney/IndyStar) LaVall Jordan inherited him.
Through all of Butler’s basketball's coaching changes, Tyler Wideman has stood as tall and immovable as a sequoia. He was a Butler player before arriving at Butler.
His high school coach, Lake Central’s Dave Milausnic, said Wideman had intangibles. Students and teachers embraced him. So did lunchroom workers, janitors and secretaries. He cared about his teammates, and about winning.
“You talk about the Butler Way, he went there already having that team mentality,” Milausnic said. “I think that’s what attracted him to Butler.”
Not that Wideman was incapable of change. He had to change.
He was so big for his age — he was 6-3 in fifth grade and dunked in seventh grade — that his mother took a birth certificate to summer tournaments to prove he was eligible. Purdue coach Matt Painter started checking him out in the eighth grade. Other recruiters envisioned Wideman growing into a 7-foot center.
Did not happen. He topped out at 6-8. Did not matter.
He became mobile enough that Milausnic called him Big Cat. The nickname stuck. In AAU, high school and then college, Wideman has not backed down from anyone.
Big Cat has opposed big men such as Jahlil Okafor, Caleb Swanigan, Trey Lyles, Myles Turner and Dakari Johnson — all now making millions in the NBA. Wideman did not always win the statistical matchup, but his team usually won the games.
One other note: Before this season, Wideman set a Butler record with 30 reps of 185 pounds on the bench press. That exceeds the record for the NBA Draft Combine: 27 by Jason Keep in 2003.
“Nothing can intimidate that kid at Butler right now,” said Terrence Wilburn, who coached Wideman on the Chicago Meanstreets summer team. “Because he’s faced those guys since eighth grade.”
Butler needs Wideman to change again, from quiet teammate to vocal leader. He can do it. He has done it.
When he addressed Lake Central teammates, Milausnic said, they listened. No “phony stuff,” though. Wilburn has seen Wideman come to the bench “and get into the guys pretty good.”
Big Cat would rather play like a lion than roar like one. He and Kelan Martin are the only seniors on a team made up mostly of sophomores and freshmen. Wideman began transitioning into a leadership role during an August trip to Spain … but no, he is not changing who he is. “I don’t have to step outside of myself and try to talk too much or do too much extra stuff,” he said. “Just lead by example and help out guys however I can.”
***
Wideman was born to a single mother in Harvey, Ill. His mother, Cammy Wideman, and father, Robin Howard, were both high school basketball players in south suburban Chicago. Wideman and his older sister, Ashley, later moved with their mother to Merrillville, Crown Point and then Schererville.
Cammy said her son was so candid that he would “tell on himself” if he misbehaved in preschool. Behavior was rarely a problem, although one incident redirected his life. On a dare, he jumped over a chair at a parent/teacher conference. A youth coach suggested Wideman play basketball, and from fifth grade on, that’s what he did.
“Couldn’t make a layup. Didn’t have any work habits,” Wilburn recalled. “It took a couple of years to handle him and get him to understand what working hard meant. He had a lot of baby fat. Once he figured out that he wanted to do it, it was an amazing road after that.”
Wideman stayed with the same group of boys, many earning Division I scholarships, including Phoenix Suns guard Tyler Ulis (Kentucky) and Paul White (Georgetown/Oregon). The team changed names a couple of times but was desirable to tournament organizers.
In a tournament in Norfolk, Va., against the New York Gauchos, Wilburn challenged Wideman to neutralize Johnson, who went on to Kentucky and the Oklahoma City Thunder. Games like that caused Wideman to change his mind-set.
Wilburn said Wideman’s response was: “These guys weren’t better than me. I’m right there with them.”
When Wideman arrived at Lake Central, he weighed 280 pounds. So the coach was not worried about how well he could play, but how long. Two minutes? A quarter? A half?
“That was really the battle for Tyler,” Milausnic said.
Wideman and Glenn Robinson III, who went on to Michigan and the Indiana Pacers, were Lake Central teammates for two seasons. The Indians were 21-2 heading into the 2012 regional, where they were upset by South Bend Adams 76-72, ending Robinson’s high school career.
Two years later, Lake Central returned to the regional but lost a late lead to Penn. What happened at the buzzer is etched in Milausnic’s memory and preserved in a photograph on his office wall.
“I can see it in slow motion and I can remember, ‘Is he going to dunk it?’” the coach said. “I asked him about it. ‘I thought really quick about dunking it but was afraid I was going to miss and what you were going to say if I missed it.’ He just tapped it in.”
That 57-55 victory sent Lake Central into the semistate, in which it beat Homestead and Swanigan, 79-57. In their first state finals since 1984, the Indians lost to Tech and Lyles, 63-59. Wideman missed part of that game because of a gash that required bandaging. Lake Central trailed by 23 in the third quarter before a comeback led by Wideman, who finished with 19 points, 12 rebounds and set a Class 4A record with 9-of-11 shooting.
He came out with more than a scar near his eyebrow. That night — and a 15-point, 18-rebound game for the Indiana All-Stars against Kentucky — reinforced what his coach thought all along.
“When your best player is as unselfish as him, the team that year was just magical,” Milausnic said.
After Big East games, opposing coaches often mention Wideman, whose contributions are not always evident in box scores. Last season, he averaged 7.2 points, 5.0 rebounds and shot 61.5 percent.
A college recruiter once told Milausnic that Wideman communicated better on defense than his own players. During televised games, the Lake Central coach recognizes Wideman’s voice, picked up by microphones.
Jordan has called him one of Butler’s brightest players, especially in directing teammates on defense. Practice with the Indiana All-Stars underscored Wideman’s hoops IQ. An All-Stars coach, Crown Point’s Clint Swan, was explaining an offensive set. That is your “Texas” play, Wideman told him.
“So he remembered coach Swann’s play name from our scouting report and what the play was,” Milausnic said.
***
Wideman rations words but tells stories with tattoos. One is devoted to Annye McDonald, his great-grandmother, and another to his grandmother, Felicia Wideman, who died from cancer in 2010 at age 60. They were profoundly influential. Another tattoo, extending from right elbow to wrist, is of a tiger. (Remember: Big Cat.)
Those close to Wideman appreciate his sense of humor. His mother said he is wise for his age, perhaps because he enjoys talking to older people. Yet he acknowledged “very chill” is his default setting.
“I always say I’d be fine just sitting in my room with a couple of dogs next to me,” he said.
Jordan will be fine if the Dawgs continue to follow Wideman.
When the new coach arrived in mid-June, he already had a bond with his new player from having recruited him while an assistant coach at Michigan. Coincidentally, the Jordan and Wideman families once lived in the same Merrillville apartment complex at the same time.
The 240-pound Wideman, an exercise science major, showed how serious he was about this season in those weightlifting numbers. Besides the 30 reps, he set another Butler record with a bench press of 350 pounds.
Only other numbers of interest are on the all-time Butler wins board. The Bulldogs have gone 70-31 in three years, and six senior classes have won 95 or more.
“We’ve been talking to him about being kind of that charismatic connector for this group,” Jordan said. “It’s something he wants. Sometimes guys don’t want to lead. So it’s something he wants to do, something we’re challenging him to do.
“He’ll ask questions about what we want from him as a staff, how he could communicate with his teammates. It’s been encouraging to go through this with him and walk down this path together.”
If there is victory at the end, Wideman’s footprints will be all along that path.
MORE BUTLER: ► 3 key takeaways from Butler victory over Lincoln Memorial (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2017/11/04/3-key-takeaways-butler- victory-over-lincoln-memorial/823156001/) ► Building the best Butler basketball lineup from the past 25 years (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2017/11/02/building-best-butler- basketball-lineup-past-25-years/817331001/) ► Butler basketball recruiting: Dawgs still looking for first 2018 commit (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2017/10/31/butler-basketball- recruiting-dawgs-still-looking-first-2018-commit/817361001/)
Call IndyStar reporter David Woods at (317) 444-6195. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.
SPONSORED BY TOYOTA (//EB2.3LIFT.COM/PASS? TL_CLICKTHROUGH=TRUE&REDIR=HTTPS%3A%2F%2FAD.DOUBLECLICK.NE Toyotathon Is ON! (//Eb2.3lift.Com/Pass? Tl_clickthrough=True&Redir=Https%3A%2F%2
SEE MORE (//EB2.3LIFT.COM/PASS? TL_CLICKTHROUGH=TRUE&REDIR=HTTPS%3A%2F%2FAD.DOUBLECLICK.NET%2FD
(//eb2.3lift.com/pass? tl_clickthrough=true&redir=https%3A%2F%2Fad.doubleclick.net%2Fddm%2Ftrackclk%2FN2724.1264338TRIPLELIFTINC%2FB10723673.143215
No longer a secret, Kamar Baldwin asked to do more for Butler
David Woods, [email protected] Published 10:37 a.m. ET Dec. 8, 2017
INDIANAPOLIS – Kamar Baldwin is like the hitter who begins his career banging baseballs all over the yard . . . that is, until pitchers identify his weaknesses. Then he must adjust to those adjustments.
Baldwin is a college basketball player, not a baseball slugger, but the analogy applies. He was not the No. 1 or 2 target of defenses last season, when he became the highest-scoring Butler freshman (10.1 ppg) since NBA
Buy Photo players Gordon Hayward and Shelvin Mack in 2008-09.
(Photo: Jenna Watson/IndyStar) Now everyone knows about Baldwin. His scoring average (12.8) is up, but most other numbers are down.
