Creighton kept winning, which was good news for Alan Huss, then an assistant on coach Greg McDermott’s staff. The Blue Jays advanced to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament, then topped Princeton to move one game away from the Final Four.
While the Final Four was a goal for any college basketball coach, coming so close also threw a wrench into things for Huss — and High Point University.
The school was looking for a new coach. They reached out to Huss just before the start of postseason play, and the flirtation had led to interviews. By the time Creighton left for Louisville to play in the Sweet 16, High Point was pretty sure it had its man, and Huss was pretty sure he wanted the job.
Except he hadn’t ever been to the campus.
He could wait until Creighton’s run was finished before making the trip and his final decision, but that might cost him valuable time and leave the players he would be inheriting dangling, with the transfer portal open and inviting them to test the waters.
“Luckily for me, I’d heard of Dr. (Nido) Qubein (High Point’s president) and the success being had at High Point, both athletically and in the academic world,” Huss said. “I knew the campus was one of the nicer campuses in the country. I had the opportunity to meet with the administration and knew we were aligned in our visions. In today’s world, playing deeply into the tournament, you kind of have to make a leap of faith.”
So Huss took the job, sight unseen.
“Rather than worry about all the other things that didn’t matter, I knew the important things were all in place,” he said. “It was an easy decision, just different — when you’ve got two teenage daughters and a wife to deal with, going to a place they’ve never seen.”
Huss was at least somewhat familiar with the area from his 10 years as a college assistant. Creighton played in Charlotte in the 2018 NCAA Tournament, and Huss had been to the state several times on recruiting trips.
“When I was an assistant at New Mexico, we signed Jalen Harris from Wilson,” Huss said. “So I’d been down to recruit Jalen many years ago. We had two players from North Carolina at Creighton — Ty-Shon Alexander and Davion Mintz — but I didn’t recruit them. I was familiar with North Carolina. I’d been down here to different schools to recruit guys, but I never spent any real amount of time down here. There was always somebody else on the staff that had relationships down here.”
It’s safe to say that the leap of faith has had a soft landing so far. High Point is off to a 14-4 start in Huss’ first year as a head coach. The Panthers’ next win will be the most they’ve had in a season since 2018. They’ve also jumped out to a 3-0 record in the Big South, their best start to conference play since 2015.
Two weeks ago, Huss was recognized by the Joe B. Hall Award — the trophy given to the country’s best first-year coach. Huss was named the award’s midseason honoree, making him the front-runner to take home the hardware at season’s end.
“You prefer to have success,” Huss said. “And with success comes awards. If you’re ranking in order of importance, I don’t know that a midseason award would be near or at the top of the list. I think it’s a credit to our guys’ buy-in to what we’re trying to accomplish. It’s a credit to their ability to learn a lot of news — new roles, new responsibilities, new system. Even the three returning players are learning everything new. So credit to everyone for coming together. We’re still very much a work in progress, but it shows we’re heading in the right direction.”
The success is even more impressive given the start to his tenure at High Point. Creighton’s tournament run cost him valuable time in assembling his roster.
“We played in the Elite Eight, within a basket of the Final Four, and I didn’t know I was getting the job until the night before the Sweet 16 game,” he said. “So I didn’t have a lot of time to get my ducks in a row, whether that be staffing or players or whatever the case may be. And in the world of portaling in the spring, we lost some of our best players. One guy (Zack Austin) is starting at Pitt now. There’s a guy (Jaden House) starting at Rhode Island. One (Bryant Randleman) has started at James Madison, amongst others. We weren’t really exactly sure what to expect. We just went to work to try to put the most competitive team out there that we could.”
He brought in 11 newcomers, and Huss clearly has an eye for talent. High Point’s top two scorers, Duke Miles and Kimani Hamilton, transferred from Troy and Mississippi State, respectively. Their third-leading scorer, Kezza Giffa, came from junior college, and Trae Benham, another double-figure scorer, transferred from Lipscomb.
Freshman 7-footer Juslin Bodo Bodo has been one of the biggest surprises in the class of 2023, coming from seemingly nowhere to win the Big South freshman of the week award five times already this season.
“He’s had to learn on the fly,” Huss said of Bodo. “He played less than seven minutes a game last year on his high school team and even less than that the year before. Really, he played on the second team, like their version of JV, as a junior. Then played seven minutes a game on the top team — albeit a very good high school team — as a senior. He didn’t play much, just doesn’t have a ton of experience.”
Huss assembled a staff and a roster, but the surprises weren’t quite over yet.
“Once everything was in place, we lost two of our better guys,” he said. “One to an extra year of eligibility waiver that was declined and the other (transfer Liam McChesney) to an illness. He’s out for the year. So, we had to kind of reinvent ourselves again in September and October.
“It’s a credit to our staff and players for accepting the new and buying in. They’ve done a pretty nice job on the fly of learning new responsibilities. But you can definitely see at times that we’re not finished product on either side of the basketball.”
From a chaotic beginning, Huss has managed to put together a contender at High Point.
It turns out, the school has a pretty nice campus, too, once you get to see it in person.
