After leading Mesa High School to the Arizona Division I basketball title in 2015-16, NAU coach Shane Burcar received a congratulatory call from Sean Miller.
Only it wasn’t just the obligatory coach-to-coach, pat-on-the-back kind of call. Not only did the Arizona coach have no vested interest in recruiting Burcar’s Mesa players at the time, but also Burcar said Miller also offered an unsolicited line of communication he followed through on.
That wound up helping Burcar, after a long high school and junior college coaching career, make a move up in the sport.
“He said, ‘Hey, if you ever need to talk, give me a call,’” Burcar said. “I gave him a call and then he returned my call. Not every coach does that.
“I said, ‘How did you get to this level?’ and he gave me a lot of good input. One thing I remember him saying is, ‘Just win as many games as you can the right way and everything will take care of itself.’”
Less than five years later, Burcar is a big step closer to Miller’s level — in part because of what Miller did with his own staff.
Miller hired away then-NAU coach Jack Murphy in June 2019 to become his associate head coach, after NAU associate head coach Wes Pifer left to take over Western Oregon’s program earlier that spring.
Their departures led NAU athletic director Mike Marlow to name Burcar the Lumberjacks’ interim head coach for 2019-20, thanks in part to Murphy’s endorsement.
“We used to have NAU coaches’ clinics and Shane would always come up and he was one of the most supportive coaches of our program,” Murphy said. “And I used to go to Mesa games and practices and was always impressed with how they played.
“Mike and I had our discussions as I was mulling over Sean’s offer. Mike asked my thoughts and I was 100% in support of Shane.”
Then Burcar did pretty much what Miller told him to do.
He won. The Lumberjacks improved from 10-21 in 2018-19 to 16-14 under Burcar last season and finished above expectations in the Big Sky, in a tie for fifth place at 10-10.
Not surprisingly, after the season, Marlow removed the interim tag.
Burcar was a Division I head coach, for real.
“I had no indication but the one thing I’ll tell you about Mike is he was full disclosure the whole time,” Burcar said. “He was honest with me. He gave me great confidence and told me (to) just be yourself. He gave me great confidence throughout the season, not just the first day like a pep talk.”
The only problem was, part of the new job is having to face Miller’s team at the start of every season through 2022-23.
Last season, eventual first-rounder Zeke Nnaji plowed through the undersized NAU frontcourt for 20 points in just 21 minutes and the Wildcats handed the Lumberjacks a 91-52 loss in what was Burcar’s first game as interim head coach.
Now for his first game as permanent head coach, Burcar has to face Miller’s Wildcats again Monday, with another disadvantage.
The Lumberjacks have had just three days and zero warm-up games to prepare thanks to, you guessed it, COVID-19.
NAU was actually scheduled to open its season at McKale Center on Nov. 25, but paused basketball activities on Nov. 20. Burcar said his team had a positive test that resulted only in mild symptoms but pretty much knocked everyone else out via contact tracing since they had practiced closely together.
“We were in a staff meeting and we got the test with a positive result,” Burcar said. “Obviously, as a coach you want to figure out how to play. You want to play every night, but especially opening night. You’ve been working so long and so obviously we’re frustrated by it.
“It’s no fault of anybody. That’s just the world we’re living in with this pandemic.”
But over the 14 days of quarantining with no basketball activities, Burcar saw an upside.
He watched other games, saw how other teams were handling their protocols, and wondered maybe if the Lumberjacks will find an advantage down the road.
As Burcar knows from his own career, sometimes patience can pay off.
“Hopefully we’re free the rest of the way,” Burcar said. “I guess if we had to pick (when COVID hits), we’d want to do it at the beginning.
“Now we can hopefully just have the rest of our season.”