However, he might be finding his groove as the Bulldogs (7-2) prepare to play Youngstown State (2-7) at noon Saturday at Hinkle Fieldhouse.
“I feel like I’m transitioning over pretty smoothly,” said Baldwin, who shares point guard duties with freshman Aaron Thompson. “It’s just a matter of time before shots start falling.” Buy Photo
Butler guard Kamar Baldwin's shooting percentages have dipped from his freshman to sophomore season. (Photo: Jenna Watson/IndyStar) Baldwin’s offensive rating is 90.3, compared to 106.3 last season, according to kenpom.com. He is shooting 41 percent from the field and 30 percent on 3-pointers, compared to 50 percent and 37 percent a year ago. He also has 25 assists in nine games (2.8 per), compared with 50 in 34 games (1.5) as a freshman.
Before the season, ESPN ranked Butler’s Kelan Martin (36th) and Baldwin (50th) among the nation’s top 50 players.
Martin conceded “freshman to sophomore year is a big jump.” The senior endured a transition last season, when he became first on the scouting report following graduation of Roosevelt Jones and Kellen Dunham.
“I made some adjustments to my game,” Martin said. “I had to get my teammates involved.”
That’s what Baldwin is doing, too. The Bulldogs still need him to score, but also to make plays for others, rebound and guard the opponent’s top perimeter player. Few during Butler’s renaissance of the past two decades have been asked to do more.
Coach LaVall Jordan said Baldwin “really found something there” in Tuesday’s 81-69 victory over Utah (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2017/12/06/insider-old-dawgs-learn-new-tricks-butler-builds- winning-streak/919689001/). The sophomore had a career-high five assists, and Jordan said he could have had eight or nine. Baldwin went on a personal 7-0 run in the second half, allowing the Bulldogs to push an eight-point lead to 70-55.
Buy Photo “It’s a new role, so it takes some time to find your way in that role,” Jordan said. “Every team plays you different.
Butler coach LaVall Jordan, left, There’s different schemes. You’ve kind of got to figure out what the defense is giving you. And it’s moving at a wants sophomore Kamar Baldwin high rate of speed. It’s college basketball. and the other Bulldogs to pick up the pace. (Photo: Robert Scheer/IndyStar) “I think he’s getting more comfortable every day.”
As a Michigan assistant coach, Jordan helped develop three future NBA guards: Darius Morris, Trey Burke and Tim Hardaway Jr. Baldwin could become a fourth, although he might need all four college seasons to get there. He is already attracting attention of NBA scouts. Buy Photo
Butler Bulldogs guard Kamar Baldwin (3) passes during second half action between the Butler Bulldogs and the Princeton Tigers at Hinkle Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017. Butler lead at halftime, 41-31. Butler defeated Princeton, 85-75. (Photo: Jenna Watson/IndyStar)
One part of Baldwin’s game has not changed: Coming up big in big moments. His high school coach in Winder, Ga., nicknamed him "Franchise." (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2017/01/19/butlers-kamar-baldwin-ability-humility-ambidextrous/96664556/)
In his second college game, his jump shot beat Northwestern. His steal and layup secured an upset of No. 1 Villanova, and he helped rescue the Bulldogs late in road victories at DePaul and Xavier. Baldwin scored all of his 14 points after halftime in the Nov. 26 overtime win over Ohio State, sinking a tying 3-pointer with nine seconds left in regulation.
“Without a doubt, he has the clutch gene,” teammate Joey Brunk said.
Bulldog bits
Butler’s RPI has climbed to 30th but won’t be helped by Youngstown, which ranks 347th out of 351 Division I teams. . . . When both were in the Horizon League, Youngstown beat Butler 62-60 on Feb. 3, 2011. The Bulldogs won their next 14, advancing to the NCAA championship game. . . . Butler’s streak of 40 consecutive nonleague home wins is No. 3 nationally behind Duke (138) and Arizona (44). . . . Jordan was 1-1 against Youngstown while coaching at Milwaukee last season. . . . Jerrod Calhoun, 36, is in his first season as Penguins coach, succeeding longtime coach Jerry Slocum. Calhoun, who formerly played for Cleveland State, led Fairmount State to a 34-3 record and NCAA Division II runner-up finish last season.
Call IndyStar reporter David Woods at (317) 444-6195. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.
► MORE: Butler fans on beer sales — We know how to behave (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2017/12/07/butler-fans-hinkle-beer- sales-we-know-how-behave/930678001/) ► MORE: Joey Brunk granted additional year of eligibility (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2017/12/06/butlers-joey-brunk-granted- additional-season-ncaa/926226001/) ► INSIDER: Who says you can't teach old Dawgs new tricks? (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2017/12/06/insider-old-dawgs-learn- new-tricks-butler-builds-winning-streak/919689001/)
Youngstown State at Butler
Tipoff: Noon Saturday, Hinkle Fieldhouse.
TV/Radio: Fox Sports Indiana/1070 AM, 107.5 FM. 'Prince Harry of Harlem' finds home at Hinkle
David Woods, [email protected] Published 2:15 p.m. ET Dec. 18, 2017
INDIANAPOLIS – There is a lot of New York in Paul Jorgensen ... but a whole lotta Hoosier, too.
Butler basketball teammates might tease him about his slang and the way he pronounces water like “watta.” To nearly everyone, he is “Paulie.” Yet what could be more Indiana than the kid outside his house shooting baskets all day long?
Buy Photo “Morning, noon and night,” said his mother, Anne.
(Photo: Jenna Watson/IndyStar) Jorgensen’s father, Eric, works in Knightstown, home of the Hoosier Gym. That is where parts of the movie “Hoosiers” were filmed.
Jorgensen is animated enough to agitate opposing fans ... but he is so nice. Because of him, high school teammates looked forward to practice. He not only talks about loving Butler teammates, but his coaches, classmates and professors.
Hoosiers tout their hospitality. It would be hard to find a friendlier one.
“The most important thing about Paulie is he likes people, and people like him,” his mother said.
Jorgensen has become an important figure for the Bulldogs, who will try to raise their Hinkle Fieldhouse record to 7-0 in Tuesday night's game against Morehead State. Buy Photo
Butler Bulldogs forward Tyler Wideman (4) and Butler Bulldogs guard Paul Jorgensen (5) celebrate the team's lead during first half action between the Butler Bulldogs and the Princeton Tigers at Hinkle Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017. Butler defeated Princeton, 85-75. (Photo: Jenna Watson/IndyStar)
Jorgensen was brought to Butler by former coach Chris Holtmann, who calculated there would be a need for a point guard in 2017-18. Instead, the transfer from George Washington has morphed into a shooting guard, and an accurate one. Over the Bulldogs’ past six games, he is 19-of-37 on 3- pointers (51 percent) and has averaged 13.5 points.
Virtually no one foresaw he would do what he has done — with one exception. He always had self-belief.
“On the court, I always try to bring the New York attitude,” he said. “Because in New York, listen, no matter what you do, no matter how much you do, in anything you do, people are going to think they want to win it. ‘I’m going to take it.’” ***
Jorgensen is the first Butler player from his state since Dean Edwards of Olean, N.Y., in 1991-92. (Edwards transferred to Rider after one season.) A DV E R T I S E M E N T
Play Now ►
Jorgensen’s hometown is New City, N.Y., county seat of Rockland County and located 18 miles north of the Bronx. Rockland has the highest per capita Jewish population of any U.S. county at 31 percent.
“I grew up with everybody,” Jorgensen said of New York demographics.
He grew up playing baseball, football and soccer in addition to basketball, and he was told he had a future as a shortstop. He loved hoops, though.
On outdoor playgrounds, he acquired the nickname “Prince Harry of Harlem.” His hair was longer and reddish then, and he resembled the British prince. And he was a baller.
Beginning his sophomore year, he concentrated on basketball at Don Bosco Prep, an all-boys Catholic school in Ramsey, N.J., that was a 25-minute commute. The school has a national reputation in football but has also thrived in basketball under coach Kevin Diverio, now in his 23rd season.
Jorgensen was “all-in,” the coach said.
“It was all about the program, it was all about the coaching staff. It was about everything but himself.”
Jorgensen averaged 17.8 points as a senior, featuring a buzzer beater that sent Don Bosco past Pope John 61- 59 and into the final of the North Jersey non-public A state tournament. He sank five 3-pointers and scored 27 points.
Just as memorable was the night Don Bosco’s team traveled to the Bronx to meet Cardinal Hayes, ranked No. 2 in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut tri-state area. Cardinal Hayes won 58-54, but Jorgensen scored 20 Buy Photo points and kept the Ironmen in it.
Butler Bulldogs guard Paul Jorgensen (5) gets an easy layup “Every time it looked like they were going to pull away, Paul got us back into the game,” Diverio said. “I think that after a steal against the Purdue was definitely a game to show he could play with elite guards.” Boilermakers during the Crossroads Classic at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on Still, recruiters were scarce. None from the Big East came calling. Harvard and Columbia of the Ivy League were Saturday, Dec. 16, 2017. (Photo: interested in Jorgensen, as were Bucknell and Holy Cross. Mykal McEldowney/IndyStar)
At George Washington, he was a teammate of Kethan Savage, who also transferred to Butler. In 2016, Jorgensen helped the 28-10 Colonials win the National Invitation Tournament. He averaged 4.9 points and 2.1 assists per game, and his 15.7 minutes were most by a non-starter.
Jorgensen left before the coach, Mike Lonergan, was fired in September 2016 amid allegations of verbal abuse. Longeran filed a suit for wrongful termination, and an out-of-court settlement was reached.
