Bill Martin has an opportunity to reverse what has been the twenty-six year reverse evolution of the Michigan basketball program. Beginning in 1980 the program began a sad, graft strewn, decision poor march from college basketball’s upper echelon to where it is today, a program of leadership enabled mediocrity that hasn’t been to an NCAA tournament in almost a decade. This downward trend is a connect the dots of coaches, from one of the leading lights of the profession to the merely serviceable to even less so.
Salty Son Of Lincoln
As Bill Martin and his secret cabal hone in on a new coach who will determine whether this once great and inexcusably poor program slides further into primitivism or claims its rightful stature as a perennial power, let’s consider the last coach in Ann Arbor to uphold the latter. Johnny Orr, the irascible son of Lincoln (Taylorville High ‘44), Hall of Fame 1949 graduate of Beloit College, and onetime assistant coach at Wisconsin, led twelve of the richest years (1968-80) of Michigan basketball and provides a sterling benchmark for the kind of coaching background and quality that Bill Martin and company should be seeking.
Providing a stiff rebuke to the decline that followed, Orr remains the all-time winningest coach at Michigan (209-113), a record that included:
4 NCAA appearances
2 NIT appearances
2 Elite Eights (1974, 1977)
1 NCAA Runner-Up (1976)
2 Big Ten Titles (1977, 1978)
Big Ten Coach of the Year (1974, 1977)
NABC Coach of the Year (1976)
His record as a smart recruiter and developer of talent is found in the fact that he mentored six All-Americans in his twelve year tenure (Rudy Tomjanovich, Henry Willmore, Campy Russell, C.J. Kupec, Rickey Green, Phil Hubbard). Each of the aforementioned were players of good, but by no means inevitable potential who made huge developmental leaps in their skill sets under Orr’s basketball tutelage. Furthermore, he was the kind of savvy evaluator of talent who, unlike more than a few coaches today who seem to rely solely on recruiting service ratings, could identify jewels in the rough like Willmore and then take them to heights no one thought possible.
The Running Runts
And the finest illustration of the Orr regime at Michigan was the coaching he did to take his 1976 Running Runts to the NCAA final. With his tallest starter 6′7″ reed skinny frosh Hubbard, a host of similarly slim tweeners, and a bird bath deep bench, Orr conditioned them into a tireless forty minute dervish that went 25-7 overall, 14-4 in conference only to be bested by what was arguably the finest college basketball team of all-time, Bob Knight’s Benson, May, Buckner squad that never lost a game that season. Orr’s starting five was a model of democracy and overachievement with undersized center Hubbard (15.1 pts., 11 rbs.), 6′2″ junior guard Rickey Green (19.9 pts.), 6′2″ junior guard Steve Grote (10.5), 6′6″ junior forward John Robinson (14, 8.2), and 6″2″ senior do-everything forward Wayman Britt (10.9).
The $33,665 Question
Given Orr’s overachieving, fan friendly, NCAA tournament ready tenure at Michigan one arrives at the $33,665 question. Other than a $12,000 dollar raise from the aforementioned, what explains his departure at the age of 52 for a lesser conference and an Iowa State program that was a complete rebuild? One anecdote suggests when Iowa State called to for permission to interview Orr’s top assistant Bill Frieder for the opening, Orr himself became so enticed by the package that he couldn’t say no. Perhaps. But it’s hard to accept that Orr couldn’t have negotiated for enough of a raise from his Michigan bosses to negate that enticement. Orr himself offered the following explanations:
“I had a full career at Michigan, I loved it but I was ready to make a change. This opportunity came, and I was excited for it. The facilities were awesome — beautiful dorms and a beautiful campus. It was a great school that had everything, but just didn’t do well in basketball. This was a chance to do something that other people failed to do.”
“We’d been in the top 10 something like six years in a row. Romie, my wife, said to me, ‘You’re not going to have that now. You think you can do that?’ Can you handle that? I said, ‘I think I can. I know I can.’ ”
“I can’t say I never regretted it. That first day of practice I regretted it. But I got over that.”
Long Shadow From Bloomington
While one can’t discount the attraction of a new challenge, a less popular, but possible thesis is that Orr grew weary of the long shadow of the legend residing across the conference in Bloomington. Coaching so well only to more often than not be usurped by Bob Knight both in the conference races and postseason and national repute might well have been the nudge that made the Big Eight and what was then a complete basketball hinterland in Ames an attractive escape hatch. While it didn’t discourage Gene Keady from sticking out for the good fight, perhaps Orr’s ego just couldn’t handle the bruising. Imagine what Orr’s Michigan and Big Ten totals might’ve been without the General’s heavy taxation.
Whatever the case, Orr’s fourteen years at Iowa State were similarly success laden and in relatively short order he took a program from nowhere to great respectability. By 1984 he had the Cyclones in the NIT, he coached six teams to the NCAA, picked up a Sweet Sixteen in 1986, developed several under the radar recruits into collegiate superstars such as Jeff Hornacek and Jeff Grayer, and went 218-200 before he retired in 1994. Throughout his stint in Ames he stewarded basketball that was profitable and consistently tournament bound. He left the most popular man in Iowa.
Weak Broth
Unfortunately and by contrast, after Orr’s exit, Michigan basketball was subjected to a depressing erosion led by the ever weakening coaching broth of Bill Frieder (1981-89), Steve Fisher (1989-97), Steve Ellerbe (1997-2001), and Tommy Amaker (2002-07). Amazingly this group all shared the ability to take highly athletic rosters and turn them into dissolute, undisciplined, routinely underachieving teams.
While the more forgiving might point to Fisher’s 1989 National Championship as a counterpoint worthy of great celebration, the fact is it was a highly charmed, Glen Rice out of body tournament rather than great coaching or great team basketball that accounted for the result. Fisher’s inability to close the deal with the Fab Five cements the argument and the recruiting scandals that he failed to police put the program into fetters. Ellerbe was in the no win interim spot but much ballyhooed Amaker had every opportunity to have great success and failed miserably, going 109-83 overall, 43-53 in conference, and failing to notch a single NCAA bid despite more than a few talented rosters.
Do It For Johnny
On the eve of Bill Martin’s announcement of a new leader for a program that has suffered from poor stewardship both in the AD’s office over the years and on the sideline, let’s hope, at long last, there will be someone to pick up where Orr left off. If so, the University of Michigan will reassume its place in the upper tier of the conference, will reinstall itself in the Top 20 poll, and will be more often than not dancing in March. The Michigan that Orr built needs to rise again.
It’s Beilen
West Virginia’s John Beilen is reportedly the man charged with bringing Wolverine basketball back to its rightful stature.
