Alan Huss

You go to, you know, obviously out west, you know, Midwest, you go to Indiana to play Butler and then out to Omaha to the Chai Health Center.

Tough place to play with Alan Huss and the new look Creighton Blue Jays.

It'll be tough, man.

2 p.m. January 3rd, a little hangover from the new year.

Xavier, Providence, Marquette, DePaul, hell, even Creighton.

Creighton's going to look a lot different.

I think you're going to see a whole different side of Creighton with Alan Huss there.

He was the mastermind behind getting High Point to the level that they are now and competing for Sweet 16s and whatnot.

A lot of people got a lot wrong back in October when we check in at the end of February.

Uh, just as one theoretical, like Huss was awesome his first two years at High Point.

He matched everyone except, I think I said this on the show to him actually, uh, Brad Underwood, Brad Stevens, and Tommy Lloyd are the only coaches I think that won more games their first two years as a head coach than Alan Huss.

And, and let's be clear, doing that at High Point, very different than doing that at, you know, some of these other places where you could just get-

No question.

Although-

Although-

Although Huss' situation at High Point was more advantageous than Underwood's at Stevens and Boston.

[ball hits backboard] Alan Huss, new coach of the Creighton Bluejays, joins us here on the Eye on College Basketball podcast.

I am not surprised because when I had this interview a year ago with Greg McDermott, I turned to him and I said, "Are we ever gonna do this again?" And he blushed, and he said, "I don't know.

We'll see." And in my mind's, my heart's mind, I said, "Nope, this is gonna be it." It's a pleasure to have you here.

in the Big East.

Do you anticipate to have a team that is m- more defensive oriented than what Mac ran? Uh, you know, I, I know you've been s- you've said publicly, like, you're not gonna lead the nation in fewest fouls per game and stuff like that.

So what are, what are going to be the cosmetic differences in, in a Creighton program under Alan Huss versus what we saw for so many years under Greg McDermott?

Uh, the, the biggest difference is for years we've, especially on the defensive side of the basketball, we have obsessed over trying to stay out of defensive rotation, and we build schemes around it.

We provide short bursts of help where we don't have to fully rotate, and when we have to fully rotate, when we had to fully rotate, we would have catastrophic breakdowns.

You got Butler with Ronald Norad.

Ronald Norad's running like – in their drills like he's playing his team just to be like listen if you don't think that i can still do this like you're mistaken so like that's a first off i love that okay so i'm excited for butler because they're turning a new page same way that providence is i don't think the talent's gonna be at the same as the providence players that brian hodgson brought in but a guy like ron norad who basically went to butler because no one else signed him no one else gave him a look and has he's gonna bring that culture of like look people may not give you a shot but we're gonna we're gonna bring butler basketball back so i love that hire i think he's gonna be phenomenal uh and then even even a guy like uh like you stole my thunder with alan huss alan huss built high point into what you see high point being now um so the fact that now he gets to go to creighton with the resources that they have there and do it at the big east level it's a phenomenal hire uh i think they're gonna look a lot different than what they did under coach mac i think they're gonna be no disrespect to coach max teams because i think they've been really good almost made the final four a bunch of times i think they're gonna be faster i think they're gonna be a little more um Let's just say the difference between like a Ferrari and a Corvette.

Nothing, not crazy, but I think the Ferrari is a little more built for what Alan Huss is trying to do.

At least that's what he did at High Point.

And then listen.

They're not going to be the best team in the world and it's not some sleeping giant or whatever, but with the resources that everybody in the league has to compete, you can at least make matching offers you can convince guys to come live in in uh in a you know a very pretty place that i very much enjoyed living in for for many years and um and and play in a really good basketball conference like there's there's a the the disadvantages aren't as stark as they used to be for depaul and i think holtman has a chance to uh maybe take that forward this year we'll see how it goes okay the next tier i've got it's just called wait and see just because i i don't know i think probably creighton i would probably rank above depaul like if you made me make a ranking top to bottom here um but i just wanted to kind of pull them out and talk about them because they are the rare situation of a new coaching thing.

That is like, I simultaneously feel like every outcome is on the table, even though the situation was managed kind of perfectly, you know, Alan Huss goes off.

He's a, he's a Creighton guy.

He's an alum.

You know, no, no issues whatsoever.

But it's just, it's stark to me because the first, it's the first time in a very, very long time that I just can't immediately picture what Creighton is going to look like.

Definitely with no question whatsoever before the season starts, just because Alan Huss isn't, Greg McDermott, he just isn't.

And so we have to, we have to wait and see.

Five minutes on this.

I have a quote from Alan Huss.

Regarding Jackson McAndrew.

Uh-oh.

They've gotten to the point where they're becoming second nature to him, so he's able to fly around without thinking now defensively.

And his length, size, and strength are really impacting the game on that end.

He's really just been an absolute monster on the glass, which being close to 235 pounds, I believe... now and all 6'10 with a seven foot some odd wingspan so he's going to use the length and size to impact the game on that end of the floor it's an unbelievable help to our team as we try to figure out ways for him to be impactful when those shots aren't going in so he's not kind of a one trick pony that he once was that is Alan Huss seemingly telling us that Jackson McAndrew is their best player which is

it was kind of expected right It's hopeful.