Diverio said Jorgensen told him he did not fit George Washington’s offensive style. Jorgensen declined to comment on his experience there. “I don’t even think about what happened in my past,” he said. “I’ve worked so hard to be where I’m at now.”
After announcing he would transfer, he was contacted by Holtmann. Jorgensen also considered Hofstra and Northeastern but said the opportunity to play in the Big East, the conference he grew up following, could not be turned down.
“The stars aligned,” his mother said.
*** Buy Photo
Butler Bulldogs guard Paul Jorgensen (5) works a possession during second half action between the Butler Bulldogs and the Princeton Tigers at Hinkle Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2017. Butler lead at halftime, 41-31. Butler defeated Princeton, 85-75. (Photo: Jenna Watson/IndyStar)
Jorgensen comes from a family of athletes.
His father, Eric, played college football at The Citadel for coach Bobby Ross, who took Georgia Tech to a national championship and San Diego Chargers to a Super Bowl. His brother, also named Eric, 26, played soccer at Manhattan. His sister, Dana, 30, was a swim captain at Holy Cross.
Yet even in his own family, Jorgensen is something of a fitness fanatic.
“He has us all on diets,” his mother said.
In the offseason, Jorgensen lowered his body fat from 13 percent to less than 10 percent. He took yoga lessons in a class that was otherwise all-women, swam laps in the pool, ran hills and developed his own treadmill workout. In Butler’s preseason mile run, he finished first in 5 minutes, 25 seconds.
Anne Jorgensen preceded her son’s arrival in Indianapolis. She is a director in the neonatal practice at Riley Hospital for Children. Jorgensen’s father, vice president of sales for Hy-Flex, followed her to Indiana.
Having family nearby has enriched Jorgensen’s Indianapolis experience, but he already felt at home. He gushes about the city, the school and Hinkle Fieldhouse. The Butler Way, he said, is real.
“Overall, the place is a special place,” he said. “You don’t get that everywhere. A lot of kids don’t understand how good we have it.”
Jorgensen, 21, was young for his class and said he benefited from the season in which he had to sit out. He had heard how hard it was to redshirt but said he did not find it hard at all. He needed the year to improve and learn Butler’s system, and he keeps reminding himself he gets this season and next.
The Bulldogs glimpsed what he could do during an August tour of Spain, and his development has only accelerated. If he has a swagger and a chip on his shoulder ... well, that fits in with the other Dawgs.
“If there’s two players, and they’re similar skill levels, give me the confident guy every time,” coach LaVall Jordan said. “Paulie’s got that.” According to kenpom.com, Jorgensen has an offensive rating of 58th out of 2,100-plus players nationally — a consequence of his .434 shooting on 3s and 26-to-6 assist/turnover ratio.
He scored 13 of his 15 points in a 10-minute span Saturday, helping Butler trim a 26-point deficit to nine in what became an 82-67 loss to Purdue (https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/butler/2017/12/16/insider-another-poor-start-dooms-butler-loss-purdue/940895001/). If anything, it was evidence he and the Bulldogs must continue getting better. Not that he needs prodding.
“He wakes up every morning,” his mother said, “looking to maximize that day.”
That is a good state to be in, whether New York or Indiana.
Call IndyStar reporter David Woods at (317) 444-6195. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.
Morehead State at Butler
Tipoff: 8:30 p.m. Tuesday., Hinkle Fieldhouse.
TV/radio: FS1/1070 AM, 107.5 FM 1/5/2018 A ‘grateful’ Paul Jorgensen finds ‘right fit’ at Butler | News, Sports, Jobs - News-Sentinel
A ‘grateful’ Paul Jorgensen finds ‘right fit’ at Butler
Butler guard Paul Jorgensen thanks fans after defeating Villanova 101-93 in a game in Indianapolis Saturday. (By The Associated Press)
INDIANAPOLIS – Walk out to the end of the long pier in Hermosa Beach, California and watch the sun sink into the Pacific Ocean and you’ll be mesmerized by its magnificence and beauty.
http://www.news-sentinel.com/sports/2017/12/31/a-grateful-paul-jorgensen-finds-right-fit-at-butler/ 1/4 1/5/2018 A ‘grateful’ Paul Jorgensen finds ‘right fit’ at Butler | News, Sports, Jobs - News-Sentinel
The event happens every 24 hours, and has since the beginning of time, yet, it never ceases to amaze.
A similar happening occurs in sports, where an athlete finds him or herself in just the right situation, under the right leadership and circumstances, and they are able to flourish like never before. And we’re amazed by it.
It’s happened since the advent of competition, it happens with regularity today, despite more dissection of athletes and competition than ever before throughout the history of man, and it will happen until the end of athletic competition.
Albert Pujols still happens.
Tom Brady still happens.
And the emergence of Paul Jorgensen can still happen; and is happening; inside of Hinkle Fieldhouse.
The Butler guard played the game of his life Saturday, as he led the Bulldogs to a 101-93 win over No. 1-ranked and unbeaten Villanova in front of 9,244 fans that crammed themselves into the iconic and sold-out arena.
The fact that the offensively-challenged (until Saturday) Bulldogs (12-3, 2- 0 Big East) could bury 15 of 22 3-pointers and lead the Wildcats (13-1, 1-1) by 23 midway through the second half wasn’t as unfathomable as what Jorgensen is doing this season. http://www.news-sentinel.com/sports/2017/12/31/a-grateful-paul-jorgensen-finds-right-fit-at-butler/ 2/4 1/5/2018 A ‘grateful’ Paul Jorgensen finds ‘right fit’ at Butler | News, Sports, Jobs - News-Sentinel Butler has played Villanova either to the final minute or beaten the Wildcats, in six of their nine league meetings, and have now won three consecutive in the series. So Saturday’s win wasn’t mind-boggling.
“They’ve given us trouble,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said prior to the game, “a lot of trouble.”
But to witness Jorgensen becoming one of the catalysts for this Butler squad, with all due respect, has to be stunning to everyone, Jorgensen included.
“The biggest thing is that they believe in us,” Jorgensen said of his Butler coaches. “They believe in what I can do and what the whole team can do. As a player, I’ve been in different situations, and when a coach believes in you, and gives you confidence every day, it’s something that I don’t take for granted. I know how special it is and how a lot of people don’t have that.”
RELATED STORY:No. 1-ranked Villanova knows Butler presents ‘a lot of trouble’
RELATED STORY:Butler’s 3-point barrage stops No. 1 Villanova 101-93
That is about as close as Jorgensen will ever get to touching on the first stage of his collegiate career, which was unproductive and disappointing, to say the least.
Jorgensen spent two seasons as a role player for George Washington and by the end of his time with the Colonials, it was clear that he was playing for a coaching staff that had little confidence in him.
After playing double-figure minutes in the first 23 games of the 2015-16 season, former George Washington coach Mike Lonergan used Jorgensen to that degree just six times in the Colonials’ final 13 games.
Yes, the same player that hit 8 of 13 shots, including a 25-footer and a 30- footer (neither at the buzzer), and totaled a team-high 23 points against the nation’s top team Saturday, could barely get in games at George Washington by the end of his time there.
http://www.news-sentinel.com/sports/2017/12/31/a-grateful-paul-jorgensen-finds-right-fit-at-butler/ 3/4 1/5/2018 A ‘grateful’ Paul Jorgensen finds ‘right fit’ at Butler | News, Sports, Jobs - News-Sentinel “It’s just about opportunity,” Jorgensen said.
And that is precisely what former Butler coach Chris Holtmann and now current Bulldog coach LaVall Jordan have given Jorgensen.
Jorgensen averaged 15minutes and 4.9 points per game for the Colonials the last time he competed, but this season, those numbers have increased to nearly 29 minutes per game and over 12 points per outing.
A few weeks ago, Butler was holding a mid-week media availability session and Jorgensen sauntered out of the locker room for practice and the first person he saw was Jordan, and the first thing he did was go give his coach a hug. If you were curious as to why Jorgensen had the confidence to pull up from 30 feet in transition Saturday, that touching moment between a coach and player explains it.
Jordan isn’t going to tolerate poor or dumb play, but if a guy can make a play, he has the freedom… the confidence, to attempt it under the first-year Butler coach.
“There are a lot of good kids (i.e. Pujols and Brady and now Jorgensen) around the country,” Jorgensen explained, “who don’t have the chance and don’t have the right fit. I’m just grateful to have the right fit now.”
No more grateful than the Butler coaches and fans.
For more on college basketball, follow Tom Davis on Twitter at Tom101010 and on Facebook at Thomas Davis.
http://www.news-sentinel.com/sports/2017/12/31/a-grateful-paul-jorgensen-finds-right-fit-at-butler/ 4/4 Butler basketball looks for Sean McDermott to fill void
David Woods, [email protected] Published 2:25 p.m. ET Oct. 4, 2017 | Updated 3:41 p.m. ET Oct. 4, 2017
INDIANAPOLIS – Every time coach LaVall Jordan walked into the gym, Sean McDermott was there.
When Jordan was at Hinkle Fieldhouse interviewing for the Butler basketball job, so was McDermott, putting up shots. McDermott was kicked out of the gym because rules prevented the coach from watching him.
After Jordan was hired, the first two times he was in the gym, same thing. McDermott was there.
“He works like crazy. He’s in the gym all the time,” Jordan said.
This is a season in which McDermott’s labors should pay off. Patience and perseverance don’t begin to describe what he has endured.
