A REALLY GOOD GUY
By Hugh Durham

The undivided attention of Al McGuire


I can remember it like it was yesterday. We were sitting around a table listening to Al McGuire talk basketball and he said he was very excited about a new player he had coming to Marquette. Al was right. He went onto to be a pretty darn good player. His name was Dean Meminger.
Over the years, Coach McGuire got a few more good players and had a fine career at Marquette.

In all my years of coaching, I only faced Coach McGuire's team once. It was during the 1967-68 season, when Dave Cowens was a sophomore for me at Florida State. We had some pretty good offensive teams in those days, but when we faced Marquette, in the Milwaukee Classic, Coach McGuire gave a lesson in defense.

They beat us in the opening round, 78-58. To put that into perspective, we came back the next night, in the consolation game, and scored 130 points against Pete Maravich and LSU. We could only score 58 points in 40 minutes against the Warriors, but tallied 78 in the second half, alone, against the Tigers.

In the 1972 NCAA Tournament, we had an opportunity to face each other again. We beat Minnesota, but Marquette lost to Kentucky, in the Mid-East Region.

I was in the stands, in 1977, when Al took Marquette to the Final Four in Atlanta. He had a great team that year, with Bo Ellis, Butch Lee and Jerome Whitehead. They faced a very good North Carolina-Charlotte team, led by Cedric 'Cornbread' Maxwell, in the semi-finals. It was a very tightly contested game, with Marquette squeezing out a victory.

Two nights later, the four-corners approach backfired on Dean Smith and North Carolina and Marquette stormed back to win the National Championship.

I was really happy for him. An appearance in the Final Four puts a stamp on a coach's career, but a National Championship puts an exclamation at the end of it! Al only had one National Championship, but he had a life full of exclamations!

The 1977 National Title game was the last game Al McGuire ever coached, but it was far from the end of his involvement in college basketball.

Al went on to have a great career as color analyst. He brought a very different approach to the microphone. People never heard terms like seashells and balloons to describe the action on the court.

At that time, college basketball was more regional. The entire nation got to see Notre Dame and UCLA, but that was it. Al was one of, if not the first, to have a national audience.

What made him so great was his ability to bring the game to the common fan. He broke it down to its? simplest form so that your wife or girlfriend could understand it. And he brought that love and passion for the game to living rooms across the country.

Al was always so gracious. He always had time for everyone. There are a lot of people who will say that they will make time for you, but you can tell that they are not really giving you their full attention. That wasn't the case with Al. If you were talking to Al, you had his undivided attention.

When I was in my second year, as a head coach, I can remember asking him a bunch of questions, which I thought were important, but recalling them now, they really weren't. But Coach McGuire listened to everything I asked him and took the time to give me answers to all my questions.

That was the kind of guy he was. He was never impatient. Al had a lot of enthusiasm for the game and always had time for people.

He was a great coach and he was a genuine human being. So many words can be used to describe him, but when you get right down to it, you can say that Al McGuire was a really good guy!

We are going to miss you Al.


Be sure to visit the official website of the Hugh Durham Mid-Major Coach of the Year Award, which is maintained by CollegeInsider.com.