I’m always the first one to be upfront with the fact I’m not a Marquette insider. I don’t have sources or contacts that I am regularly talking to. I don’t receive scoops from anyone inside (or near) the Al. I am literally just a fan with a blog that likes to spend too much of his time looking at Marquette stats.
Still, from time to time I do hear from people that have legit contacts or know some of the inner workings. Most of that time I internalize the info and try to contextualize what I say or write with that in mind. Unless I validate it myself, I tend to not publicly state that knowledge.
However, when that backchannel chatter goes out publicly from major, or at least reputable, outlets, it makes me more willing to speak in public about it.
And yesterday may have been one of the biggest days in recent Marquette history. We have it on pretty good authority from the anonymous account Trilly Donovan, the premier source of college basketball intel, that Shaka Smart was interviewed at least in a preliminary fashion over Zoom by Kentucky, one of the 3 most-coveted jobs in the sport.
I think I know Marquette fans well and I definitely know the next step is panic, is Shaka unhappy? Is he looking to leave? Why is he taking other calls?
So this is where I’ll also note Trilly’s follow up this morning, noting that it was Shaka’s choice to stop the interview process after a Zoom call, not the other way around.
Let me repeat that. Marquette’s head coach said thanks but no thanks to Kentucky basketball. I never thought I’d live to see that in writing. It says so much about the great position Marquette finds itself in with Shaka, not just that he turned UK down, but that it barely got past the introductory phase.
But wait, there’s more.
Why do coaching searches get leaked?
Before I explain my thought process, I have to once again dive back into some of the sausage making. When you read or hear that so and so coach is a candidate for a given job from someone in the media, it doesn’t happen by accident. There are a very limited number of people aware of the facts, and they actively disseminate that info to the media strategically.
Sometimes it’s school admins themselves looking to show the fanbase/boosters they are shooting big. Think of the chaos that was the last week with Kentucky and both Scott Drew and Dan Hurley.
Sometimes it’s coaches themselves (or through agents), using the info as public leverage to get a raise or otherwise get some sort of concession from their current employer, even if they aren’t interested.
Marquette fans have lived this more than most over the past 20 years, but there’s no better example than the Buzz Williams and SMU rumors that ran rampant in 2012. At the time, Buzz was locked in a power struggle with the administration on a few fronts and wanted to show that he had options. So he leaked EVERYTHING to local and national media at that time.
And for those that may not remember, Marquette even gave SMU permission to interview (which we knew because Buzz leaked that fact as well).
Of course, Buzz was not the only Marquette coach to do so as every successful one the past 30 years had leveraged their performance at Marquette to public dalliances with “bigger” programs.
And yet, when the moment came and those coaches actually jumped, it always came as a fairly big surprise. No one knew Buzz was headed to Blacksburg. Most thought Tom Crean going to Indiana was an April Fool’s joke. Real business is almost always done under wraps, to avoid fallout and unnecessary attention.
Not just UK
What if I told you Kentucky wasn’t even the first school in that state Shaka Smart rebuffed? Or even the 2nd prominent program with a title game appearance relatively recently? That’s not me taking conjecture public, either, that’s straight from a well sourced report from The Athletic.
It’s rare that a Marquette coach gets approached by (at least) 3 really big time programs that most would clearly put ahead of Marquette in the national pecking order and comes out of it still the coach.
But what’s even rarer is that it was done with nary a peep in real time. Again, when coaches are approached, they have an incredible amount of leverage over their current employer and one of the ways you ensure action is to let others outside of your orbit know that you have that leverage.
Now, Marquette is a private school and doesn’t have any requisite to disclose contract information if it doesn’t want to. And we won’t know about it for another 2 years or so when the 990 tax data becomes publicly available. So it is possible that Shaka was able to leverage the interest from 3 top schools this Spring into a large(r) pay day, or some other reward, monetary or otherwise.
But the fact we only have firm confirmation of Kentucky’s approach is because that search was a mess and they had leaks from every which way. It wasn’t from Marquette or Shaka’s end.
And once more, it wasn’t UK that broke off the conversation, there are firm accounts noting that it was Shaka himself not wanting to go further into the process.
Why it matters
While refreshing my memory on a few of the Buzz Williams and SMU details, I ran across a Journal-Sentinel column from Mike Hunt when Buzz left for Virginia Tech that hit a lot of what I was looking for. And this passage in particular stuck out more than any.
When the modus operandi across a profession is broken, it’s always important and of interest.
Why did Shaka say no to Kentucky? Why didn’t he make a bigger public deal out of his leverage? Why is he being approached by all of these top-tier programs?
Simple, Shaka has taken Marquette from a middle of the pack Big East program to one of the premier squads in just 3 years, and done so his way. He said before his first game that he wasn’t chasing down five stars. He is almost alone in the country in staying away from roster building through the transfer portal.
Alignment is the word that keeps coming to mind over and over again. Marquette fully believes and is committed to Shaka. It gives him every resource he requires, and supports his vision wholeheartedly. Trust me, you don’t normally see university presidents delivering cookies to the coach on his birthday, let alone showcasing it on social media.
And just go back a year, when Shaka used time in his post Big East Tournament conference to gush about President Lovell.
But even with this incredible bond, it would be normal for anyone in Shaka’s position to take a higher profile job for more money. These guys are human.
Where Marquette is incredibly fortunate is that Shaka has already done the big school thing at Texas. And we can unequivocally say it was not for him. (For the long version of this, I highly recommend my column from last year.) So you have this perfect mix of personalities, experience and timing combine to get us here.
Who knows how this column will age. Maybe MU falls flat without Kolek and Oso the next few seasons. Maybe a rift with the admin or AD creeps up. Maybe his family decides cold lakefront winters suck.
We can’t predict what life has in store, so why bother looking for those grenades?
Right now, Marquette has something it has been looking for since Al retired in 1977. It has a highly successful coach that wants to be here and nowhere else.
I won’t ever take that for granted.
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Paint Touches 
Good stuff. We Are Marquette. And Shaka is Marquette.
Not since AL have I seen what is happening at marquette. I was there before Al’s 1st game, I should know. Ask Rafferty next time he calls a game in milw. to tell u some of his AM stories. You like all the great ones are cutting your own path. Keep up the good work. You need a red hat that says MMUGA.
Arch in AZ. A proud MU Alum.