(Photo: David Woods) Before his junior season at Pendleton Heights, he developed a staph infection that could have threatened his life. He returned for that season but had not completely recovered. He redshirted during his first year at Butler, and a wrist injury would have prevented him from playing anyway.
He logged major minutes off the bench last season until mid-January. Meanwhile, his mother, Kim, was fighting a rare cancer affecting her thymus, an organ of the immune system. Surgery removed 90 percent of her thymus gland.
McDermott was recently idled for two weeks because of a severe ankle sprain that left him wearing a protective boot. He said he was “full go” when practice opened this week ahead of the Nov. 10 opener against Kennesaw State.
To honor his mother, he has a new tattoo on his left arm with the words “Kim Strong” and a tiger. He has a new role for the Bulldogs, emerging as a starter during August’s 4-0 trip to Spain. He averaged 9.5 points in those Buy Photo games.
Butler Bulldogs guard Sean McDermott (22) wore a T-shirt in “I thought he deserved to have some success, and he had some success on the trip,” Jordan said. “It’s really support of his mother on Feb. 15, encouraging, the steps he’s made. He’s got an opportunity to contribute. He was preparing himself for it, even when she was battling cancer. (Photo: Matt before I arrived.” Kryger/IndyStar) With four seniors gone, McDermott intensified preparation.
The 6-6 sophomore has added seven pounds to his slender frame, increasing his weight to 196. He earned minutes last season for his 3-point shooting (36 percent on 15-of-42) and defense. Now he is trying to improve shooting and ball-handling. He is pitting himself against quicker teammates one-on- one so he can be an even stronger defender.
He said he is “trying to take a leadership role this year instead of staying back in the crowd.” McDermott expressed indifference to the lack of preseason hype around the Bulldogs, saying they take it day by day — even if that sounds like a cliché. “He’s a great teammate. He brings other guys in with him,” Jordan said. “He’s one of guys who’s a Butler guy.”
Call IndyStar reporter David Woods at (317) 444-6195. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidWoods007.
1/13/2018 LOPRESTI: Two life-threatening illnesses don’t keep Butler’s McDermott family down | 2018-01-12 | Indianapolis Business Journal | IBJ.com | H…
Home LOPRESTI: Two life-threatening illnesses don’t keep Butler’s McDermott family down
Mike Lopresti January 12, 2018
The tattoo on his left arm is the giveaway. So are the two on his chest. They tell you plainly enough what has gone on in Sean McDermott’s life, and in his heart.
“Never, ever thought he’d get a tattoo,” his father, Mike, says. But that was before so much changed in the McDermott family. Before Sean almost died from a staph infection, at 17. Before his mother’s cancer. A one-two punch to leave any home shaken.
So Sean had a basketball in God’s hands tattooed on one side of his chest, and a stairway to heaven on the other. Then, when his mother was sick, a tiger on the left arm with the words “Kim Strong” above. The family wasn’t all that big on the idea of body art, but as his father says: “When he comes home and shows you that, what are you going to say?”
It is a Saturday afternoon in Hinkle Fieldhouse, an hour before the game, and the McDermott parents are already in the house. They started arriving early last season. The cancer—in Kim’s thymus gland—had nearly wrecked Kim’s immune system, so she had to wear a mask when around any crowd.
“It was important for him that I come early, and Sean could wave to me,” she says. “It was good for me to get here when it wasn’t crowded, so I didn’t have to wear my mask for a while. He could wave and look at me without a mask.”
Such a small thing. Such an important thing. “Even the slightest sightings meant a lot,” Sean says. “And they https://www.ibj.com/articles/print/67007-lopresti-two-life-threatening-illnesses-dont-keep-butlers-mcdermott-family-down 1/5 1/13/2018 LOPRESTI: Two life-threatening illnesses don’t keep Butler’s McDermott family down | 2018-01-12 | Indianapolis Business Journal | IBJ.com | H… still do.”
Doctors say Kim is cancer-free now, although her immune system still has its challenges. But no mask is needed. The parents still come early, though. Sean has turned into a valuable presence off the bench for Butler, and his tip-in saved the day at Georgetown. He was really playing well when an ankle injury slowed him down, but overall, things are good.
Sean McDermott got a tattoo, to honor his mom, Kim, as she battles cancer in her thymus gland.(Photo courtesy of McDermott family)
So there was time for his parents to discuss what recent years have been like for their family.
“I think there’s probably a greater appreciation for how quickly it can be taken away,” Kim says. “I think probably the biggest difference I notice is, with Sean and I, there’s definitely a tighter bond. And I think you become more empathetic to people, and what they go through.”
It started on a November weekend in 2013. Sean was a junior at Pendleton Heights and had endured some tough practices. That day, he couldn’t stay awake. On Monday, his joints started hurting. Tuesday, it was worse. “He basically couldn’t move,” Kim says. “You couldn’t adjust the bed. There’d be horrific screams if you did, because he was in so much pain.”
Repeated trips to the doctor and emergency room kept providing diagnoses that ended up wrong. First, dehydration. No. Then the flu. No. Then a virus. No. By Wednesday, they were headed to Riley Hospital for Children. By then, Sean had to be wheeled into the hospital in a wheelchair. “Nov. 16,” Kim says of when it all began. “It’s always easy to remember because Mike’s birthday is the 17th.”
The tests finally found an answer—a serious staph infection, caught just in time. Just. In. Time.
Kim: “We were told by the infectious-disease doctor that he was a day away from not making it. If it had taken one more day to get him to Riley, he probably wouldn’t have survived.”
Mike: “The doctors told us his muscles went back to the infant stage. He was 175 pounds as a junior, and in eight days he went to 152 pounds. It just ate his muscle.”
https://www.ibj.com/articles/print/67007-lopresti-two-life-threatening-illnesses-dont-keep-butlers-mcdermott-family-down 2/5 1/13/2018 LOPRESTI: Two life-threatening illnesses don’t keep Butler’s McDermott family down | 2018-01-12 | Indianapolis Business Journal | IBJ.com | H…
Mike McDermott
The medical opinion held that he wouldn’t play basketball that junior season.
Kim: “I just asked the doctors not to tell him that. The only reason I thought he would fight as hard as he could fight, was to play basketball.”
Mike: “That was everything to him. Basketball is Sean’s life.”
Turns out, he did get back later in the season, though it was two years before he was truly 100 percent. By then he was at Butler, ready to get his career rolling. But …
Kim had been going through a series of strange infections herself, plus a cough. Tests found a mass in her chest. She immediately feared lung cancer, but it turned out to involve the thymus gland.
“My bone marrow was destroying my white blood cells. For a normal person, the average white blood cell count is 3,500 to 4,000. Mine was 40. I was at risk to catch anything and everything.”
She was diagnosed in 2016, six days after Joey Brunk’s father was found to have brain cancer. Darkness had fallen on the Butler basketball program.
“All I wanted to do was keep the best attitude possible, so my two kids knew they didn’t have to worry about me, that I would be fine,” Kim says. Besides, for a mother, cancer might be scary, but not as bad as watching a son suffer. “That,” she says, “was a hundred times worse.”
It took three months for her to get her white cells up to where she could have surgery to remove a grapefruit-size mass.
“That’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever been through,” Mike says. “To watch my son be sick and that close to death, and then last year watch my wife be sick. But you know what? We’ve all got faith in God and we know He’s going to get us through everything. Sean’s been a fighter his whole life; my wife is a fighter. Neither one of them got down. … My wife was telling me, ‘You’ve got to keep your head up.’”
Sean started researching the tattoo he wanted to honor his mother. Kim wasn’t so sure.
“Sean and I had a long talk about that one. He put a lot of thought into it. It was like a six-month talk.”
The challenges for the family go on. Kim’s immune system is still at risk, so any fever means a quick hospital trip. Also, Sean’s brother, Chayce, is a pitcher at Ball State. He hurt his arm last year and needed Tommy John surgery.
“I basically knew I had cancer the day before my birthday,” Kim says. “Last year on my birthday, he gets injured pitching in an intra-squad scrimmage and found out he has to have Tommy John.
https://www.ibj.com/articles/print/67007-lopresti-two-life-threatening-illnesses-dont-keep-butlers-mcdermott-family-down 3/5 1/13/2018 LOPRESTI: Two life-threatening illnesses don’t keep Butler’s McDermott family down | 2018-01-12 | Indianapolis Business Journal | IBJ.com | H… “We’re skipping my birthday this year.”
It is three hours later, after a tough loss to Seton Hall. Sean McDermott, who contributed seven points, has come out to see the family. His grandparents are there, too. Grandfather Alan Darner coached two state champions at Pike. Not here is uncle Linc, who played at Purdue and is coach at Green Bay, getting the Phoenix to the NCAA Tournament in 2016.
Basketball is the gathering spot for the clan. The place to celebrate, and to reflect on the recent hard journey. Could Sean describe what it was like, having infection suddenly overturn your world?
“I can’t. I woke up one day and felt like I couldn’t move. It’s indescribable pain. I don’t think I could ever feel that again.
“Not knowing whether you’d have tomorrow, that was the scariest part.”
But tomorrow came, and he was soon back on the court, and now look at him.
“It means everything. This is a game I love. It makes it even more special being here at Butler.
“Finally, it feels like I’m starting to get to that point in life where you can calm down and breathe for a second, and do what we love and do it together as a family.”
Well, except for his brother’s surgery. “It’s a never-ending cycle,” he sighs.
About that tiger tattoo.
“The lesson I learned is, they were there for me every day, so it’s my turn to be there for her every day. Hopefully, she knows I’m there, and that I’ll carry her battle with me.”
