Greg McDermott was at a career crossroads in the spring of 2010. He was coming off his fourth season at Iowa State and had yet to lead the Cyclones to a winning record in his time in Ames.
That’s when Creighton reached out to McDermott about replacing Dana Altman, the program’s longtime head coach who had just left for Oregon. McDermott set out for Des Moines where he was meeting then-Creighton Athletic Director Bruce Rasmussen to discuss the job. Pulling out of his driveway, he gave Rick Barnes a call.
“I had questions for him about that point in my career, this kind of move,” McDermott said on Thursday before Creighton faces Tennessee in the Midwest Regional Semifinals. “I hung up the phone with him when I pulled into the hotel parking lot 40 minutes later, and he just drilled me with questions and things to think about, short term, long term, that I think speaks to who Rick Barnes is.”
Barnes and McDermott had known each other for just four years at that point with the two battling on the sidelines as Barnes led the Texas program and McDermott the Cyclones.
“I’m sure the conversation would’ve been, one, everyone would want him in the league because he stands for all the right things,” Barnes said on Thursday. “He’s done it the way that you’d want any coach to do it. He’s a guy that could coach at any level.”
McDermott took the Creighton job later that spring and has led the Blue Jays to nine NCAA Tournament appearances, three trips to the Sweet 16 and another to the Elite Eight in his 14 seasons as head coach.
Making McDermott’s success at Creighton even more impressive is that he’s led the Blue Jays from the Missouri Valley Conference to the Big East during his tenure and they’ve only improved as a program despite the step up in competition.
“He’s been a great friend of mine,” McDermott said of Barnes. “I’ve always respected the way he’s coached his teams and how he’s gone about it. And this Tennessee team, it’s got some of what he did offensively when he was at Texas, trying to run some cutters off the basket, stander under the basket. I’ve prepared for that a lot before, and he does that a lot with Dalton (Knecht).”
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Why is Barnes the type of person that other coaches would turn to for advice in a moment of transition? For McDermott, the then Texas coach’s success at multiple different spots as well as his friendship made him the Big 12 coach he turned to.
“We just developed a friendship,” McDermott said. “He’s someone that I respected that had moved around a few times from George Mason to Providence to Clemson and had been in that situation. Of the guys in the Big 12 at that time, he was the one I thought could maybe give me — make sure I’m thinking about everything before I made that decision, and to his credit, he asked a lot of the right questions.”
Tennessee associate head coach Justin Gainey is in a similar position to lean on Barnes now. Gainey is a proven assistant coach at multiple stops. He’s bound to receive head coaching opportunities in the near future.
The Vols’ associate head coach says Barnes’ experience is a key reason why coaches would turn to him as well as his cut-and-dry nature. Anyone who plays for, coaches with or covers Barnes knows he’s straight to the point. That characteristic is beneficial when needing honest guidance.
“He’s done it for a long time at a lot of different levels and different regions,” Gainey said. “He’s wise and he may say some things that make you look at things in a different perspective and in a way you really haven’t thought about it. You always know that with coach there’s no sugar coating. He’s going to give it to you real and so I think when you’re looking for advice … that’s what you want.”
McDermott and Barnes teams will meet at Little Caesars Arena on Friday night with a berth in the Elite Eight on the line. The 14th-year Creighton coach is one of the nation’s best offensive coaches. The ninth-year Tennessee coach is one of the nation’s best defensive coaches.
They’ll collide in the Sweet 16 like they used to in the Big 12. And without a spring phone call between the two nearly a decade and a half ago, McDermott may not have ended up at Creighton.
