Getting to know new Cal MBB assistant coach Marty Wilson

GoldenBearReport.com was also able to interview new Cal men’s basketball assistant coach Marty Wilson, who comes from Pepperdine, where he was head coach for seven seasons (2011-2018). Wilson played collegiately at Pepperdine from 1984-1989 and has over 20 years of experience coaching in the college ranks. Wilson has had the chance to work with future NBA stars in Doug Christie and Andrew Bogut during his coaching career. Below is a transcription of our interview with him.

Question: Talk about your background, how you got into playing basketball and later coaching.

Marty Wilson: Well, I actually played basketball all my life. Probably since nine years old in a group setting. I’m the youngest of six, so I followed my brother everywhere. When I played through high school, I had a pretty good high school career; I got a scholarship to Pepperdine; I was there for five years, redshirted one year; I wanted to try to play pro ball like everybody else, and it actually didn’t happen, I had some injuries along the way, but I didn’t chase the dream.

Once it was over I said, “Hey, let me start my life.” I’ve been married for gosh, twenty-seven years now and I got a daughter who lives in San Diego, I have a son, who we talked a minute ago, who’s gonna be a graduate assistant at Georgia with Tom Crean. We’re basketball lifers, I got into coaching at Pepperdine, working for the coach that I played for, Tom Asbury. I owe my life to him. He’s been great. Recruiting me, getting me my first job, years later giving me the opportunity to come back to Pepperdine as associate head coach knowing that eventually I was going to be the head coach. So he’s been a big part of my life for a while.

I coached at Pepperdine for six years, coached some really really good teams and played on some really good teams. We won the conference back-to-back back then, went to the tournament back-to-back, I want to say we went to the tournament, the NCAA tournament two years, we went to the NIT two years, so I had a pretty successful four years. And then as an assistant, again we dominated the league, Doug Christie was our marquee player back then and we won the league three out of those four years.

And again, coached and played there. Coached on some really good teams with some great coaches. Tom Asbury, Bob Williams who was at Davis, was at Santa Barbara for the last nineteen years; I mean I’ve learned a lot. I left Pepperdine in ’96. ’96 went down to San Diego, University of San Diego for two years with Brad Holland and then went to Santa Barbara, UC Santa Barbara with Bob Williams, who coached me one year at Pepperdine and I was there with him for six years.

Again, coached on some really good teams, we went to the tournament a couple of times, and then 2004, Ray Giacoletti was at Eastern Washington. He got the Utah job and he asked me to join his staff and we had a great first year. Andrew Bogut, former Golden State Warrior, he was there. It was his second year. We went to the Sweet Sixteen and probably the best player I’ve ever had an opportunity to coach. He was magnificent in a number of ways.

So I was there for four years, my last year was with Jim Boylen, who is back in the NBA as an assistant, and then I had a chance to go back to Pepperdine as associate head coach and then knowing that I was going to take over three years later as the head coach and was there for seven years. I had a couple of good years, had a lot of injuries our last couple of years. Disappointing, actually there are certain things that you can’t control, I believe we had five concussions last year. Our best player was out for six weeks. We had two labrum tears, we had a fractured ankle, so some of those things are out of your control. So in a nutshell, that’s my journey.

Comment: And then you guys got Jadé Smith (former Cal recruit).

Marty Wilson: Jadé Smith, yeah. Actually I was going to try to catch him. He’s up here, I think he’s going back this weekend. Go back down to Pepperdine. Actually I’m going to be down there, so I may see him. But great kid, I enjoyed him. He’s going to do good things down there.

Question: Can you talk about the difference between being an assistant coach at a power five program like Cal as opposed to being the head coach at a mid-major like Pepperdine? How did your experiences at Pepperdine shape you for your role at Cal? What adjustments will you have to make now that you’re not the head coach?