He rolls up his left sleeve and shows the tattoo. Yep, that sends a message all right. Took a while to win the parents over, hey?
“Months of convincing. I think they like it now.”•
______
Lopresti is a lifelong resident of Richmond and a graduate of Ball State University. He was a columnist for USA Today and Gannett newspapers for 31 years; he covered 34 Final Fours, 30 Super Bowls, 32 World Series and 16 Olympics. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at [email protected].
You have reached your limit of free articles
Select one of the following options to continue
https://www.ibj.com/articles/print/67007-lopresti-two-life-threatening-illnesses-dont-keep-butlers-mcdermott-family-down 4/5 1/13/2018 LOPRESTI: Two life-threatening illnesses don’t keep Butler’s McDermott family down | 2018-01-12 | Indianapolis Business Journal | IBJ.com | H… Login - For registered or paid digital subscribers not logged in.
Register - View limited additional free articles monthly.
Subscribe - Digital subscription options enjoy unlimited access to IBJ.com.
Upgrade - Limited time free upgrade to IBJ Premium digital+print.
Existing Print only subscribers
Metering FAQs Register Subscribe Upgrade Login
https://www.ibj.com/articles/print/67007-lopresti-two-life-threatening-illnesses-dont-keep-butlers-mcdermott-family-down 5/5 11/20/2017 Big East Conference - Thankful Brunk Ready To Help Bulldogs
Thankful Brunk Ready To Help Bulldogs
Butler's Joey Brunk 11/19/2017 11:38:09 AM By Sean Brennan, Special to BIGEAST.com
At this time every year, with the Thanksgiving Day holiday approaching, people often take a moment or two to appreciate the good things they have in their lives.
Joey Brunk is thankful for quality time he spent with his late father, Joe, last season after the elder Brunk was diagnosed with cancer. That quality time Joey spent with his dad cost him virtually all of his freshman season at Butler. But it was time well spent with the man Joey thought of as more than a dad.
“I think my dad and I definitely had a relationship that was probably closer to two friends than father-son,” said Brunk, a highly- touted, four-star recruit out of Indianapolis who was named to several Top 100 recruiting lists coming out of Southport High School. “Every day after seventh and eighth grade he would pick me up to go take me to work out. And once I started high school, before and after the season, we’d work out before and after school. We spent a lot of time together and had a lot of really neat experiences. But basketball wasn’t the be all and end all.”
No, basketball was just a small part of what Joey and Joe shared in their dynamic relationship. There was also a shared love of all things Indianapolis Colts, and some wonderful memories were made over their passion for football.
“W e took a lot of really neat trips and I grew up going to every Colts home game,” said Brunk, a 6-11, 240-pound forward/center. “And we went to the two Super Bowls the Colts played in. So our relationship obviously extended way further than basketball.”
But the Colts’ ride to winning Super Bowl XVI was Brunk’s favorite among a bevy of memories he has with his dad.
“Really it was that whole year that the Colts won the Super Bowl,” Brunk said. “They beat the Chiefs in the (wild card) playoffs (23- 8), then we went to Baltimore to watch them there and they beat the Ravens (15-6). Then they came back to beat New England (38-34) at home (in the AFC Championship Game). Then it was on to the Super Bowl (where the Colts completed the Brunk’s dream season with a 29-17 win over the Bears). That whole year was just a special, special year.”
Joe Brunk passed away last April with Joey constantly by his side, along with his mom, Helen, and younger brother, Johnny. And while being away from Butler basketball for most of the season was tough on Joey, the decision to the stay with his family was a no- brainer.
“Oh yeah, I certainly missed basketball and the way that it made me feel and the passion that came along with it,” Brunk said. “But at the end of the day there was no other decision that I would have ever made in that scenario. I will never regret spending all that time with my dad.”
These days Joey Brunk is thankful again, this time for his return to basketball and a chance to be with his other family, the Bulldogs. The fact that he got to be part of the Bulldogs’ summer trip to Spain for four games was just an added bonus.
http://www.bigeast.com/news/2017/11/19/mens-basketball-thankful-brunk-ready-to-help-bulldogs.aspx 1/2 11/20/2017 Big East Conference - Thankful Brunk Ready To Help Bulldogs “It was incredible to be back out there and play again,” Brunk said. “I felt rejuvenated when we got back from Spain. I got to play in a real game again. It was incredible. It was a wonderful feeling to be back out there playing with my guys. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
But as wonderful an experience as Spain surely was, it paled in comparison to Butler’s first exhibition game of the season, back on October 28, when the Bulldogs hosted tiny Hanover College, whose alumni include Vice President Mike Pence, actor Woody Harrelson and a certain former basketball player named Joe Brunk Sr.
“He went to Hanover and was an NAIA All-American,” Joey Brunk said. “He is fifth all time in points and fourth in rebounding and he was the fourth or fifth player in Hanover history to get their jersey retired.”
Joey logged six points and three rebounds in a 68-36 Butler win that night. But more than the victory, the experience of it all is what Joey took away from the day.
“That was a really neat experience,” Brunk said. “I grew up going to Hanover basketball camp, so it was really cool to get to play them, especially it being my dad’s alma mater. It really was neat just to be out there and play Hanover, especially with coach (Jon) Miller being there. When I went to basketball camp he was the coach down there and I had that relationship with him. So it was neat to have a bunch of my dad’s buddies that he played with in attendance. Really just the whole day was special.”
Brunk is now looking forward to just concentrating on basketball and his school work as he looks to become a pivotal cog in the Bulldog machine this season.
“Basketball is definitely my focus for the year and obviously I have to take care of my school work, but it’s been a great start to the year,” Brunk said. “I’m ready to fulfill whatever role I need to and help out team in whatever capacity that is.”
Brunk won’t be home for Thanksgiving this year but he’s totally fine with that because the Bulldogs will be partaking in the Phil Knight Invitational in Portland, Ore., and will be facing Texas and perhaps, No. 1 Duke. For Brunk, it’s the perfect way to get the season off and running.
“I don’t think anyone in this locker room would want to spend Thanksgiving any other way,” Brunk said. “I think it’s really nice to be together as a team and go out there and play some high-level competition.”
When Butler does return home, Brunk says he can count on a strong contingent of family and friends to be on hand for any home games.
“I have a lot of family that come to games,” Brunk said. “My mom and my brother come all the time as long as (Johnny) doesn’t have any conflicts with his high school schedule. But I’ll have a lot of family and friends at just about everything.”
Because he missed last season, Brunk said he may not be where he hoped to be with his game. But it shouldn’t take him long to be where he wants to be and where many predicted he would be coming out of high school with such high acclaim.
“I’m just surrounded by good people and I’m just trying to learn on the fly,” Brunk said. “It’ll play out the way it’s supposed to. I just want to get a little bit better each day and make progress whenever I get a chance to be out there.
So what would be the perfect season for Brunk now that he is back among the Bulldogs?
“A perfect year would mean we’re going to come out and as a team and we’re going to play hard and we’re going to let the chips fall where they may,” Brunk said. “We’re going to go out and do whatever we can to win and be competitive. That’s my perfect year, my perfect scenario.”
http://www.bigeast.com/news/2017/11/19/mens-basketball-thankful-brunk-ready-to-help-bulldogs.aspx 2/2 1/28/2018 Perfect Match: Inside Project 44 and how late Andrew Smith helped save a 2-year-old - CBSSports.com
C B S S P O R T S . C O M 2 4 7 S P O R T S M A X P R E P S S C O U T S P O R T S L I N E S H O P F O L L O W C B S S P O R T S G O L F B O O K T I C K E T S
Perfect Match: Inside Project 44 and how late Andrew Smith helped save a 2-year-old How the late Andrew Smith inspired change and helped save a child
by Matt Norlander @MattNorlander Jan 23, 2018 • 25 min read 1023E Tractor
BRA0%CKE FTOROLO G60Y Project 44: How Andrew Smith's legacy lives on MONTHS* Check out the latest at NOBBEBrack MOWERetology SHOP updates, INC. from Jerry Palm. LEARN MORE *Finance Offer Details
H O M E S C O R E S S C H E D U L E STATS STA N D I N G S LO G I N
Before his end, Andrew Smith's final years on earth brought incredible tales of white-knuckle perseverance and phenomenal, odds-defying health recuperation.
The young man had already beaten cancer once. All 83 inches of him knocked it down and kicked it to hell. Months after came a collapse that left him unconscious and plunged him into a coma. But he came back, all the way back, and faster than logic suggested. Eighty-three inches reviving to life, to full-blown awareness. Back to physical capabilities, back to marriage. Back, miraculously, to a cycle of normalcy.
Those triumphs were supposed to be what defined Andrew Smith before the next 50, 60, 70 years of his life. Instead, they were prelude to cancer's boomerang ricochet from hell, infecting him once more and robbing Smith's loved ones of the man many called "Moose."
https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/perfect-match-inside-project-44-and-how-late-andrew-smith-helped-save-2-year-old/ 1/16 1/28/2018 Perfect Match: Inside Project 44 and how late Andrew Smith helped save a 2-year-old - CBSSports.com
The inspirational story of Andrew Smith has become local lore in Indianapolis, where he grew up and was part of Butler's back-to-back runs to the NCAA Tournament title game in 2010 and 2011. He graduated from Butler in 2013, then got a contract offer with a Lithuanian basketball organization in a competitive European pro league. Smith's first battle with cancer -- followed months later by his inexplicable return to life after collapsing, falling unconscious and ceasing breath for 22 minutes -- was previously documented in an extensive feature on CBSSports.com.
