NCAA MEN'S 2023 BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

April 1, 2023

Shaka Smart

Associated Press Coach of the Year Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: As we begin our Associated Press Coach of the Year news conference, we're joined again by Barry Bedlan of the Associated Press.

BARRY BEDLAN: It's my pleasure to present the AP Men's Basketball College Coach of the Year. Selected by the same panelists that decides the weekly AP Top 25. Voting for the award is conducted at the end of the season, before the start of the NCAA Tournament.

Past recipients include John Wooden, Bob Knight, Roy Williams, Bill Self, and Jim Larrañaga. This year's winner is the second from Marquette University, with the other being Al McGuire in only the fifth year of the award, back in 1971.

In the 56 years of this award, this year's coach is also only the third Big East coach to receive it, with the others being UConn's Jim Calhoun and Pitt's Ben Howland. This year, this coach led one of the regular season's biggest surprise, probably wasn't a surprise to him, Marquette was picked by the Big East coaches to finish ninth in the 11-team league. The team didn't receive a single vote in the Preseason AP Top 25.

However, this coach, which he's done before at other schools, channeled all that to motivate his Golden Eagles to a record season, leading the team to a program high 29 wins, clinching both the conference's regular season and tournament titles for the first time, and Marquette also earned a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, its highest ever.

It's my pleasure today to present AP's Men's College Basketball Coach of the Year, Shaka Smart.

SHAKA SMART: First I want to say thank you to the AP voters for two things: One, not including us in your Preseason -- (laughter) -- Top 25, but I want to say thank you for voting me Coach of the Year.

As we all know, any coach of the year honor is truly a team award. I don't think there's ever been a coach of the year as great as those coaches are that we just rattled off that's won an award like this without a great group of players that believed in that coach's plan and followed that process of what goes into winning. So thank you to the AP.

I want to say thank you also to all the guys that taught me what coaching is all about. I don't really come from much of a coaching background, other than I love to play the game. And my high school coach encouraged me to think strategically. He encouraged me to think like a coach, and he got me involved in coaching young kids. His name is Kevin Bavery, and I owe him a debt of gratitude because he got me thinking this way.

My college coach, Bill Brown, left after my freshman year, was one of the worst days of my life, but he sparked something in me that has me sitting up here today. He said, "Hey, when you get done playing, you can come work for me at this new school that I'm heading off to."

And so that's exactly what I did. And those guys, along with Oliver Purnell, Keith Dambrot, Dan Hipsher and Billy Donovan, they taught me everything that goes into what I do every day.

And then probably the most important coach of my life is my mom, Monica King. She didn't know a thing about basketball. But she taught me a lot about relationships, which is the foundation for our program, it's how we do things. And we still believe in 2023 that you can win big that way, when you care about each other and you care about pouring into each other to go do something special as a group.

Q. Shaka, the identity of this team, when you think about coming to Madison Square Garden last October and seeing where you were selected, seeing all this stuff, it's one thing for a group to talk about how they're going to prove people wrong, it's another thing to actually do it and act upon it. What was in the group's DNA that led them to doing that and so much more, winning Big East championships?

SHAKA SMART: You remember what Tyler said on that same day, so that's what was in our DNA. I think more importantly than proving anyone wrong was proving ourselves right and was pouring into each other to make each other better.

Our core values are relationships, growth and victory. And growth is incredibly important to any team that wants to be playing here in the last weekend of the season or wants to win a regular season championship or a conference championship.

So for us, maybe at some point we were the ninth best team. But not when the games were played. And that's what really matters. And our guys grew. They really focused on what goes into winning as opposed to focusing on all the other things that tend to surround sports these days.

I think there's never been a time when there's been more diversity in how people go about coaching and people go about playing. And I think the way that our guys went about this season is a testament to the way that we've chosen to go about it.

Q. You're very familiar with a team getting to the Final Four that people maybe didn't expect to get there. When you look at this this year, all the surprises, was it in a way borne from the age of George Mason and VCU and Butler? Did that sort of start the journey in any way to where we are now?

SHAKA SMART: For sure it absolutely did. What one of these teams is going to do, that those teams that you mentioned have not done yet, is win the whole thing. I remember I worked for a guy named Keith Dambrot at University of Akron. That's where I met my wife, Maya. So it was the most important stop in my coaching journey.

He used to say, One of these years, a mid-level team is going to win the whole thing. I would look at him like, You're nuts, man. But when I got to VCU, it was like, hey, let's go after it.

