Mark Wiedmer
The words jumped from the transcript of South Carolina basketball coach Frank Martin's news conference following his team's Sunday night victory over Duke in the second round of the NCAA tournament's East Regional.
Asked about what happened outside the Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, S.C., prior to that 88-81 victory - a small group of protesters displayed a Confederate flag in the same state where that flag formerly being flown at the capitol led the NCAA to keep its championships from being played in South Carolina for more than a decade - Martin said the following:
"It's unfortunate, but it's America. People have freedoms to do whatever they want to do with themselves and their property."
He then added: "There's things out there that I don't like. But I can't force people to do what I want them to do. All I know is this unbelievable university and state has taken in a son of Cuban immigrants that's married to a Jamaican woman, has mixed kids, and they've treated me like I'm one of their own from day one."
Not exactly the words you might have expected to roll off the tongue of the seemingly rough, tough Martin, are they?
For if your only reference point for the Gamecocks coach heading into tonight's Sweet 16 game against Baylor is that of the drill sergeant persona he projects during games, it would be easy to mistake him for a more ornery version of former Indiana coach Robert Montgomery Knight, were such a thing possible.
There's the glare/stare that would have made the late Tennessee Lady Vols coaching legend Pat Summitt's angriest face look as sweet as Little Debbie. There's the hulking body of a linebacker, which always looks ready to launch, not unlike the bouncer Martin was in Miami while trying to make ends meet during his student years at Florida International University. There are the occasional short, curt answers, which make "See Jane Run" book passages sound like compound sentences.
And all of that is certainly a portion of the 51-year-old Martin's personality. Just ask his first coaching mentor, Shakey Rodriguez, the legendary former Miami Senior High School coach who coached Martin and then asked him to work with the JV team after he went off to FIU.
According to Rodriguez, now the coach at Mater Academy, Martin already was so passionate that on more than one occasion Rodriguez and future Alabama coach Anthony Grant - then a Miami Senior assistant - would hide in the locker-room shower during halftime of JV games just to hear Martin's fiery speeches.
"Just how intense he was," Rodriguez said. "But no matter what he said, we all knew that we'd see a different, better team in the second half."
His playing career at Miami Senior was a different story.
"I wouldn't say he was much of a player," Grant told the Charleston (S.C) Post and Courier in 2012.
Recalled Rodriguez: "I had my players come in at 5:30 every morning to run stairs and stuff. One day this heavyset kid walks in wearing regular clothes and street shoes and tells me he wants to do anything he can to be part of our organization. Let's just say he didn't exactly exude athleticism.
"I told him, 'I don't like fat people.' He wasn't really fat, but he was one of the heavier kids out there. So he takes off running in street shoes and pants. Frank always did whatever it took to be successful."
After Rodriguez left Miami Senior to coach Florida International, Martin became the head coach. He guided the school to two state titles. But the kind of success that eventually would lead to him to sign a six-year South Carolina contract valued at $2 million-plus annually would take awhile. He made so little money in his first college job at Northeastern that he had to live 50 miles from Boston in Providence, R.I., because he couldn't afford the rent in Boston. Even then, his mom had to send him money.
And because he didn't own a car he had to - according to the Post-Courier article - take a 5 a.m. bus, then a commuter rail, then a subway to get to work and home each day. Because the train didn't run late, Martin had to sleep in his Northeastern office after night games.
Yet a longtime friendship with current West Virginia coach Bob Huggins provided Martin his big break. He worked with Huggy Bear at Cincinnati and Kansas State, getting the K-State job when Huggins went home to WVU, his alma mater.
The result was five straight 20-win seasons and a spot in the 2010 Elite Eight. Two years later, Martin was lured to South Carolina because, in his words to ESPN early Monday morning, "I just believed in the people that hired me."
(Side note: Whether it's the whole story, Martin's deteriorating relationship with John Currie, then the K-State athletic director and now the Tennessee AD, was a major reason he left the Wildcats for the Gamecocks.)
Anyway, five seasons after he was hired at South Carolina, he has the Gamecocks in their first Sweet 16 in more than 40 years.
Said University of Tennessee at Chattanooga coach Matt McCall on Wednesday: "Frank's one of the most loyal people in our business. He's always going to take care of his former players. But beyond that, he's just a great guy. When I was an assistant at Florida, Billy (Donovan) and I were at a coaching clinic where Frank spoke. Afterward, he was headed out to a high school clinic in Kansas. When I asked him why he spoke at so many clinics, he said, 'I remember when I was a high school coach, trying to get better. I'll never turn down an invitation to speak.'"
Rodriguez went further: "No one in the college game is better at developing the total person than Frank Martin."
As the Duke Blue Devils can attest this week, he's certainly become pretty good at developing basketball players.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com