SPONSORED BY NETAPP 6 Key Attributes of Data Thrivers Digital disruption is real! Learn how Data Thrivers are embracing DX and, consequentially, improving every part of their business.
"Unbelievably great teammate, a guy that was all about the team, never about himself," Emerson Kampen, a former teammate of Andrew's and current Butler assistant, said. "He was the happiest guy every single day just to be a part of the team. That showed throughout his life."
It won't be the cancer or the collapse or the coma comeback that will define Andrew's story. It will be life. Not his. Others'. Those who live on, and surely 1023E Tractor some who've not yet been born. 0% FOR 60 MONTHS* at NOBBE MOWER SHOP, INC. Mike Meredith, CBS Sports
LEARN MORE *Finance Offer Details Nearly two years after Smith's death, CBS Sports returned to the community he touched to find a scene of action -- to see how his life, and death, have × affected others. Project 44 is the positive agent of change born from tragedy. This story and accompanying video feature involve myriad interviews with those on all sides of the organ-donor program. What was revealed was an astonishing story of finding hope in tragedy.
This mission began with what Andrew learned in May 2015. What he chose to do next, even as the cancer viciously returned, spread and transmuted, is the legacy: Andrew's doctor confirmed he would need a bone marrow transplant, a last resort to beat the disease. He tried to make sense of the injustice happening to his body, the injustice of a world plagued by cancer and the injustice of the fact that were this happening to his wife, Samantha, she would be staring down certain death.
SPONSORED BY NETAPP 6 Key Attributes of Data Thrivers Digital disruption is real! Learn how Data Thrivers are embracing DX and, consequentially, improving every part of their business.
Since Andrew was a white male of European descent, his chances at receiving a donor whose marrow was a match were relatively good. Samantha, whose family history going back generations is much more diverse, would almost certainly die waiting for a donor. And why? Because bone marrow registries in the United States not only lack donors, they specifically lack donors from ethnic, multi-cultural backgrounds. In Europe many people sign up for bone marrow registries when they turn 18. It is a https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/perfect-match-inside-project-44-and-how-late-andrew-smith-helped-save-2-year-old/ 2/16 1/28/2018 Perfect Match: Inside Project 44 and how late Andrew Smith helped save a 2-year-old - CBSSports.com cultural norm, like getting a driver's license, that has not come to exist in the United States. The idea that Samantha would have almost no chance angered Andrew.
"That's not OK," he told the doctor.
Andrew didn't have to wait long for a match. He received his transplant Nov. 6, 2015. Cruelly, the cancer was a step ahead. Andrew's initial diagnosis, in 2014, was T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma. It was rare but beatable -- and he did just that. But in the final months of his life, Andrew's fight was against leukemia. That cancer was more aggressive, attacking his white blood cells -- the cells that were trying to give him life. Andrew's transplant never got the chance to cleanse his system because it was fighting a fast-acting, devastating host.
Samantha and Andrew Smith sleeping at the hospital in December 2015. Samantha Smith
"Sam had called me the night before I think we were getting ready to play Detroit at home, and Sam had called me right before the game and said, 1023E Tractor 'Andrew's prognosis has become dire,'" former Butler coach Brad Stevens, now coach of the Boston Celtics, said. "'He's obviously in hospice care and 0% FOR 60 will probably only be cognizant for the next however many hours.' And having lived that with my wife's mom when she was going through the later MONTHS* stages of her life with hospice care, it was really important to me, and [former at NOBBE MOWER SHOP, INC. teammate] Ron Nored came up from Northern Kentucky and joined us. LEARN MORE *Finance Offer Details SPONSORED BY NETAPP 5 Ways to Be a Data Visionary Data visionaries share these common traits as they align resources and unleash data’s full potential. Here's five ways to measure you…
"It was really important for me to be there when he was still communicating, still cognizant of people that were there, so I knew that that time was really dwindling, and so we went down there and it was -- super glad we did it -- and a very, very difficult day. Because there were times during that day when he recognized what was going on. He understood that his time was dwindling and that's why we were there."
At 10:55 a.m. on Jan. 12, 2016, Andrew Smith lay in Samantha's arms and died in his sleep at the age of 25.
Seventy-one days and 343 miles away from Andrew's death, 2-year-old Deegan Scott was sitting on the kitchen countertop watching Mom prepare macaroni and cheese. It was a Wednesday: March 23, 2016. Deegan, the youngest of seven children, had seemingly fallen ill from the flu like most of the rest of his family in the previous week. But he wasn't recovering like his siblings. He would feel better, then have his energy sapped. That's not Deegan.
"If he's not dirty he's not having fun," Amy Scott, his mother, said.
https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/perfect-match-inside-project-44-and-how-late-andrew-smith-helped-save-2-year-old/ 3/16 1/28/2018 Perfect Match: Inside Project 44 and how late Andrew Smith helped save a 2-year-old - CBSSports.com
SPONSORED BY REGIONS More Security - Regions LockIt Customize how your cards are used for in-store, online and ATM transactions. It's easy.
As Deegan sat on the counter, Amy noticed his lips and tongue were shading to blue. His father, Cliff, was in the cold driveway, near the crooked-rimmed basketball hoop, installing new brakes on Amy's Chevy Cobalt. Once the car was ready, she rushed Deegan to their local emergency room in Salem, Ohio. His hemoglobin logged at a dangerously low level of four. Then, in the middle of Deegan's chest X-ray scan, a doctor came in and told Amy that her son needed to be transported immediately, via Life Flight, to Akron Children's Hospital.
"The way the doctor said it to me was almost like it gave me some hope," Amy said. "When the doctor says, 'I'm not saying it's leukemia,' I kind of held on to that. 'So it might not be, it might not be.' That's all I kept telling myself."
They bundled the boy up, strapped him to a gurney and loaded him into a medic helicopter. With "HE LOOKED SCARED multiple medical personnel needed TO DEATH, AND I 1023E Tractor in the cabin, Amy was told she FELT HELPLESS." couldn't fly along with him. She Amy Scott 0% FOR 60 would have to drive. MONTHS* at NOBBE MOWER SHOP, INC. "That's where the nightmare began," she said. "He looked scared to death, and I felt helpless." LEARN MORE *Finance Offer Details With so many children back at their house, Amy and her husband shuttled kids to different grandparents' homes while their son was airborne over Ohio. Those new brakes on Amy's car got little use as they eventually sped northwest toward Akron. She remembers the 45-minute drive as the longest ride of her life.
Deegan underwent a litany of procedures and tests upon arriving in Akron. Amy soon found herself holding Deegan, sitting in a rocking chair in a little room in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. A bag of blood hung from an IV pole; a transfusion was underway to raise his hemoglobin levels.
"Wondering where we go from here," she said. "Seeing people walk in and out of the room and they didn't have faces. Staring at the clock and I didn't want to put him down for nothing. I remember sitting there having to pee so bad but I didn't want to let him go."
The diagnosis came shortly before 1 a.m. A doctor she hadn't seen before walked in and pulled his chair up very close. She knew then it wasn't good news. Deegan had acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a rare and aggressive blood cancer.
"I honestly don't remember when I slept next after that," Amy said.
Deegan was a rarity. The median age for those afflicted with AML is 72. The American Cancer Institute estimated 21,380 new cases of AML in 2017, with a tiny fraction of those occurring in children under 5. AML is considered fatal if not treated within the first 8-14 weeks after it develops, and treatment involves a long journey of repeated chemotherapy sessions. Doctors https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/perfect-match-inside-project-44-and-how-late-andrew-smith-helped-save-2-year-old/ 4/16 1/28/2018 Perfect Match: Inside Project 44 and how late Andrew Smith helped save a 2-year-old - CBSSports.com anticipated Deegan's 2-year-old body would need five rounds of chemo in the ensuing eight months. The Scotts were given no promises the treatment would work.
"As a mother you're supposed to be able to kiss their wounds and make them better, and when you're put in that situation when you know you can't," Amy said. "At that moment I think I tried to completely shut off my emotions and stay strong for him."
A few days later, doctors told Amy that a bone marrow transplant was necessary -- a last resort for extending Deegan's life.
Needing a transplant brought on an entirely new state of stress. Finding a match added to the anxiety. And no family members qualified.
A Mediport was implanted in Deegan's tiny chest and hooked up to tubing for medications and chemotherapy. The cancer was attacking his cells, and when good cells were being made they were taken over by hostile ones. Amy watched as nurses would suit up in what looked like garbage bags to inject Deegan with the poison needed in order to save his life.
Of the many concerns with AML, one of the most unpredictable facets of the 1023E Tractor disease is its propensity to attack the spinal column and the testicles, so Deegan also had to be sedated in order for chemo to be put into his spinal 0% FOR 60 fluid. Amy had to hold Deegan down while his Mediport was "accessed" and "de-accessed," procedures that sterilized the stent-like apparatus and kept MONTHS* infections from arising. The solution used to clean the area around the at NOBBE MOWER SHOP, INC. Mediport and puncture into his chest burned his sensitive skin. LEARN MORE *Finance Offer Details "I've never seen a kid -- and I have seven -- I've never seen a kid as strong as him," she said.
Deegan Scott was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and spent months in the hospital. Amy Scott
Because he was 2, Deegan couldn't clearly verbalize the pain. Family and doctors had to monitor his body language to gauge his discomfort. He wasn't able to consistently communicate what hurt or how it hurt. He would throw up without warning. It was hell for him, for his family. Cliff, his father, stayed in the hospital for the first month. Amy stayed by Deegan's side for another three months after that. She did not sleep at her house until Deegan was able to do the same.