I think what you see from these teams, whether it's FAU, San Diego State, is certainly not a mid-major team. They've been terrific for a long time. But these teams have found a way to really capture all the things that go into winning throughout the season and then, most importantly, at the right time.

And the teams that do that, because it's a single elimination tournament, they advance. And a team like us, we had a record-breaking regular season. We won our league tournament. But the reality is the reason I'm sitting here as opposed to being with my team today preparing for a game tonight is because maybe we didn't play our best game our last game of the year. And that's how this tournament works.

LUKE DECOCK: About an hour ago we had Dwyane Wade up as part of the 2023 Class in the Hall of Fame. It's the 20-year anniversary of Marquette's run with Dwyane. As the head coach of Marquette now, what does that mean to you? Did see Dwyane? Is he around? Tell us what it means.

SHAKA SMART: Got a chance to spend some time with Dwyane right after he got off the dais here. And, first of all, standing in the back and looking at that collection of basketball royalty, it was very humbling for me. And then to be able to have the relationship that we have with Dwyane Wade and the way that he feels about Marquette -- I still remember sitting in my little living room in Dayton, Ohio, watching Dwyane Wade put up a triple-double against Kentucky to go to the Final Four in 2003. And now to be able to coach at his school is pretty cool.

Dwyane Wade is a guy that I think for someone that's that level of a superstar, he's got incredible humility, and he truly cares about where he came from. He's been on our campus four times in the last calendar year. He spoke at graduation. He came back and celebrated his Final Four team multiple times. He came back and spent time with his teammates, with our players, with other folks on campus.

And I'm really, really grateful for the connection that we have with him because I look at him and I see a guy who literally is one of the top guys to ever do it at that position.

Q. You talked about being encouraged to get into coaching after you finished playing. Was there a moment that it really hit you, though, that you were like, hey, I'm good at this; I think this is what's going to be my plan?

SHAKA SMART: That's a great question. I was a graduate assistant at a school called California University of Pennsylvania. It's a Division II school. I was 22 years old. Our whole starting lineup was older than me, because in Division II sometimes there's guys that have bounced around a little bit. And I actually lived with my boss, a gentleman by the name of Bill Brown, who had been my college coach.

And every day we would drive to the office. And he would ask me, Are you sure you want to do this? Is this really what you want to do? And I remember feeling slightly offended every time he would ask me that question because I felt like I was doing it; I'm already doing it, what do you mean? I'm in this. I'm with you. We're trying to go after winning. We're trying to make these guys better.

What he meant was, when you're young, 22, 23, 24 years old, you can change your mind; you can go do something else. But I've never thought about doing anything else because the opportunity to be a part of a team and be a part of something larger than any of us, the opportunity to go after winning, the opportunity to compete in really cool venues, whether it's some Division II school in Pennsylvania or whether it's coaching at a place like UConn, it doesn't really matter. It's been a thrill for me.

And I used to be the young coach. Now I guess I'm the middle-aged coach. But I'm just grateful for the opportunity to continue doing it.

Q. Curious to get your thoughts on UConn having played them three times, and what makes them so dangerous and what your thoughts are on the Big East in general?

SHAKA SMART: The Big East is awesome. It's my favorite league that I've coached in. And what's special about the Big East compared to other leagues is basketball, which is what we're all here for. When you go to Providence or you go to Seton Hall or you go to Villanova or any school in the Big East, you can feel how special and meaningful that game is to so many people. It's probably like football at Ohio State or Michigan.

And that's our sport and our league. In terms of UConn, there's been multiple times this season where I've thought they have the best team in the country, starting off in November and December when they were running through their non-conference schedule and at various times in conference play, including when they shellacked us at their place, we were fortunate to beat them twice. Those games were not easy.

I'm still in awe of what our guys were able to do to accomplish those wins. But I think the reality is, with UConn, you've got three incredibly special players in Sanogo, Hawkins and Jackson. And when those guys are all playing well -- not to take away from any other guys on their team because they have some terrific role guys. They've got a point guard who had a triple-double against us who is not one of those three guys. But when those three guys are playing well, they're not losing. They will win both games here if those guys continue to play the way they're playing.

And Andre Jackson, especially, he's just a real, real problem when he's on the floor and he's playing with great confidence. So it's been fun to be in the Big East with them this year. It's going to be fun to watch them. I wish we were out here competing against them.