Marty Wilson: I’ll touch on that part first. The adjustment, that’ll be easy for me. I’m not a big ego guy. I don’t feel that, and I told Coach Jones this, I’m not trying to come in and rattle the cage. My job is to help him do his job. Like I said, I’m blessed that he gave me the opportunity. So, for me, I’m pretty laid back, I’m fired up during practice and games, we’ll challenge our guys, but for that, it’ll allow me to see the games differently as an assistant now because of all the different situations we were in, that I was in as a head coach. So now I can see things happening and be able to relay those to Coach Jones in the process, so that part will be easy. The transition part, that’ll be easy.

Again, running your own team for seven years, planning practices, just dealing with all the stress and strain that you deal with as a head coach, you worry about everything. A lot of those things are taken off my plate, but I’ll still think about those things, I’ll still look for some of those things, and I’ll still help manage some of those things as he gives them to me. So, I’m looking forward to that.

In terms of being at a power five school, granted I was at Utah, they weren’t in the Pac-12 at the time, lot of similarities, again we had a great team and great program when we were there. So, I’ve been in it before and just obviously wasn’t the Pac-12, but recruiting and playing at a high level, again I have that experience.

But like I said, for me it’s not about me, I’m not a big ego guy. My job is to do whatever Coach Jones needs us to do to help our program. Help him, take a load off of his plate, help manage our guys, help get them better on and off the floor, academically, socially, and then help teach them. Just teach them how to become better young men as they get older. Because there’s going to be a lot of things that they don’t know. That they haven’t experienced and our job as coaches because we’ve gone through, we’ve made some of those mistakes, is try to help them prevent those on and off the floor.

Question: As far as your relationship with Wyking is concerned, just talk about how you know him, how he reached out to you, and just the relationship that you’ve had coming into this job.

Marty Wilson: Well, I’ve known him for a long time. When I was an assistant my first, I wanna say it might have been my third year at Pepperdine, he was a player at Loyola and so I coached against him. He was a really good player and we joke all the time that we used to beat up on them, but he used to get his. He was a tough player, so I’ve known him for a long time.

And then just as we got into coaching over the years and as you’re traveling and moving, you get to know each other a little bit more and spend time, and when we’re out recruiting and maybe we’ll sit together and let’s go have lunch or dinner, things like that, just to continue to build relationships. So I’ve known him for a long time. As a player when he was in college, he played overseas ball with and against some of my former teammates, so that’s another bond that we have, and then just over the years as we’ve been at different places.

Him at New Mexico and working for Nike and Louisville, I mean we just stayed in touch over the years and so when my situation happened at Pepperdine, after our conference tournament was over, which was in Vegas, actually the Pac-12, the Mountain West, and the WAC were all coming into Vegas the next week, and I told our former staff that instead of us just going home and moping and being without a job, hey we’re going to come back and network and go watch some practices and go figure out how to get better.

We needed to look for a job, so I reached out to some coaches, I reached out to Coach Jones, I reached out to a good friend of mine at UMKC Kareem Richardson who Coach Jones, they worked together at Louisville, so we reached out to a number of coaches just to go watch practices and I went by and watched Cal practice and not ever with a thought of me joining a staff. I thought that it was pretty much solid or solidified with what their staff was going to be, so I just went to learn and get out of the house, quit driving my wife crazy a little bit, and then about a week and a half later, he called me and actually I told him I was going to write notes. Just to give him my thoughts on their practice.

And so I had written a number of notes on the staff and the energy and the organization and all those things that I liked, and I was writing notes trying to steal some stuff. If I can use them down the line and before I had sent it to him, he had given me a call. Called me and asked if I can meet him in San Diego. My daughter lives in San Diego and so we met down there and he said I want to talk to you about possibly joining our staff. And we met at a hotel, at his hotel, probably sat down and ate breakfast and met for about an hour and a half, two hours. We talked about a lot of things. He offered me the job and without hesitation, I took it.