"Trapped in a hospital room," she said. "Life-changing. You feel disconnected from your family and your life every day. You don't realize how much little things, that you would [previously] stress about, you wish you could be dealing with."
Amy had to switch insurance companies to cover the transplant. A friend set up a GoFundMe page to help. A social worker at Akron Children's Hospital got the family in touch with organizations that could provide more assistance, financial and otherwise.
Life became a trudge, a cycle of repetition. Deegan was stuck living the same day over and over. He wasn't allowed to leave the unit, meaning he couldn't https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/perfect-match-inside-project-44-and-how-late-andrew-smith-helped-save-2-year-old/ 5/16 1/28/2018 Perfect Match: Inside Project 44 and how late Andrew Smith helped save a 2-year-old - CBSSports.com leave that floor of the hospital. The bald boy would ride a tricycle in the hallway and pass by other families who had children fighting cancer. Nurses would come in at 7 p.m. asking Amy if she ate at all that day. Some days the answer was no. It would never occur to her.
"I looked at it as: We walk around these hallways. Almost every room has a child fighting," she said. "They need you too. I can wait."
Andrew's revelation with his doctor was the first stage in this story. Eight months later, pen to paper pushed the plot. Andrew's Celebration of Life ceremony was held Jan. 17, 2016. Stevens gave the eulogy. A worship band played, a wounded community prayed and everyone made sure to smile that day just as much as they mourned. In the lobby, tables were set up with Be The Match signup forms. That was Samantha's doing.
Be The Match, which started in 1987, has a registry of donors-in-waiting that's 19 million deep. It's an organization that links cancer patients with bone marrow donors, and has facilitated more than 80,000 transplants over the past 30 years. The wonder of modern medicine has given rise to the powerful realization that millions of people are walking the planet and, 1023E Tractor without even knowing it, are a potential cure to someone else's cancer. That is what bone marrow donation can do. 0% FOR 60 MONTHS* But instead of having 19 million at NOBBE MOWER SHOP, INC. people on the registry, what about "YOU THINK YOU'RE 190 million? What if Be The Match's LEARN MORE PREPARED FOR IT purpose was common knowledge, *Finance Offer Details EMOTIONALLY AND part of the greater good, part of the American way of life? That's what MENTALLY, BUT YOU Andrew pushed for in his final NEVER ARE," months. Brad Stevens "A lot of times we get it wrong. We mourn the loss," Scott Flatt, Andrew's high school coach, said. "In this situation, Andrew was safe. We knew he was going to heaven. He didn't have to deal with a body that was wracked with cancer and live with pain."
At his Celebration of Life, dozens committed to the cause. It was the start of Project 44 before Project 44 had a name. The unfunded program, run almost entirely by volunteers, was born out of Andrew's death. The idea, cultivated by Butler alumni Krissi Edgington and Michael Kaltenmark, was an extension, an attachment to Andrew's enthusiastic, earnest push for Be The Match awareness and donor ambassadorship he embodied in the final year of his life.
Edgington had previously been the strategic communications adviser for Butler. Kaltenmark can be seen at every Butler game, as he's the caretaker of Trip, BU's beloved live bulldog mascot. When the duo brought the idea of Project 44 to Butler's marketing department, the school agreed to partner up without hesitation.
"We were also in close communication with Samantha Smith, working with her to determine program goals that were in line with Andrew's work and how he would have wanted it done," Edgington said. "Somehow, despite https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/perfect-match-inside-project-44-and-how-late-andrew-smith-helped-save-2-year-old/ 6/16 1/28/2018 Perfect Match: Inside Project 44 and how late Andrew Smith helped save a 2-year-old - CBSSports.com having lost her husband just weeks before, she was selflessly able and willing to participate in building a program that would save the lives of others."
Among those who registered for Project 44 at Andrew's memorial service: Chase Stigall.
A durable, level-headed shooting guard whose four years at Butler mirrored Andrew's, Chase started alongside Andrew in the 2011 national championship game when Butler amazingly made it there as a No. 8 seed. Together, they helped the Bulldogs average 28 wins across four seasons and redefined big-picture expectations for mid-major programs.
"If it wasn't for Andrew, I wouldn't have signed up," he said.
Chase Stigall in August 2016, when he made his bone marrow donation. Chase Stigall
Smith wore No. 44 (no Butler basketball player has worn it since), and so the goal of the enterprise is to save 44 lives. But the odds of someone on the Be 1023E Tractor The Match registry getting that call is 430-to-1. Do the math: 430 times 44 lives saved equals 18,920 registrations needed in order to statistically get to 44. 0% FOR 60 MONTHS* Project 44 was officially put into action in affiliation with Butler University on at NOBBE MOWER SHOP, INC. March 17, 2016, literally seconds before the start of Butler's NCAA Tournament game against Texas Tech (the Bulldogs won). Coaches who've LEARN MORE prominently patrolled Butler's sideline -- Stevens, Chris Holtmann and now *Finance Offer Details LaVall Jordan -- are on the registry.
"You think you're prepared for it emotionally and mentally, but you never are," Stevens said. "There's that other part of you, that very, very small part, because everybody misses him so badly, that is thankful he doesn't wrestle with this kind of pain anymore."
After the memorial, Butler players and coaches joined Samantha at a dinner organized by Stevens. Unprompted, everyone there stood up one at a time at the dinner and shared their best Andrew stories. They did it for him, they did it for each other, but they mostly did it for Samantha.
"It was by far one of the most special things I've ever been part of," she said.
She had stood for two hours at the memorial service -- and still had more than a hundred people waiting in line to give condolences two hours after the service officially ended.
"What she's been through and how she navigated that, and the amount of support and love that she showed with the amount of strength she did simultaneously is incredible," Stevens said. "You hate to see anybody have to go through what she did, and again, the way that she did it and the strength that she showed was nothing short of miraculous to me."
https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/perfect-match-inside-project-44-and-how-late-andrew-smith-helped-save-2-year-old/ 7/16 1/28/2018 Perfect Match: Inside Project 44 and how late Andrew Smith helped save a 2-year-old - CBSSports.com
It was time to cut the grass. Samantha had never used a lawnmower. But the winter had thawed to spring, it was April, the green was overgrown and she had to do it. She had moved back to the house she and Andrew bought in 2015, three months before his cancer returned. Andrew was the one supposed to be mowing the lawn now. It would take him an hour, tops; it took her three. She fell down attempting to do it because the property sits on a slanted corner lot. She eventually finished, went upstairs, and wept.
Then her phone rang. Chase. Less than three months after he scribbled his information on a sign-up sheet, he got the call. There was a young boy out there, somewhere, dying of cancer. Chase was told he might be the match.
Samantha sat in her closet and cried.
"I'm blown away by the odds of it," she said. "I felt a security of Andrew's legacy in that moment."
Of all the people to get the first call, it was not only someone they knew, but a four-year teammate. Someone who was in the trenches, someone who helped turn Butler basketball into a national program -- and has now made the legacy of Andrew Smith a national sports story. 1023E Tractor
0% FOR 60 Chase and Andrew played four years together at Butler. Courtesy of Butler Athletics MONTHS* at NOBBE MOWER SHOP, INC. "That's Andrew tapping her on the shoulder saying, 'I'm still here,'" Chase said. LEARN MORE *Finance Offer Details
Soon thereafter, Chase donated 10 vials of his blood for further testing. The process took maybe 10 minutes. A few months later, on Aug. 9, 2016, he underwent a 20-minute procedure that involved taking a liter of bone marrow out of the back of his pelvis through two tiny punctures.
"Chase has always been a giving person," Stevens said.
Afterward the procedure hardly hurt; it felt like Chase took a rough charge in a game and landed on his tailbone.
Chase's wife, Rachael, was 36 weeks pregnant at the time.
"I always tell people, 'My wife waddled to the hospital, and so did I,'" he said.
It's something they laughed about then and still do now. Andrew, from beyond, put them in that situation. He put them in their situation from the start too. It was Andrew who introduced Chase and Rachael to each other during college. In a small way, or maybe not so small, they owe their marriage -- their life -- to him.
"A lot of things that happened, and the way I live my life now, is because of him," Chase said.
The day after Chase's donation at the Cleveland Clinic, a 2-year-old boy who had lost all his hair from chemotherapy, and who 140 days before was strapped down on a medical helicopter zipping over Ohio, sat on the floor at
https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/perfect-match-inside-project-44-and-how-late-andrew-smith-helped-save-2-year-old/ 8/16 1/28/2018 Perfect Match: Inside Project 44 and how late Andrew Smith helped save a 2-year-old - CBSSports.com Akron Children's Hospital, played with his favorite toys and received his transplant.
Deegan needed a Mediport in his chest and often received treatments while playing on the floor. Amy Scott
The trouble with transplants is, for all the hope they bring, they do not always take. Be The Match is extremely protective of the identities of donors and patients for numerous reasons. Andrew Smith never got to meet his donor; his transplant could not catch up to the leukemia preying on his cells. Patients must wait a year after a transplant before they can meet their newfound, earthbound maker. This helps protect the donor and the patient from any undue pressure.
