Under construction: Braun brings no-excuse formula to rebuild men's basketball

By Yan Digilov     10/23/08 7:00pm

Success has been no stranger to head basketball coach Ben Braun in his three decades of coaching college basketball, but his experience with success is not why he was chosen to take over the reigns of a failing Rice Owls basketball squad last spring. Rather, Braun's history of reviving struggling teams throughout the nation brought him to Houston. And for this singular reason, his arrival at Rice University is a welcome sight. Before ever picking up a clipboard, Braun spent time as a young athlete shaping his approach to the game of basketball, learning the importance of hard work and determination at a young age. The eldest of three brothers, he grew up in Chicago, Ill. and attended New Trier High School, where he led teams on both the basketball court and the baseball diamond.

An anecdote from his youth as captain of a New Trier team on the path to a state title best describes his earliest approach to leadership.

"One time, my best friend was eating too much at a pre-game meal, and I spit in his ice cream," Braun remembered. "We got into a fight and coach had to separate us. I did that because he didn't have the discipline to wait until after the game to eat ice cream."

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After high school, he went to play for the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Though he initially intended to transfer to the university's main campus in Madison for athletics, the young man with a deep love for competition made a difficult choice that would change the course of his life. Instead of joining Badger athletics, Braun decided to focus on his academics after transferring.

"At the time it was a big sacrifice, but it was something that I needed to do," he said.

Braun became an English major and earned a teaching degree. However, he could not leave the game of basketball behind, and soon after graduating, he accepted a job as a teacher and head coach at Sienna Heights University in Adrian, Mich.

Sienna Heights was no men's basketball powerhouse. In fact, the institution was open only to female students until two years prior to Braun's arrival. The private Roman Catholic institution had less than 2,000 students and was run by nuns who placed an unwavering emphasis on academics.

Braun's accomplishments at Sienna Heights would later become his calling card - a no-excuses formula for success. After recruiting players straight from the dormitories, the Saints went 8-21 in their first-ever season. Despite odds stacked against the young program, the Saints tripled their win total the following year, finishing 24-6.

"Those teams ended up becoming pretty good," he said. "We won five independent championships and went to the NAIA [National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics] tournament five times."

What made Braun's success even more impressive was that he was not much older than any of his players. When he manned the sidelines for the first game of his coaching career, he was 24 years old.

"I was pretty tough on the players," he said. "I learned later that you didn't have to be really tough on the players, you just have to really work hard."

His dedication spoke volumes, and news of his success spread throughout the state. After eight years of building Sienna Heights up from a school with no team at all to one with a championship pedigree, Braun was offered a position as assistant coach at Eastern Michigan University.

Though Eastern Michigan had a larger NCAA Division I program, Braun's story there was not much different from his humble beginnings at Sienna Heights. The Eagles had never been to an NCAA tournament, had never won a conference championship and were perennial favorites to finish in the bottom of the Mid-American Conference.

All that changed when EMU's head coach left the program in 1986, giving Braun the chance to rebuild a second struggling team. It took him only one year to turn the program around, and in 1988, EMU went 14-2 in conference play on the way to their first-ever MAC Championship. Braun was named MAC Coach of the Year, a title he would receive again in 1991 and 1996.

In his eight years at EMU, Braun took the Eagles to the NCAA tournament three times, including a Sweet 16 appearance in 1991. His successes at Eastern Michigan gave him national recognition as a coach who brought the best out of his players, demanding commitment and a solid defensive effort.

Braun also attributed much of EMU's resurgence to successful recruiting and a talented staff. One of the first assistants he had was Keith Dambrot, who later became famous as the head coach of St. Vincent- St. Mary High School where he won two state championships with the help of an up-and-coming star named LeBron James.

As he transformed the EMU squad, Braun also discovered the importance of utilizing players that may have been overlooked by other teams, like Earl Boykins, who went on to be the be the second shortest player in NBA history at 5 feet 5 inches.

"In this day and age, that is the biggest challenge any coach has," he said. "Players want to go into the NBA, or they want to graduate and go start working. Basketball is a team game. What you do affects your team. We want to play unselfish basketball."

After EMU defeated perennial powerhouse Duke University in the first round of the tournament in 1996, the nation was convinced that Braun was the real-deal, and he was given the opportunity to leave the small market of Eastern Michigan for the most populous state in the US.

The University of California- Berkeley had been to the NCAA tournament four times from 1990-'96 when its athletics department gave Braun the chance to replace head coach Todd Bozeman.

Braun accepted the position, thinking that he was finally entering the ranks of an established program on the brink of cracking the top spots in the nation.

