July 21, 2009

Steve Megargee
Rivals.com College Basketball Staff Writer

VCU officials knew Jeff Capel was a hot commodity who eventually would be pursued by major-college programs across the country, so they decided to put together a forum that would allow the nation's elite assistants to get together with administrators from various mid-major programs.

The Villa 7 Consortium did indeed help VCU find its next coach ? and the one after that. And it also has helped dozens of other schools in their coaching searches.

The event started in 2005 and got its name because the first session was held in Las Vegas at The Mirage's Villa No. 7.

VCU runs the Villa 7 Consortium with assistance from Nike under the umbrella of the school's Center for Sports Leadership. The latest session takes place today, when close to 50 hand-picked assistants from across the nation gather in Vegas. Recent history suggests several of those guys will be head coaches this time next year.

"We saw it as something that would fill a niche for us and others like us," VCU associate athletic director Mike Ellis said, "but it's really grown to be something of a staple on the coaches' calendar in the summer."

That the consortium continues to attract the nation's best assistants should come as no surprise. Since VCU launched this forum in '05 ? Nike came aboard the following year ? 38 Villa 7 alumni have landed head-coaching jobs. Those coaches call it an ideal networking opportunity that helped prepare them for the challenges they faced in their first seasons on the job.

"It's a unique situation in that it's probably the first of its kind," Drake coach Mark Phelps said. "There are countless ways it was helpful to me."

The consortium typically is a two-day, invitation-only event that takes place at Nike's headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. This year, Villa 7 organizers chose not to hold an event on the Nike campus because the economic downturn would have prevented many invited assistants from making the trip. VCU and Nike officials instead are holding an abbreviated version of the session in Las Vegas.

"For the most part, everyone in the room is going to be a future head coach," said Eric Lautenbach, the director of college basketball sports marketing for Nike.

Villa 7's track record indicates Lautenbach's projection isn't far off the mark. Villa 7 alumni in the most recent NCAA tournament included Binghamton's Kevin Broadus, VCU's Anthony Grant (now at Alabama), Western Kentucky's Ken McDonald and Marquette's Buzz Williams.

Nine coaches who received their first head-coaching jobs this offseason ? High Point's Scott Cherry, Tennessee State's John Cooper, Seattle's Cameron Dollar, Holy Cross' Sean Kearney, Xavier's Chris Mack, Elon's Matt Matheny, Memphis' Josh Pastner, VCU's Shaka Smart and Georgia Southern's Charlton Young ? are former Villa 7 participants.

The forum has worked so well that a women's version was added two years ago and has produced 13 head coaches. Last year, VCU and Nike also held a Villa 6 Consortium, a one-day event in Las Vegas that didn't require an invitation and was aimed at younger assistants just beginning their careers.

Villa 7 isn't the only event that brings together coaches and administrators from across the country. They typically all get together for Final Four weekend, which coincides with the National Association of Basketball Coaches convention.

"Villa 7 isn't necessarily technical," Williams said. "It's more about the business, how to progress in the business and ways to develop relationships. At the end of the day, those things are sometimes more important than any Xs and Os."

The consortium works as a gathering place that allows promising assistants to introduce themselves to athletic directors across the nation and participate in mock interview sessions. The event also includes panel discussions in which assistants learn how to prepare for the obstacles they might face after they get hired as head coaches.

In short, the process allows the nation's most promising assistants to introduce themselves to potential employers and it helps school officials to get an early look at the candidates they might end up considering for their next coaching search.

"When you go through the coach selection process, you're rushed," Ellis said. "You're trying to create a relationship in a week and make a hire. Putting these two entities together would necessitate some relationship-building so when the time came to make a hire, some of that process was already done. You already would have started down that relationship path, and you'd know more about your candidates. You could already eliminate some people you might have possibly investigated because you'd know something about them you wouldn't have known otherwise."

The benefits of this program to athletic directors were evident at the first event, when VCU held a two-hour networking session for assistant coaches and athletic directors. Some of the participants acted at ease in this setting; others revealed they perhaps weren't quite ready for the social demands that come with a head-coaching position.

