No 'Tobacco Road' mystique for Marquette
NEWARK -- No relation. Marquette coach Brent "Buzz'' Williams shares a surname with North Carolina's Roy Williams, but their only other discernible connection is as opponents in Friday's East Regional semifinal.
This lack of similar DNA not only is evident in their different styles but also in their divergent paths to the Sweet 16. As usual, the bromide that a team reflects its coach holds up.
For every underclassman passing through Carolina's "Blue Heaven" like royalty on his way to the NBA, Marquette has a well-traveled upperclassman familiar with hardscrabble prep school and junior college paths.
What may feel like a birthright to North Carolina and Roy Williams, whose previous job was at another basketball blue blood -- Kansas -- has come to Marquette and Buzz Williams via a long and winding road.
Jimmy Butler and Joseph Fulce, seniors from Texas, went to Tyler JC before arriving at Marquette. North Carolina native Darius Johnson-Odom, the junior guard who leads the team in scoring, played at Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College. Milwaukee senior Dwight Buycks attended Indian Hills (Iowa) CC.
How their roots -- and routes -- will affect Friday's game is unknowable.
"We're both in the Sweet 16 and we're both good teams," Johnson-Odom said. "You can't think about what we've been through and what they've been through as players."
Butler called junior college "another bump in the road, but it got us to the place we wanted to be. What's big on this Marquette team is we've all got different stories, but we all want to reach the same dreams. I think we can talk about JUCO days and how hard it was and how we didn't have any of the things we have now, the great facilities at Marquette. Junior college was nothing like this."
Nor was most of Buzz Williams' coaching career anything special. He was a student assistant at Navarro JC in Corsicana, Texas, and Oklahoma City University before a journey as assistant at Texas-Arlington, Texas A & M-Kingsville, Northwestern State (La.), Colorado State and Texas A & M, landing his first head-coaching job at the University of New Orleans.
There are tales of his early days living in a U-Haul, and he is belligerently loyal to those beginnings and insistent that he hasn't changed.
"Vince Gill," Williams said, citing the country singer, "says in the 'Secret to Life' song: 'It don't mean nothin' if you don't stay the same.' My title has changed, where I live has changed, but who I am has not changed . . . I think about Navarro every day."