Though he took the team to the Sweet 16 in his first season, his success was stripped from the history books when the NCAA Committee on Infractions ruled on a scandal surrounding the former coach. Bozeman was found guilty of paying large sums of money to the family of a player on the squad. According to the ruling, Cal was "required to vacate its 1996 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship records and awards." Braun found himself leading a team with only nine scholarship players after the NCAA revoked two scholarships, no home gym - the Haas Pavilion was undergoing renovations - and no hopes of post-season play because of a season-long ban.

"Our first years there were really tough," he said. "We couldn't get players to visit because no one wanted to go to a school where you couldn't go to the post-season."

What first appeared to be the opportunity of a lifetime turned into the challenge of a lifetime, but Braun was, of course, in familiar territory. By recruiting players who were happy to play and could easily be coached, much like the ones from EMU, Braun held the team together through tough times.

"I didn't mind picking players that were the third best players on the [high school] team," he said. "The third best player might be the best role player. He might be the most unselfish player. He might be the best defender."

Of course the enormous institution was also able to attract players like Leon Powe, who won an NBA title with the Boston Celtics last year, and Ryan Anderson, who was selected by the New Jersey Nets in the first round of the 2008 draft.

By the time he was faced with the challenge of steering the high-profile Golden Bears squad, Braun had established a tried and true coaching style that emphasized team play and, most of all, defense.

"He told us straight that defense was going to be the most important aspect of our game, and offense would come along with it," Anderson said. "We were successful against some really good opponents because of that defensive factor that he brought."

In his 12 years at Cal, the Golden Bears went to the NCAA tournament five times and the National Invitation Tournament three times, winning it in 1999. Braun's teams also made an improbable run of beating rival University of California-Los Angeles nine seasons in a row.

Braun's relationship with his players and contributions to the university gave him a 12-year tenure as one of the most popular coaches in Cal's history.

"His consistency in sticking by us despite anything meant a lot," Patrick Christopher, a Cal junior guard, said. "He stood by our side through thick and thin. I definitely appreciate him as a man and a coach. That was big for me to have some one like that, a male figure, as a coach and as a person."

After finishing in the bottom of the Pac-10 for the second year in a row and failing to get back to the Sweet 16 since his first season with the program, the university decided it needed a change of scenery. More worried about his players than himself, Braun was sure to leave the program on a good note.

"Most coaches wouldn't say anything," Christopher said. "They would just move to a different area and go to a different team. He stressed that he wanted his players to be aware of what was going on and wanted them to be happy."

Days after he lost his job, Braun was contacted by Chris Del Conte, Rice's director of athletics, who convinced him to fill the shoes of another tenured coach who had been replaced in a search of new direction.

"I don't think you look at who you are replacing," Braun said. "I know Willis, and he had some successful years. Willis and I talked at a spring tournament where he and I spent a lot of time. He was very encouraging, and he offered me help. It meant a lot to me, and it showed me something about the kind of coach he was."

When he, his wife Jessica and newborn son Julius arrived in Houston, Braun noticed striking similarities with his arrival at EMU: no gym, meek post-season potential and only nine signed scholarship players were all sights he had seen before.

In a short period of time, Braun gathered a staff from across the country, including Louis Reynaud and Mike Roberts, who turned down head coaching opportunities elsewhere to follow Braun from Cal.

He recruited forward P.J. Bolte and point guard Connor Frizzelle to fill holes in the depth chart and made adjustments to the schedule to allow for bigger crowds to show up on Saturday afternoons rather than nights. Braun has been attending football games to gauge the crowd levels and said he was impressed with the turnout that he saw in the home opener against Southern Methodist University.

He has also been impressed with the close ties between students, athletes and the administration at the university. Part of his formula for success, though, will be integrating the greater Houston community into the Owls' fan base.

"That is going to be my goal - to get Houston to realize this is a great venue for families and entertainment," he said. "I'd love to see standing room only, people camping out for tickets and college gameday here. That is our goal. I have seen that before, and it is really fun."

Before he can again attract the national spotlight, he will need refocus a team that went 0-16 in conference play last year.

"I asked the team, 'What do you think the perception of our program is," he said. "They said to me that it is not very good. I told them that we have to change that. It is up to us to change that. Nobody is going to change that for us."

Looking at another last place team in need of serious repairs, Braun and his staff are making only one promise - the players will get better every day and every week.

"There is no magic," he said. "It is about overcoming adversity. We are not going to feel bad for ourselves, and we are not going to make excuses. When you are going through tough times, you cannot make excuses.

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