Hansen: Murphy's UA lineage, energy give NAU hope

In pre-game shooting drills Wednesday at McKale Center, 10 UA student managers outfitted in off-red golf shirts retrieved errant shots for 11 Wildcat players.

I wondered: Where would they all sit during the game?

Beyond the benefits of a scholarship, what is it that draws them to a job that includes handling sweaty towels and making sure Dusan Ristic’s size 16 Nikes aren’t put in Parker Jackson-Cartwright’s locker?

And then NAU coach Jack Murphy, wearing what looked to be a $1,000 Brooks Brothers suit, took a seat on the Lumberjacks bench.

Murph is the role model for college basketball managers from Duke to Delaware State.

Seventeen years ago, when a bad back forced Murphy to abandon his goal of graduating from the Air Force Academy, a guy who knew a guy who once played for Lute Olson at Long Beach City College recommended that Olson appoint Murphy to one of the treasured manager’s jobs at Arizona.

The Wildcats, after all, were the defending national champions.

And so the son of a dice dealer from Las Vegas moved to Tucson and yada, yada, yada became the head coach at NAU.

NAU isn’t exactly the Cradle of Coaches in college basketball, but as Murphy’s mentor, long-time Arizona assistant coach Jim Rosborough said Wednesday, “if you have a chance to get a head coaching job, you take it; they are very hard to get.”

Over the last four decades, only one NAU basketball coach successfully moved from Flagstaff to a higher station in college hoops. That was Ben Howland; the former UCLA Final Four coach was a big exception. Joedy Gardner, Gene Visscher, Jay Arnote, Pat Rafferty, Harold Merritt and Mike Adras all saw their head coaching careers vanish at NAU.

Murphy is battling the odds to make a go of it at NAU and beyond, but he has superior basketball breeding to his Lumberjack predecessors.

Arizona was 106-13 with Murphy on its bench at McKale Center from 1998-2006, a period in which he went from manager to video coordinator to operations director. He was a confidant to some of the top names in UA history, especially Josh Pastner, who hired Murphy at Memphis, giving the former Las Vegas Durango High School guard — “my high school career consisted of two foul shots and a travel,” he said with a laugh — a chance to get his foot in the coaching door.

How good is 106-13 at McKale?

After Arizona beat Murphy’s Lumberjacks 92-37 on Wednesday, Sean Miller is 92-11 at McKale.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Murphy didn’t go down easily Wednesday. He stomped and shouted and did all he could with a roster populated by nine freshmen. He was so into the game that he was assessed a technical foul when it was 67-28. You have to like his spirit and energy; his school directed him to schedule road games at Arizona, Gonzaga, Washington State, Boise State, Tulsa and undefeated rising power Arkansas-Little Rock. That Tour Across America will raise about $400,000 for NAU’s athletic budget.

“We took a six-hour bus ride from Washington State to Boise last month,” he says. “And then we got back on the bus and rode six hours back to Gonzaga.”

At 36, Murphy is one of the 11 youngest head coaches in Division I basketball, but his backstory is probably No. 1.

The biggest so-called villain in modern UA basketball history is the late Jerry Tarkanian. Murphy worked for Tark in the mid-’90s. And after Olson retired, Murphy went to the NBA as an advance scout for the Denver Nuggets. It sounded like a lifetime job, but being an advance scout meant Murphy had to all but go underground.

“At one period, I took a commercial airline flight 22 consecutive days,” he said. “That’s not any way to start a family.”

So he went from the NBA to Pastner’s Memphis program and, strangely enough, walked into McKale Center in April 2009, the day Sean Miller was hired. Murphy was pushing his twins, Emma and Isabella, in a stroller. It was a show of support for his father-in-law, then-UA athletic director Jim Livengood.

Murphy had married Michelle Livengood three years earlier; he began courting her after a UCLA game at McKale Center. Typical, huh? They have since added a son, 3-year-old Dylan, to the family.

Coaching at NAU allows him not only to find his way as a head coach, but also to be husband and a dad.

“I live 2 miles from the office,” he said. “Last week, I was at a ballet recital for our twins. My kids can walk two blocks to school and I go home for lunch. In this profession, that’s a benefit most don’t have.”

Getting beat by 55 at Arizona isn’t all grief.

Two years ago, the Lumberjacks lost 77-44 at McKale. A week later, on a wintry bus ride to play Montana, Murphy heard that Arizona beat Washington State 60-25.

“I told our guys, ‘We scored 44 on Arizona; Washington State only got 25. We’re a juggernaut.’ That actually pumped us up.”

The Lumberjacks beat Montana that night, 73-65. On New Year’s Eve, Murph’s club plays Montana again.

This uphill climb won’t last forever.