Although Andrew's body rejected the transplant, it did buy him and Samantha more time. It allowed them to have one more Christmas together. It gave them time to have conversations, even the worst kinds of 1023E Tractor conversations. And after Andrew died, the phone call Samantha got from Chase kicked in emotions of hesitation and fear for a child whose identity 0% FOR 60 she did not yet know. MONTHS* "I prayed for that little boy more than I can say," she said. "I've thought about at NOBBE MOWER SHOP, INC. Deegan more than that little boy knows." LEARN MORE *Finance Offer Details The Scotts were warned that the medicine alone could be fatal to Deegan's body before the transplant was done. That medicine, though, was necessary to wipe out all the tainted cells in his body.
Deegan is a wild child, a tornado in size 5 clothing. He is also a medical wonder. Not only did the boy respond well to chemotherapy, his body's reaction to the transplant was advanced to the point that it was wowing the doctors and nurses who deal with children's cancer on a daily basis.
"When it happened as fast as it did, it was amazing not just to us but to the hospital staff too," Amy said.
In recovery he was taking as many as 11 medications at once. Astonishingly, approximately a year after the transplant Deegan was off all of them, even after two tough battles with Graft-Versus-Host Disease. Symbolic milestones over the past year have included Deegan getting to throw his medicine bottles in the trash one by one, every few weeks. We're done. You don't have to take that anymore. Today, Deegan's only inconvenience is being lubed up every day with Aquaphor. He hates it, but it's needed to keep a close eye on his tender skin.
"They wish they could bottle Deegan up to study him, study his counts, understand what it is about his body that allowed it to respond so well," Amy said.
By November 2016, when he turned 3, Deegan was home for good. But it would be another year until he and Chase knew of each other.
https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/perfect-match-inside-project-44-and-how-late-andrew-smith-helped-save-2-year-old/ 9/16 1/28/2018 Perfect Match: Inside Project 44 and how late Andrew Smith helped save a 2-year-old - CBSSports.com
On Nov. 11, 2017, in Minneapolis, Be The Match arranged for Chase and Deegan to see each other for the first time. Their meeting was the centerpiece of Be The Match's annual council meeting.
"The man that saved my son's life. ... You see someone and what they did for your child and they're now a part of your child, and it's like an instant connection," Amy said. "You feel like you have love for someone that you never knew until that moment you're meeting them."
Chase told his story to a packed room that day. Amy, waiting backstage with Deegan, Cliff and some of her other children, learned not only of Chase but also of a man who wasn't there. His name is Andrew. She discovered then how deep this story goes.
"What I could say if I could talk to Andrew," Amy said with a pause. "Being faced with cancer himself, and then losing his battle, but he still is spreading the word. He's still -- Deegan is an example -- saving lives."
Samantha was also in Minneapolis that day to see the first life saved under Project 44.
"It was one of the most defining moments and I didn't want to let go of him, 1023E Tractor because I almost felt like I was just hugging a piece of Andrew," she said. "It is Chase's blood running through Deegan, but it is very much so the heart of 0% FOR 60 Andrew. There's a little boy that is embodying everything we've been trying MONTHS* to accomplish and to show people that it's important and that literally lives at NOBBE MOWER SHOP, INC. are being saved through Project 44 and Be The Match."
LEARN MORE *Finance Offer Details
Chase Stigall, Deegan Scott and Samantha Smith in November at Be The Match's council meeting. Be The Match
Deegan has spoken about Chase's blood. He understands. He knows Chase's blood is his blood -- it's what saved him. The transplant process is called "rebirth" because a patient receives new cells to bring life to the body. So Deegan now has two birthdays. He turned 4 on Nov. 22, but he also turned 1 on Aug. 10.
In Minneapolis, he gave Chase a thank-you gift: a sign made from wood. It reads: You made one decision and it saved my life. Love, Deegan.
On Dec. 30, Butler had its annual Be The Match/Project 44 awareness day. No. 1, undefeated Villanova was in town. It was the biggest game on Butler's schedule this season. Sign-up sheets were placed in every seat of the student section. Posters and directions were up in the concourse of Hinkle Fieldhouse, directing people where they could sign up.
This way to save a life!
There's a woman in her young 20s standing next to the entrance where signups are happening.
"I can't," she says to the man standing next to her. "I'm too chickenshit." https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/perfect-match-inside-project-44-and-how-late-andrew-smith-helped-save-2-year-old/ 10/16 1/28/2018 Perfect Match: Inside Project 44 and how late Andrew Smith helped save a 2-year-old - CBSSports.com
And that's the biggest hurdle.
Misconception is a constant fight IF IT WASN'T FOR for Project 44 and Be The Match. ANDREW, WE Misconception about how much WOULDN'T BE pain is involved to donate bone marrow, misconception that it will SITTING HERE RIGHT temporarily hinder a donor's health. NOW." There is general hesitation because Chase Stigall many people are predispositioned to think that signing up for the registry means they'll wind up putting their body in pain's way. That's why the odds are 430-to-1. It's why the grassroots ethos of Project 44 must continue, because that number needs to be a lot lower.
"Through everything we've been through, he brought us to this point," Chase said. "He saved a life. It's always been that Andrew saved a life. It's never been that I saved a life or Sam saved a life. That's the way we've always spoke about it because if it wasn't for Andrew, we wouldn't be sitting here right now." 1023E Tractor Against Villanova, the Bulldogs pulled off their best performance of the season and beat the Wildcats for the third straight time. It was an exhilarating scene, but the ending could not match what happened early in the game 0% FOR 60 when Samantha and Chase were introduced and spoke to a capacity crowd MONTHS* of 9,244 inside Hinkle. Fans rose to a standing ovation, and remained on at NOBBE MOWER SHOP, INC. their feet, as Samantha and Chase publicly shared the news of Deegan's story. It was an emotional scene. This was the first widespread public reveal LEARN MORE of what Project 44 is capable of. *Finance Offer Details
"It's what Andrew was talking about on that last day that I saw him," Stevens said. "It was about, 'How do we use this platform to help others, going through similar things, live longer, live another day. That's to me the coolest part of the story. Being in that room and listening to him talk through all the tubes, through all the pain, with Sam next to him, [former Butler teammate] Ron Nored and I are just sitting there glassy-eyed and listening, and then to have Chase be a perfect match ... it's a pretty incredible story of paying it forward."
Chase Stigall meets Deegan Scott for the first time. Be The Match
For Samantha, the weeks still vary. She is living her life, living it well, but does not pretend that all days are a success. Sometimes, courage can be just getting out of bed. Courage can also be what she did in December in front of 9,244 people. She speaks of it with earnestness, but also bluntness: "Raise awareness. Help one woman not become a widow. Or help kids not lose their parents or lose grandparents. That's what I'm here to do. These are people that are going to die otherwise."
The mark of a legacy, a true legacy, often becomes truth after a person has left. That's a bittersweet circumstance. Andrew Smith helped start something he could never see come to life when he had his own.
https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/perfect-match-inside-project-44-and-how-late-andrew-smith-helped-save-2-year-old/ 11/16 1/28/2018 Perfect Match: Inside Project 44 and how late Andrew Smith helped save a 2-year-old - CBSSports.com
"The impact of his life, but more powerfully, the impact of his death," Flatt said. "His death has meant more and has meant life for so many more. ... We don't want to say that, we don't want to acknowledge that in terms of, man, I don't wish that he had died, but certainly I see how his life has been used and his impact has gone far beyond because of his death. What has happened with Be The Match and Deegan Scott is a testimony of that legacy that is living on."
Stevens calls all that's happened with Chase, Deegan and Project 44 "the footprints" Andrew left behind. Stevens remembers the way Andrew's eyes looked, the sound of his voice, the sound of his conviction from a hospital bed only a few days before he died.
"You could hear it in his emotions," he said. "He spent the whole afternoon talking about how he and Sam could help others and how they could use all that they've learned to help others, and how they could use all that they've learned to help others, and then there were those brief moments where he got emotional because he knew, unfortunately, he was going to pass soon. That was tough."
There are people walking the planet right now -- healthy people; it might be 1023E Tractor you or me -- who are yet to get cancer. People who will one day eventually be saved because of all Andrew and those close to him brought forth with a life-changing project. There's a 4-year-old running around Salem, Ohio, right 0% FOR 60 now. He's playing with trucks, climbing on furniture and riding bikes with his MONTHS* big brother Broadie. at NOBBE MOWER SHOP, INC.
"To be here, to wake up in our own house, and the noise." Amy said. "The LEARN MORE noise! I mean, some of you will probably think I'm crazy but I missed the *Finance Offer Details noise from my kids. It's so nice to be in a noisy house."
Deegan is No. 1 on the way to 44 -- and hopefully many more. The goal is not just to get to 44 lives saved, but for Project 44 to outlive everyone associated with it now. Butler assistant Emerson Kampen is the one remaining link from Andrew's playing career who's still with the program. He's helped rally to get all the players and coaches to be signed up.
"We're all waiting for the call," he said.
Who's next is unknown, but someone will be next. Samantha is waiting for call No. 2. The process can repeat, then happen 42 more times -- at least. There is no happy ending because there is no ending, only continuance, an extension of life. That is the win. A non-ending: a noisy boy in Ohio.
If you're interested in registering with Be The Match and/or Project 44, visit BeTheMatch.org or text "ANDREW" to 38470 to learn more.
Matt Norlander FOLLOW CBS Sports Writer
Matt Norlander is a national award-winning senior writer who has been with CBS Sports since 2010. He's in his eighth season covering college basketball for CBS, and also covers the NBA Draft, the Olympics,... FULL BIO https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/perfect-match-inside-project-44-and-how-late-andrew-smith-helped-save-2-year-old/ 12/16