Willis Brown didn't always want to be a coach.
In fact, the women's basketball assistant wanted to own and manage a fitness center.
His basketball coach at Baldwin-Wallace, Steve Bankson, convinced Brown to become an assistant coach.
(Bankson) thought I'd be a pretty good coach
Brown said. He told me to look into it because the next best thing from playing is coaching.
I loved basketball, and coaching keeps you in the game.
Luckily for Ohio he took Bankson's advice.
In 13 years of coaching he has been the head coach of two programs
Lakeland Community College and Myers University in Cleveland.
The Chagrin Falls Park native created Myers' men's basketball program.
Myers - now Chancellor University - hired Brown in 2006 to take over its basketball program. The problem for Brown was that they only gave him $35
000 to start with.
The university did not have a gym
uniforms
vehicles
or even a schedule.
You had to create everything, he said. Like a piece of clay, you had to mold it into (what you wanted).
Brown bargained for everything.
He rented the local boys and girls club gym for practice and a local community college's gym for home games. The community college
where Brown was working
allowed him to use
the gym for $100 a game.
He found cheap uniforms and he was able to get a decent shoe deal for his players.
He also was able to buy 15 passenger vans.
In the 2006-2007 season
Myers went 4-21. However