"It was almost like a social test-tube experiment," Ellis said. "It really was. We didn't tell folks what to wear. There was no real structure. Some guys didn't handle the networking part very well. Some folks sat on a sofa. Some folks took advantage and dressed the part. Some didn't.

"It was a social experiment, and it was very interesting to watch it happen."

Soon enough, the coaches also began reaping the benefits of this program. By the time they leave the seminar, participants typically are a step ahead of their peers once they get ready to take a spin on the coaching carousel.

For example, Broadus said those mock interview sessions helped prepare him for the real thing.

"It put me at ease to sit in front of an [athletic director]," said Broadus, a former Georgetown assistant. "Normally when you go in, you're all nervous and don't know what to expect. When you go out in front of Villa 7 and get to meet some athletic directors, you realize they're people, just like you. They're looking at you to run a program instead of looking at you as somebody to interview."

The lessons learned at Villa 7 continue paying off even after a coach gets hired. Toledo's Gene Cross said the advice he received at Villa 7 and at a Black Coaches and Administrators meetings made his first year on the job much easier.

Cross remembered how Georgetown coach John Thompson III and former Virginia coach Dave Leitao talked about how a newly hired coach should allow his voice mailbox to fill up instead of answering every call immediately. Cross followed that advice, and it allowed him to avoid getting distracted by every congratulatory phone call after Toledo hired him as coach.

Cross, a former Notre Dame assistant, also recalled how Grant stressed that a head-coaching prospect also should put together a list of his potential assistants long before he ever gets hired. Following that advice helped Cross when he put together his staff at Toledo.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of Villa 7 isn't necessarily taught in any of the brainstorming sessions or panel discussions. The simple honor of receiving an invitation to such an exclusive event gives a promising assistant the realization that his dream has moved closer to reality.

"It gave you a sense of confidence that someone thought of you as a rising star or a potential candidate to be a head coach," Cross said. "When somebody has the confidence in you to pull you aside and say, 'We want to share information with you and make you a part of the process,' it gives you a boost, even from a psychological standpoint."

Officials from Nike and VCU consult with head coaches across the country to identify the nation's next wave of potential head coaches. Lautenbach admits he often starts out by looking at coaches from Nike-sponsored schools.

"It's a natural thing to begin there because we see those guys in action behind the scenes, at a practice and in the locker room, so we see their potential," Lautenbach said. "It's the familiarity. It's the relationships. While we cater to the Nike guys, it's not exclusive to the Nike guys."

Cross and Kearney were assistants at Notre Dame ? an adidas-sponsored school ? when they were invited to Villa 7. Phelps was working at a Nike school (Arizona State) when he attended Villa 7, but he was hired by an adidas program (Drake). One of the participants in this week's event is Tennessee assistant Steve Forbes, whose team wears adidas.

Offering special consideration to Nike schools also doesn't significantly narrow the field; Nike has some kind of partnership with more than 200 Division I programs, including about 75 percent of the schools from the nation's six major conferences.

"That never really was an issue," Ellis said, in regard to worries about Nike's involvement causing a conflict of interest. "They're beyond that. They want to help and give back. This is one way they can do that. If you look at our list, there are guys from schools who wear every shoe out there. It's primarily a Nike list, but Nike has close to 80 percent of the college teams anyway.

"If guys look around in the room and they see guys that don't belong, the whole idea or concept of the event doesn't work. It works because guys look around the room and know they're in there with all the best guys."

Ellis' school offers an ideal example of Villa 7's benefits. When Oklahoma hired Capel away from VCU in 2006, VCU replaced him with Anthony Grant, a Florida assistant who had participated in Villa 7. Grant led VCU to two NCAA tournament berths in three years. When Grant parlayed that success into a move to Alabama, VCU again reached out to a Villa 7 alum from Billy Donovan's staff by hiring Shaka Smart.

"We always try to find the best coach for us," Ellis said. "It just so happened that the last two times, it's happened to be someone from Villa 7. The Villa 7 model works for us."

Plenty of schools across the country are discovering the same thing.

Steve Megargee is a national writer for Rivals.com. He can be reached at smegargee@rivals.com.