Will Martin gearing up for "emotional" Kentucky homecoming with Missouri Western
The last time Will Martin opened the college basketball season at Rupp Arena, the Kentucky men’s basketball team went on to win a national championship. That was in 2012, the third-year head coach’s final season in Lexington serving as a team manager for the Wildcats at the time.
Martin started in 2009, then under coach Billy Gillispie. He was then brought back by John Calipari the following season, where he was part of three Elite Eights, two Final Fours and a national title in his final three years at UK.
Ten years after he left Lexington as a champion, Martin is set to make his return to Rupp Arena — and he’s bringing some familiar faces back with him.
Now the head coach at Missouri Western State University, he hired two former Wildcats as assistants in Jon Hood and Perry Stevenson. The former played at Kentucky from 2009-14, while the latter was in Lexington from 2006-10. All three overlapped in Calipari’s first season in 2009-10.
After several coaching stops for each at various levels of basketball, a homecoming at Rupp Arena is scheduled for Sunday evening.
“We’re super excited, but I think it’s overshadowed by just the humility and gratefulness that we have to be able to play this game,” Martin told KSR. “There are obvious storylines (with our homecoming), but if I learned anything from Coach Cal during my time (at UK), it’s all about the players.
“I’m just really stoked for our kids and the platform that this will provide them and grateful that Coach Cal and the University of Kentucky made this happen.”
So how does a game like this get put on the schedule? Obviously, it takes a bit of persistence on Missouri Western’s end, but also a willingness and desire to do right by individuals who put in a lot of work for Calipari and the program on Kentucky’s end.
Martin started making the calls when he first got hired at MWSU in 2020. And then when Hood and Stevenson were brought in the following season, it became a clear opportunity for both sides to make this matchup happen.
“I had a little bit of naivety, I think. Just have to credit that, the persistence in asking Coach Cal and the people over Kentucky,” Martin said. “I never really thought that it would actually materialize into anything. But as soon as I became the head coach, I reached out and said, ‘We’d love to play you all.’ Obviously, we just stayed at it. And Coach Cal did a phenomenal job of responding back and trying to fit something into their schedule.”
Martin credits the additions of Hood and Stevenson with being the final push the Griffons needed to bring this game to life, an obvious boost for the basketball program going into the 2022-23 season. An exhibition game in October, though, isn’t why the former Wildcats were added to the Missouri Western coaching staff. It starts with what they learned playing under a Hall of Fame coach at Kentucky.
A combined six years playing for Calipari, nine at Kentucky overall. It’s where the duo learned how to fight, compete and win at college basketball’s highest level.
Factor in Martin’s four seasons with the program as a team manager, and the MWSU head coach felt it was a certain recipe for success competing at the Division II level. Hood and Stevenson both had a passion for coaching — the former spent time as an assistant at Frederick Douglass High School in Lexington and Kentucky Wesleyan, while the latter was an assistant at Trinity High School in Louisville — so why not bring them in to establish a winning culture in Saint Joseph, Missouri?
Martin made the calls.
“Coach Cal really instilled in us taking care of the players. When I was a manager at Kentucky, that was the main focus,” Martin told KSR. “I had other jobs obviously, but I knew that Coach kept wanting me to make sure that I was taking care of the guys. When I became a head coach, that was still there deep in my subconscious. So it was an easy call. … It was a no-brainer for both, two guys that have played at a high level who know the game extremely well.
“Both of them have been tremendous, tremendous on the court and off the court. And if we’re trying to build a culture of player-first, but also having the type of success — at least at this level — that Coach Cal at Kentucky has been able to have, what better than to bring in guys who actually played for Coach Cal and played within that culture?”
There’s also an added layer of respect when it comes to adding two former scholarship players under John Calipari. It’s one thing to be around the program the way Martin was as a student of the game, but it’s another to be on the floor running the plays and executing. The Griffons now have a solid mix of both.
“It’s one thing for me when I’m getting on the guys and saying, ‘Hey, this is what it was like at Kentucky.’ They’re looking at me like, ‘Right, cool coach, but you were the towel boy. You were doing Coach Cal’s laundry,'” Martin joked. “When Coach Hood and Coach Stevenson say it, it adds a little more to it. I think it’s great for our guys and it’s a great vantage point for them to learn from.”
