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Storm trooper Cyclones' coach having a whirlwind season
Posted: Monday March 20, 2000 03:25 PM
By John Giannone, CNNSI.com AMES, Iowa -- Ask any Iowa State basketball fan to describe Larry Eustachy and the superlatives flow. A winner. A genius. Heaven-sent. Ask any Iowa State player the same question, you'll get a very different response. "Is he going to see this?" asks senior guard Michael Nurse. Fellow guard Kantrail Horton says, "There's something he got about him that makes you just go." To hear ISU's all-everything forward Marcus Fizer explain it, his coach brings a smile to hisb face. "He's a very funny guy. He's a total comedian." Nurse on the other hand, doesn't always see the humor. "If you were on the outside looking in you would say, 'Wow, that guy's a madman.' " The method behind Eustachy's intense, tough-love madness is unmistakable. Even if it sometimes involves abandoning his team on road trips and driving alone to calm his fear of flying or scheduling crack-of-dawn practices after victories. "Hold the players accountable for their actions," Eustachy demands. "I don't want to take the fun out of the experience, but losing is no fun." Fizer may have led the Big 12 in scoring with 23.2 points per game. But that hasn't brought him any extra special treatment from his coach. "I don't think I ever hear him say, you know, 'good Fizer" and, you know, 'you're doing this right, you're doing that right.' And it lets me know that I have a coach that is going to try to get the best out of me each and every time that we step out on the floor."
"He attacks us," added Nurse. "You get used to it. And you know when you messed up during the game, you know that he is going to blast out at you. You know that's his way." Eustachy's way also includes dissecting every game film, grading every player in 20 different categories of mistakes and then posting those grades in the locker room. It's a tactic successfully employed nearly for two decades by NBA coach Pat Riley. "When you don't play well and make mistakes, it shows up on the breakdown board," Eustachy said. "That's their biggest fear when they come in on Monday morning. They are graded."
"It doesn't bother us," Horton countered. "We know the type of guy he is. We know he really just wants us to be better and he expects a lot out of us." Even if it means being on the short end of a good tongue-lashing? "You do learn from it when he's in there yelling at you, cursing, all types of stuff, calling you all types of names," said Nurse. "When it gets down to it, you know what you did was wrong. You can play better than what you were putting out there." Iowa State's success has fueled speculation that Eustachy might follow predecessor Tim Floyd and seek a more lucrative, more prestigious deal elsewhere. But the man in the midst of a memorable run says he has found a home on this three-point range.
"This is it," he said. "I have no desire to get to one of the top five universities in the country. This is perfect for me. I think we can get to the Final Four from here. And I may be wrong, I may be a dreamer." If that happens, Eustachy certainly wouldn't be the first person to use the state of Iowa as his field of dreams.
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