A DIFFERENT PATH


In just his third season as a head coach he won a national championship. He left having recorded the best season in school history. At his second stop, he once again notched the best single season in the program's history and continues to re-write the record books.

Carrying around such accolades would have to make this coach a well-known commodity, right?

The truth of the matter is that Sam Houston State head coach Bob Marlin is highly respected by his piers, but is a great unknown to most others.

Last season Marlin's accomplishments gained national attention, when he guided Sam Houston State to its' first-ever NCAA tournament appearance. But in March, those that win become media darlings and the losers simply go home.

But losing is not a word not often associated with the coach who never played college basketball.

"I wasn't a very good player," laughs Marlin. "After a 2-for-7 night in high school my coach told me I was a good ball handler so he wanted me to bring up the ball, get it to the shooters and play defense. His message was pretty clear."

That's when Marlin began to recognize the intricacies of coaching and he credits his high school mentor for lighting the spark.

"The fact that I wasn't a good shooter wasn't the only thing that I learned from Byron Lehman," says Marlin. "We had a good team, but we faced a great team that was 30-1. Humphries County had won its' previous game by sixty points, but we slowed the tempo, took them out of their game and held them to nearly fifty points below their average. We won that game and advanced to the state tournament."

For Marlin it was a learning experience and one that would put him on a path to coaching. It was a path that not only lacked collegiate experience, but also absent was any basketball background whatsoever.

"My dad was not a coach and I never played in college," says Marlin. "But coaching was something that I wanted to do so I knew I would just have to work harder than everyone else."

And that is exactly what Marlin has done, since graduating from Mississippi State in 1981. And at every stop along the way, Marlin has impressed.

But what is most impressive about Marlin is down-to-earth approach. He neither seeks nor exactly welcomes fan fair. You won't find him working the lobby at the Final Four, but you will find him off in the corner talking basketball with one of his piers. And if you do spot him, he would probably being sitting with his 10-year old son Matt, watching their beloved St. Louis Cardinals.

Marlin is passionate about his trade, but he is also passionate about the important things and there in lies the reason for his success.

"You cannot control how much or how little people talk about what you have or haven't done," says Marlin. "All that you can control is what do on the court. A good friend of mine likes to say, 'if you work hard everything else takes care of itself.' That is so true."

That simplistic approach took Marlin on a path to Pensacola junior college in 1994. It had taken eight years as an assistant coach -- at Marshall, Houston Baptist, and Louisiana-Monroe -- to gain his first opportunity as a head coach, but it took far less time for him to deliver.

In five seasons at Pensacola, Marlin would rack up 120 wins, a national title and a national junior college coach of the year award. But ask Marlin about his stint at Pensacola and he will point out the fact that current Central Florida coach Kirk Speraw and current Mercer coach Mark Slonaker also had great runs with the JUCO program.

He is as proud of the fact that they have gone onto to have success at the division I level as he is about stay in the sunshine state.

"Kirk [Speraw] did a great job before I got there and Mark [Slonaker] had a lot of success after I left," says Marlin. "It has been great to see that all of us have done well since moving on. I was fortunate to inherit a pretty good situation at Pensacola."

But the only thing Marlin inherited in his next head coaching job was a slightly better salary.

After a great five-year run at Pensacola and a three-year stint as an assistant at Alabama, Marlin accepted the head coaching position at Sam Houston State. The SHSU program was in total disarray.

In the eleven previous seasons, the Bearkats were a less than impressive 93-202 and the school had never had a winning season at the division I level.

Five years later, nobody has won more games in the Southland Conference than Sam Houston State.

"I am fortunate to have an athletic director that really understood what it would take to have success here," says Marlin. "Bobby Williams has been so supportive and so instrumental in our success. I am proud of what we have been able to accomplish so far and he has been a major part of it."

Marlin is so right in that support throughout the athletic department is vital to the ultimate success of a program, but -- with all due respect -- Mr. Williams hasn't called a single timeout or recruited a single player.

Since taking over, Marlin has guided SHSU to a pair of pair of Southland Conference regular season titles, the top winning percentage in SLC games and the best non-league mark.

Not bad for a guy that was told by his high school coach that he can't shoot.

Maybe he can't shoot, but he can certainly coach.