Gregg Marshall
Wichita State head coach Gregg Marshall speaks during a news conference for an NCAA college basketball tournament third round game, Saturday, March 21, 2015, in Omaha, Neb.
(Charlie Neibergall/AP)
This is nothing new for Gregg Marshall.
The reported target of Alabama's basketball coaching search has topped wish lists around the country for several years now. And yet he's made just one jump in his 17-year head coaching career.
On ESPN's Mike and Mike radio show, Marshall on Wednesday estimated he had job offers seven of the nine years he was at Winthrop. He only left when Wichita State called in 2007. Since then he's built one of the strongest programs in the nation, making the 2013 Final Four and navigating the 2013-14 regular season unbeaten.
Heavyweights have pursued his services, but nobody's been able to lure him away from Wichita just yet.
"I'm not just a guy that's always looking to bounce," he said on Mike and Mike. My agent, my attorney said 'You're just not a jumper.' We like to go and get our program and culture established and get the right type of people to be coached and enjoy our daily existence. Enjoy going to the gym. Enjoy going to film study. Enjoy going to the office. Enjoy getting on a plane and a bus with these guys and that's what we do.
"So it would be hard to walk away from happy, but that doesn't mean you don't ever move."
A day earlier, Marshall appeared on Jim Rome's national radio show. He said Tuesday he'd listen to Alabama once the season ended, but it would take a "crazy offer" for him to leave Wichita State.
Marshall said he's tried to model his programs after Gonzaga, a school outside of the football power conferences who've won consistently. Leaving Winthrop, he found a school with a higher profile, but outside of the Power 5 leagues.
"After nine years, we finally find the right situation and we think we found the right situation at Wichita State and this could be a destination job with what we're doing and what the administration is doing and the way they support us and our crowds and all of that," Marshall said. "So I don't worry about it. It's always a family decision for me."
Marshall's son Kellen is a senior in high school and daughter Maggie is in the ninth grade.
"They get a say and my wife gets a say," Marshall said. "She probably get the biggest say and we coach our team. We never discuss it. We never talk about it. It's Wichita State. Just like our players, what is our next challenge? Right now our next challenge is Notre Dame. And then once we put the balls up this year, it will be getting these guys through the next semester and getting some good recruits in here ..."
And they had to cut Marshall off because the show was ending. As is everything in this saga, that thought is to be continued.