Florida Atlantics unusual coaching staff shows how Owls dare to be different -

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HOUSTON — As the nets were coming down at Madison Square Garden, and Florida Atlantic, a school representing both a state and an ocean and all the little guys in between, was processing the reality of a first Final Four in the school’s young history, the faces on the court told the story.

There was Sean Alarcon, a 36-year-old graduate assistant. “Probably the oldest in Division I,” he says.

There was Drew Williamson, a 38-year-old assistant coach who was contemplating leaving the business not too long ago, watching the festivities, “thinking to myself, man, I was a Division II assistant coach three years ago with no clue of what was next.”

And in the middle, atop the ladder, Dusty May, a coach willing to make hires from the fringes. The type of hires that don’t make sense on paper. The hires that might make other coaches in the business scratch their heads. Those are the coaches scouring Houston this week looking for better jobs and bigger opportunities in the coaching meat market that occurs every Final Four weekend.

In making his hires while building the program at FAU over the last five years, May didn’t necessarily care about what the résumés looked like. He learned early on that college basketball is often a place of recyclable goods. He wanted to be different.

“Even in our league,” May said Thursday, having led FAU to the 2023 Conference USA title on the way to this improbable Final Four, “(coaches) kind of steal each other’s stuff, and we all end up running the same out-of-bounds plays.”

As a result, “we’re all kind of in our own bubbles. So I was like, you know what, I’m gonna get outside of my comfort zone, my circle. I want some different ideas, some different thoughts, different everything.”

Everyone from fans to media to coaches have spent the last week trying to figure out what’s in Florida Atlantic’s secret sauce. There’s no one answer, but this is undoubtedly part of it — a willingness to be nonidentical. For a program that existed in a hamster wheel of big-name busts for most of this century — Matt Doherty, Rex Walters, Mike Jarvis, Michael Curry — the Owls hit a home run with their 2018 hiring of May, a former career assistant who climbed from Eastern Michigan to Murray State to UAB to Louisiana Tech to Florida. He, in turn, is creating coaching opportunities for the unexpected.

Alarcon, a Boca Rotan native and former FAU player, was tired of his corporate job. He was president of Emergent DME, a medical equipment supplier, and wanted out of the corporate world. He was always drawn to the idea of coaching and danced around it, spending a year coaching high school basketball and another year at Lynn University, a Division II school less than two miles away from Florida Atlantic.

Last spring, Alarcon had an offer to buy his company. He saw it as a parachute. He sold Emergent DME “for a good amount,” took the summer off and reached out to May. Alarcon, who played two seasons at FAU under Walters and still looks the part, knew May from playing in some pickup basketball games. The two connected when Alarcon asked a mutual friend to present May with the idea of him working as part of the staff. May called Alarcon 30 minutes later.

They met for lunch. May invited Alarcon to a practice. Alarcon wanted in.

“He wanted to be a part of it,” May said. “He wanted to help our guys. He had been successful in the business world, loved the game, and asked, how can I contribute?”

May told him, unfortunately, there was nothing he could do on the court as a volunteer. NCAA rules say as much. The only way to truly be a part of the program was as an unpaid graduate assistant. Most of the time this is where the conversation might end. Instead, a week later, Alarcon reached back out. He’d been admitted to graduate school, enrolling in an online MBA program for operations management.

Alarcon doesn’t have an office. A table in the middle of the basketball offices serves as his makeshift desk. He’s just your typical graduate assistant, keeping stats during games, chopping up film and also serving as a member of the scout team in practice. That’s fine with him. He says he doesn’t like desks anyway. He’s living his dream.

Taking it all in 🏟 pic.twitter.com/LQUwest9Ex

— FAU Men’s Basketball – Final Four Bound (@FAUMBB) March 30, 2023

Back in reality, Alarcon has a wife and three children at home — all under 5. He does his schoolwork at night after putting the kids to bed. He’ll eventually have a postgrad degree that he didn’t know he needed.

Now he’s hoping to work his way up the coaching ladder.

“This is what I want to do,” Alarcon said. “I want to be in coaching. This is what I’ve always been passionate about. Even as a player, I was like, I want to coach. And that’s what I’m working towards now. I’m happy. My wife’s happy for me. Family is happy. And this is where I’m happiest.”

So, too, is Williamson.

The former Old Dominion guard had plenty of time to think about the potential end of his coaching career. It was October 2020 when he learned his team at Virginia State would not be playing the 2020-21 season. COVID-19 proved too burdensome, and the school’s athletic department opted out of playing. The move wiped out a promising year as Virginia State was bringing in five D1 transfers.

Williamson was entering his eighth season as an assistant at the D2 school, what might as well be a lifetime in the coaching world. He’d always thought that “eventually something was gonna hit” and he’d climb. Some D1 programs reached out over the years, but never the right opportunity. So he stayed put and time passed by. Now, with his season canceled, college basketball was about to keep moving forward while he stayed still.

“It was scary,” Williamson says. “I had to actually start looking at some different avenues. Maybe I have to do something different. I’m sitting there with a wife and two kids. Like, I can’t just sit out a year. So it was, all right, do I really want to coach? Or do I want to try to do something else?”

He considered going into sales. He considered working in basketball skill development.

But Lauren, Drew’s wife, encouraged him to keep pursuing basketball. So Williamson used the six months that should have been his season to learn as much as possible and make new connections. He became more active in the Minority Coaches Association. He added rows of contacts to his phone.

In time, a friend, then-FAU assistant coach Akeem Miskdeen called. He said he was joining Mike White’s staff at Florida and a staff position was coming open in Boca. Miskdeen connected Williamson with May and the two spoke for weeks.

Williamson was interested, but, realistically, why would a mid-major D1 program hire a D2 assistant who hadn’t coached the previous season?

It’s a fair question.

“I was like, you know what, I’m gonna look at some D2 guys,” May says, remembering back to early summer 2021. “I’m gonna think about some JUCO, prep school, whatever, just someone other than the typical lower mid-major assistant that wants to come to Boca and be on staff.”

May not only liked Williamson, but heard others vouch for him. So, that settled it. He called Williamson.

Drew and Lauren were traveling in Washington D.C. when Drew’s phone buzzed. “It’s yours if you want it,” May said. Williamson covered the phone and mouthed to his wife: “We’re moving to Flor-i-da.”

That was just under two years ago. After so long at a D2, doing everything from team laundry to cutting film to being a makeshift academic advisor, Williamson’s first season at FAU was an adjustment. He’d look around a room wondering what needed to be done.

But now Williamson feels like he’s where he belongs, even if this is all so unbelievable. He got off the FAU team plane on Wednesday and saw the Florida Atlantic logo next to the Final Four logo and realized where he was.

“Surreal,” he says.

But that’s what makes the Owls so different. May’s coaching staff is rounded out by Kyle Church, who’s been with the head coach at both Louisiana Tech and Florida, and Todd Abernethy, who’s taken his own journey from SEC assistant coach to head coach at Trinity International University for a year and to FAU. They make it work, May says, because if “you really care about your guys, and you’re all together, it just permeates on down.”

(Photo of Dusty May, foreground, and Drew Williamson: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)

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