Good morning!
When Frank Martin was an assistant coach under Ron Everhart at Northeastern, he asked the financial aid officer for a date. Anya Forrest hailed from Brooklyn and had been a track star at UMass. She told Martin she wasn’t interested. He asked her again, and she refused again.
After the seventh try he told her the coaching staff wanted to treat her to dinner. When she arrived, Frank Martin was the only person waiting for her.
“I had to trick her,” he told Columbia Metropolitan Magazine in 2013. “The next day I sent her a dozen Nicole roses that are different than normal roses because they bloom bigger.”
They were married in 2006 and today have three children.
The 56-year-old Martin was introduced to the fans and media on Tuesday at the John Francis Kennedy Champions Center. The event was emceed by Director of Broadcasting Jay Burnham, who handed it over to Ryan Bamford, who prattled on for 12 minutes saying things like, “We’ve created a dynamic with this hire to realize excellence.”
It was the talk he expected to make five years ago before Pat Kelsey hightailed it back south. Hoops fans know Martin’s bonafides – he was a Big 12 coach of the year at Kansas State and took South Carolina to the Final Four. He will coach his 500th career game next season and quite likely will notch his 300th career win.
Martin’s remarks drew applause from a fan base that’s long needed something to cheer about. A lot of it was coach speak— wanting five star players who are 10-star human beings and so forth.
He gave a valiant effort at pronouncing Kumble Subbaswamy’s name and will need a GPS considering his “east to Boston and west to Springfield” battle cry, but all things considered he projected a can-do attitude.
Francisco Jose Martin was born in Miami to Cuban refugees who fled the Castro regime. His father left when he was still a youngster, but the household remained a tight knit unit composed of his mother, grandmother, aunt and uncle.
He worked at Dairy Queen in Little Havana, in pool halls and was a bouncer at Stefano’s when he was 26 and studying at FIU. According to thepostgame.com, he ditched the nightclub scene and got into coaching schoolboy basketball after a serious run-in with some people he’d kicked out of the bar. Shots were fired.
His Wikipedia bio shows he coached high school hoops in Miami from 1985 to 2000 when he landed the Northeastern job. He left for Cincinnati in 2004 and became close friends with coach Bob Huggins, and two years later he went to Kansas State and was promoted to head coach in 2007.
When he was rolling up the wins in Manhattan, Sam Amick of the New York Times called him “a burly man with an unmistakable stare… An oft-cited comparison to Bobby Knight does not do him justice.”
A frequent guest on the Jim Rome Show, Martin said, “When my team doesn’t fight, it hurts my feelings.”
After finishing 22-11 and losing in the second round of the NCAAs to Syracuse in 2012, Martin left for South Carolina. The media speculated he’d had a falling out with athletic director John Currie.
In the midst of his second losing season, in 2014 he was suspended for one game by South Carolina AD Ray Tanner for “inappropriate verbal communication as it relates to the well being of our student athletes.”
“My greatest asset is my passion, and that passion also gets me in trouble,” Martin told ABC News.
The next six years his teams were 119-81, and during the 2017 NCAA tourney they upset Duke to get to the Final Four.
Trailing by 14 points midway through the second half the Gamecocks rallied for a 67-65 lead before Zach Collins’ three-pointer put Gonzaga ahead to stay in front of 77,612 fans at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz.
Caroline Dailey was a member of the Gamecocks’ tennis team the year they reached the Final Four. “The people I knew on the team said he was a really tough coach and not all that likable, but that he was good,” she texted.
For all his accomplishments, Martin’s teams have finished in the Top 25 only twice according to sports-reference.com, both times at K-State, and their run to the Final Four was their only NCAA appearance in 10 seasons.
The SEC is tough, but so is the A-10. Getting past perennial contenders Dayton, Davidson, VCU and St. Bonaventure will be a challenge.
The Gamecocks were 18-13 this season and 9-9 in the SEC, but were blown out by Miss. State, 73-51, in the opening round of the SEC tournament. Four days later Martin was fired. “Our expectation is to compete for the SEC and national championship,” said Tanner.
It was the nadir of what had been two brutal years. The team was ravaged by COVID in 2020-21 and finished 4-12 in the SEC and 6-15 overall. Martin tested positive twice and told the media the disease had caused him to suffer arthritis and alopecia (hair loss).
“Every decision I made was wrong. My team just lost its will to fight,” he told Jim Rome.
Martin told a Columbia radio station he held no grudges. “I had a great time and I don’t have a sour bone in my body. You’re only sour if you’re mistreated. Nobody mistreated me.”
“If anyone’s listening,” he added, “and they know somebody looking for a ball coach, I’m all in.”
Ryan Bamford must’ve been tuned in, because UMass basketball is back in business.
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During the presser Bamford singled out John Kennedy for his contributions to UMass basketball.
Kennedy was born and raised in South Hadley, graduated from Lowell Tech with as BA in math in 1970, and from UMass-Amherst in 1974 with a master’s degree in accounting.
He co-founded Nova Ventures and Nova Analytics of Wakefield and subsequently sold his stakes in 2007 and 2009. He’s retired and lives in Naples, Florida.
The College of Science is named for him at UMass-Lowell, and the Champions Center is named for him at UMass-Amherst.
“I believe I would never have done what I have done without my education,” Kennedy explained in an email.
Asked if he helped underwrite Martin’s five year, $8.25 million contract he wrote, “Hiring Coach Martin is the excellent work of Ryan Bamford and Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy and my contribution is limited to encouraging them to hire the best coach.”
We’ll take that as a no.
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SQUIBBERS: Hockey attendance at the DCU Center in Worcester plunged from 6,002 on Friday to 2,848 on Sunday after UMass was eliminated. … Peter King to Dan Patrick regarding the new NFL overtime rule: “Most coaches who win the toss are going to defer so they’ll know what they’ll have to do. It’s gonna create strategy that currently doesn’t exist. … Memo to Coach Martin: Stop saying “We’re going back to hanging banners at the University of Massachusetts.” That was Matt McCall’s pitch and it didn’t work so well. … Saint Peter’s was a 17.5-point underdog to beat Kentucky and was 100/1 to make it past the second round, but UNC favored by only 10 points was the bet of the day. The Tar Heels won, 69-49. … Keith Hernandez to Richard Neer on the DH in the NL: “I’m going to miss pitchers hitting. All this talk they might get hurt, well I’m sorry that’s the nature of the beast.” … Rest in Peace Coach Al Warywoski, we never crossed paths but I sense we were kindred spirits. … The MLB season starts next week, but the grand old game won’t be like it was until next year when they ban the shift. … There was a time when a World Series prediction meant picking one of two teams, the AL or NL pennant winner. Now it’s one of 12. Let’s cut to the chase and say the Mets over the Jays in seven. You heard it here first. … PFT’s Mike Florio speculating why the Buccaneers changed partners: “We got Tom Brady and Byron Leftwich bustin’ their a**** every week to put a game plan together, and [Bruce] Arians shows up and wants to change this and change that. Brady’s got no problem with a coach that’s plugged in all the time like Bill Belichick was but Arians driving around his golf cart all day.”
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached at chipjet715@icloud.com