A lot of Dwayne Stephens’ two decades as an assistant for Tom Izzo prepared him to be a head coach. Some of it, he could only learn by experiencing it.
“I found that out pretty quick,” Stephens said, 11 games into his third season at the helm of Western Michigan’s program. “You’ve got to grow on the job. I tell my assistants, I slept really well as an assistant. As a head coach, you don’t sleep as well.”
Monday afternoon, a sleep-deprived Stephens returns to Breslin Center, where he played in the early 90s and coached alongside Izzo for 19 seasons at Michigan State, quite a few of them as Izzo’s righthand man.
“It’ll be fun and a little weird,” Stephens said.
There won’t be much time for sentimental thoughts. Stephens is in the thick of season that he’s trying to steer in the right direction. The Broncos are 3-8, though it’s been a hard-luck start, playing the first seven games without arguably their leading scorer, guard Chancey Willis, who had his appendix removed, and several other games without two other starters. They’ve lost second-half leads at Butler and Dayton and, just before Christmas, blew a 22-point with less than 7 minutes to play at home against Valparaiso.
“We have everything we need to compete at a high level in our league,” Stephens said. “Right now, obviously with the game we had the other day and just some of the other results, it’s been tough. Guys are fragile. I’m just trying to keep them in a good mindset, because we have had our moments where we’ve been really good.”
What 25 seasons as an assistant coach — two for Greg Kampe at Oakland, then four for Tom Crean at Marquette and then for Izzo at MSU — couldn’t prepare Stephens for is how college basketball would change dramatically just about the time he got his first head coaching job. Life in the NIL and transfer portal era at MSU is a challenge. But it’s Club Med relative to life in the Mid-American Conference.
There is perhaps no better example of this than 7-foot center Javonte Brown, who began his career at Connecticut, played two seasons at Texas A&M and then landed at WMU, where he lost weight, rediscovered his love for the game and reinvigorated his career. This season, he’s averaging about 11 points, six rebounds and two blocks — at Rhode Island, where he’s one of the team captains for the 11-1 Rams.
“I talk to him once a week now, still,” Stephens said. “He appreciates what we did for him and he talks about how much we helped him, and that still really feels good when you hear that from a kid like him. He had an opportunity to make a lot of money and it was money that he couldn’t get here. Obviously I’m bummed out that we don’t have him, but also happy for him and his family, because they have an opportunity to make a lot of money, and you can never hold a kid back from that.”
Winning at WMU’s level is no longer about developing a roster over time, building a culture and getting old together. As Stephens said, it’s partly about selling transfers on the idea they could be the next Javonte Brown.
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“It’s challenging because it’s hard to win with high school players,” Stephens said. “So you’ve got to jump in the portal. And in the portal, you never know what you’re getting. The portal is kind of like speed dating. It happens quick. But in terms of the kind of kids that we want to take, that has not changed. We want to take guys that are good players and have high character. We’re still in the business of teaching life lessons. You just may not be teaching those lessons for four years. Now, when you have a kid, maybe it’s one year, maybe it’s two years.
“We do offer NIL here. Obviously, not as much as some of the power four (conferences) schools are going to offer, but my AD and some of our supporters have done a really good job of helping us be in a position where we can offer kids something coming in and hopefully keep some guys. … One thing that Coach (Izzo) taught me when I was there in recruiting, we’re always going to be upfront and honest with kids. And it served me well when I was at Michigan State and it served me pretty good here, because I think at the end of the day, that’s all people want, is for you to be honest with them.”
Working in WMU’s favor: A new state of the art arena being built between the campus and downtown that they’re hoping will be ready in two years. The $300-million project, talked about in some form since the mid-2000s, is being largely financed by Kalamazoo and WMU benefactor Bill Johnston, and will house WMU men’s and women’s basketball, WMU ice hockey and the ECHL team in town, the K-Wings.
“It’s crazy. It’s actually happening,” Stephens said. “The plot of land is there now, they got the machines, they’re plugging away. It’s going to be one of the nicest arenas in the country. It won’t be the biggest, but in terms of the amenities and just everything within the building, it’s going to be one of the best.”
Stephens would like Izzo and MSU to open the new arena, as the Spartans did with Oakland’s arena in 1998, when Stephens was an assistant there.
“I’ve talked to Coach (Izzo) a little bit about it,” Stephens said. “I think it would be awesome way to open up our brand-new building. Hopefully we can make that happen.”
For now, he’ll settle for returning to Breslin — a homecoming also for WMU associate head coach Chris Fowler and assistant coach Manny Dosanjh, both of whom were graduate assistants at MSU.
WMU’s gap-help defense will look familiar to MSU fans. Rebounding is also very much a priority for the Broncos under Stephens. Offensively, he’s changed a few things.
“I would say Coach (Izzo) and the Michigan State program still has a pretty big imprint on what we’re trying to do here. It’ll be fun to see how my guys can translate some of this stuff that I stole from Michigan State when we go there.
“Even though I spent 20 years with (Izzo) and I thought I knew him really, really well, I catch myself saying, ‘Man, OK, I see what Coach meant,’ or ‘I understand why Coach was like that.’ It’s so different as a head coach. But I enjoy it. I love the fact that I get a chance to put my fingerprint on this program.”
FROM 2020: The hard, abrupt goodbye to Dwayne Stephens Sr., lost to COVID-19
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.