My wife and I had talked and again our kids are older, and we’re both from Southern California, but we were excited about making the change and making the move and actually I’ve known Coach Walker, Chris Walker forever, when he was an assistant at Loyola when Coach Jones played. And then obviously with Coach Grace being in Southern California, so a big part of, for me, a big part of coaching and working with guys is the relationships that you have and are you working with good people. Because if you’re with bad people it’s going to be a bad job no matter how great your job or how great you think that job is, and I told Coach Jones I’m excited about our staff and not just our immediate staff. Everyone else from our video guys, to our ops guys, our strength coach, I think we got a great staff and I think our program is going to benefit from it.

Question: Building on that, what are you looking forward to most about being here at Cal?

Marty Wilson: Winning. That’s all it’s about. Winning, but getting better. You can’t win unless you get better and one thing we talk about that I used to talk about all the time with our guys is our job every day is to get better. And if they get better one inch, imagine how much better they’re going to get over the year and if each individual player can get better collectively, our team has gotten better. So that’s the main thing and obviously we want to improve our program where we can get the chance to play in the big dance and then eventually fight for Sweet Sixteens and Elite Eights, etc. That’s the ultimate goal is to try to play at the highest level.

There’s no reason why at a place like Cal you can’t do it that, but there’s a process. You don’t just say let’s go get these players and then let’s win. You have to get the right guys; you gotta get guys that are committed, guys that buy in, guys that want to work together, guys that are coachable, and again not just the basketball side. Guys that want to go to class, because they go hand in hand and Cal’s a great school, it’s great academics, and you want guys that, their degree is important.

And putting all that stuff together, I’m excited because good things are going to happen and I tell you, the passion that Coach Jones has, again it matches what he did as a player, so I’m not surprised by it. I sit back as a former head coach and I see it and I told a friend of ours about this a couple of weeks ago, I said oh man, I’m very impressed by Coach Jones. Just his demeanor, his communication with the players, and his intensity, so for me again it’s another opportunity for me to learn. Again, he’s younger than me, but you can learn from anyone and so I’m excited about that.

Question: What do you enjoy most about coaching?

Marty Wilson: Teaching. On and off the floor. If you’re on the floor and you show someone or you show the team certain things, whether it’s a basic principle, if it’s footwork, if it’s shooting, if it’s defense, and then you see them work at it and then they have success in it. They get excited, you get excited. Same thing off the floor. If you can teach a kid how to become more disciplined or you can teach them that eventually the things that we’re teaching them off the floor, they’re gonna have to use for the rest of their lives.

And then you see them grow over their freshman, sophomore, junior, senior year, and then seven to ten years later, they’re about to get married, they invite you to the wedding, that’s the ultimate because you know you had a good relationship and I’ve been blessed to have gone to multiple weddings, some of our former players have kids, having a chance to spend some time with their kids and just watching them grow. I mean you get excited because you had a two, three, four year stint in their lives directly kind of every day and now you see them on the other side as a man, as a husband, as a father. That’s the exciting part.

Question: What are some goals that you have both long-term and for your first year at Cal?

Marty Wilson: Well, obviously just getting better. For me, it’s that simple. Being better than they were last year, then we were last year. Again, I wasn’t here, so I’m still learning, we’re going on a staff retreat tomorrow just so we can talk basketball. Talk about our guys, talk about who needs to work on what, who needs to get better, or how do we develop them in different ways. Talk about our offense, talk about our defense, so I need to learn. I’ve watched a lot of film, but for us, for me, actually for Coach Grace, for us to learn the philosophies that Coach has. And then if there’s something that we could possibly add to it. So that’s number one is learn what’s most important to him on the floor.

Off the floor, in terms of teaching and educating our guys and then getting better at it. Again, I still have to learn what each player is capable of doing, I mean you can see it on tape, but when you see it live, everyday, it’s a big difference. So, I’m looking forward to that, being able to work with these guys for the next eight weeks or for eight weeks in the summer and now getting a better understanding of how it’s going to carry over and what areas we need to work on in terms of getting them better throughout the season. And again, it’s that simple. Just getting them better.