Martin, Hamilton bring defensive minds to tonight's NCAA Tournament matchup

Missouri head coach Cuonzo Martin smiles as he watches his team play during the first half of a game against Texas A&M on Feb. 13 at Mizzou Arena.
Missouri head coach Cuonzo Martin smiles as he watches his team play during the first half of a game against Texas A&M on Feb. 13 at Mizzou Arena.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - By the time Missouri's Cuonzo Martin started coaching as an assistant at Purdue in 2000, Leonard Hamilton had been in the game as a coach for nearly 30 years.

Hamilton, Florida State's head coach, began as an assistant coach at Austin Peay in 1971, and then to Kentucky from 1974-86, when he became the head coach at Oklahoma State. Hamilton stayed in Stillwater for four seasons, took the head job at Miami for a decade, and was the head coach of the NBA's Washington Wizards for a year, 2000-01. He took over for the Seminoles in 2002 and has been there ever since.

Martin and Hamilton crossed paths for the first time when Martin started coaching, and the Tigers' first-year head coach developed a good relationship with a man who will stand on the other sideline of today's first-round game of the NCAA Tournament and coach against him. The eighth-seeded Tigers (20-12) and ninth-seeded Seminoles (20-11) tip at about 8:50 on TBS.

"Any time a guy of that caliber reaches out, I feel honored that he would even reach out and want to talk to me because I admire and respect what he's done, and what he's done in his coaching career," Hamilton said Thursday. "If I can be of any assistance to a guy like him, and he and I developed a pretty good relationship.

"There have been times I've gotten phone calls early in the morning, late at night and we've had to have what we call the brother-in-law conversations, what we call graveyard conversations that we talk about it and leave it there."

Their mutual respect began on the defensive side of the ball. Martin came up under Gene Keady, a well-known defensive coach, and has always built his teams up from the defensive side first. Hamilton cut his teeth on defensive coaching, too, and he welcomed the conversations with Martin that kick-started their relationship.

As college coaches, they are also responsible for the development of young men in their programs, something Martin said the two talk about more than the game itself. That mentorship, if you will, has helped Martin help younger coaches himself, completing the cycle. Hamilton also helped Martin find the identity of his teams on and off the court.

"He just said, 'You always want to have your own style, whatever that is,'" Martin said. "He said, 'Don't let it be a struggle to do what you want to do as a basketball coach. If it doesn't work, then it was what you wanted to do as a coach.'

"And that was a hard thing for me for years, to understand that, because you have a blueprint in your mind. You think this is what it's supposed to be. If you want to tweak something, make a change, should I do this, will it work. Just being confident in doing what you do. This is my 10th year as a head coach, just even that conversation years ago, some things I've changed this year and it helped me become a better coach."

Martin took his first head coaching position at Missouri State in 2009, which means he's had a decade of trial and error to go along with his success. In seven of those seasons, he won at least 20 games and at least 10 conference games. Some of that is Martin's own ability, some of that is the talent on his rosters, but some of it is also knowing what not to do.

That's where Hamilton sees his influence the most.

"That's the nature of any business," he said. "I think that sometimes, it's good to have somebody who, like myself, who has made a lot of mistakes. You know, I've learned not because I've been smarter than anyone else, but because I've made enough mistakes, and sometimes mistakes will teach you how not to make the same mistake again. Sometimes I'm just available so he won't bump his head against the wall like bumps I had. I keep from bumping his head as much as I can."

Today, though, it's all about winning.