That’s not to discredit Martin’s coaching abilities and everything he learned working under Calipari for three years — some of the program’s most successful seasons in recent memory, specifically in 2012. His leadership and approach to the game are very similar to that of Kentucky’s head coach, down to the specific concepts and plays.
“I always say that all of us are products of the people who first invested in us, and Coach Cal invested very heavily in me and all of our managers. Just like he does his players,” Martin told KSR. “A lot of who I am as a leader, a lot of who I am as a head coach, even concepts on the floor are directly correlated to what I learned from Coach Cal.”
Even the core values are the same.
“The main thing is putting players first and being a servant leader, and Coach Cal is out there doing stuff like that,” he added. “I wish people knew on the inside just how real and authentic that is. I’ve never been around a human being that really seeks to serve at a higher level and on a deeper level than Coach Cal. He instilled that in all of us. He instilled a servant leadership attitude, to put yourself second or to put yourself last and put others first. That’s how I tried to lead with this program.
“We try to put our players first, try to teach our players to put the community first. That’s probably the greatest gift that Coach Cal gave me.”
That approach to coaching and the game as a whole allowed him to move up the coaching ladder, even through adversity. He started as a graduate assistant at Tulsa working for Danny Manning, then became a director of ops for Rex Walters at San Francisco. He got fired and moved back home to train kids for free in Nashville and serve as a volunteer assistant at his former high school.
And then an assistant coaching position opened up at Missouri Western, where he joined Sundance Wicks’ staff in Saint Joseph. When Wicks took an assistant job at Wyoming in 2020, Martin got the promotion.
“All of that is a credit to the people who’ve invested in me,” he told KSR. “It’s Coach Cal, it’s guys like Kenny Payne and Orlando Antigua, people back in Kentucky that really invested in me and gave me that confidence.”
Two years after taking the head coaching job, Martin’s return to Lexington is here, an emotional moment for the former manager. Over a decade ago, he was on his hands and knees wiping up sweat at the Joe Craft Center fighting to help the Kentucky basketball program however he could.
Now, he’s sitting on the other bench, set to coach against Calipari under the bright lights at Rupp Arena.
“It’s gonna be emotional for me. I mean, if you think about it, I wiped up sweat there for four years,” Martin told KSR. “When you do that, you never imagine yourself actually getting to coach there. I know I overuse the word humility, but that’s the emotion that I feel and it’s going to be amplified when I’m there.
“Just to be able to see my guys play in Rupp Arena in front of the fanbase at Kentucky, to be able to experience that, I think that’s what’s gonna make me the most emotional, for our players.”
The learning opportunity is massive for the Griffons, playing against a team loaded with NBA talent in college basketball’s most historic venue, a nationally televised matchup. Tuning out the outside noise is one of Martin’s main challenges to his team during the season, certainly a tough ask taking on a preseason top-five program to open the exhibition slate.
For that reason, he hopes Big Blue Nation gives his players hell.
“Well, our whole mission is to kind of block out distractions, so that’s what’s gonna be great — there’s no bigger distraction than going into Rupp Arena,” Martin said. “There are going to be lights that these guys have never played under, there are going to be media outlets that they’ve never experienced. These fans, I hope BBN heckles them while they’re on the floor so that we get that experience. Hopefully they’re okay to me, Jon and Perry [laughs].”
It’s an opportunity Martin will cherish from start to finish, but it’s also one he hopes Kentucky can benefit from. This is a chance for the Wildcats to knock off the rust and prepare for the regular season, with title hopes and expectations at an all-time high.
The Griffons won’t be able to keep up from a personnel standpoint, clearly, but there’s no reason they can’t fight and play hard.
“I hope that they see a team that’s resilient,” he told KSR. “And I hope that people see a team that responds well to adversity — obviously, we’re going to be outmatched in that game. I hope that people will say that we’re still looking to get to reads, we’re connected, we’re playing together and we’re a team that respects the game. Those things are the most important to me.
“When we walk out of that gym, I hope that, yeah, 20,000 people will forget about Missouri Western, but I hope for at least 30 minutes or 45 minutes of their night when they’re driving home they’re like, ‘That team is connected, they love each other and they play hard.”
Just as he did over a decade ago, he wants to help his beloved Wildcats however he can — even on the opposing bench.
“I’m excited for our guys and I hope that we can make it worth Kentucky’s while,” Martin said. “I hope that both teams walk away from that game from their own vantage point saying, ‘Look, we got better because of this game.'”
Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m. ET at Rupp Arena.
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