Marquette Men’s Basketball Hires Rodney Crawford As Assistant Coach

After graduating from Cincinnati in 2002 — yes, he’s a former Bob Huggins player — Crawford got his coaching start a couple of years later at the Ohio high school level. After a year as a NAIA head coach, Crawford got a spot in Division 1 college hoops as an assistant at Eastern Kentucky under head coach Jeff Neubauer. When his boss turned the EKU job into the Fordham job, Crawford eventually followed along and spent four seasons on the bench there, there as associate head coach.

Crawford took a step backwards from there, joining John Brannen’s staff at Cincinnati as director of player personnel. When Brannen was relieved of duties after just two seasons, Crawford caught on with Richie Riley’s staff at South Alabama and he’s been there ever since. I don’t know how much is Crawford and how much is Riley, but for the past two seasons, USA was top 100 in defensive turnover rate AND top 15 in defensive free throw rate. When you’re forcing turnovers without committing fouls, that’s pretty good stuff. The Jaguars weren’t actually good on defense in either season — #98 and #193 in overall efficiency per KenPom.com — but y’know, building blocks and so on.

With that said, I’m not 100% sure replacing DeAndre Haynes (history of developing high major guards) and Nevada Smith (architect of the entire offensive structure since Smart came to Milwaukee) with Crawford (MU press release highlights the good things his teams did on defense) and Jeremy Ballard (Shaka Smart disciple) is a net positive in terms of what the assistants are offering the room. At worst, it seems like there’s not an offensive tactical mind in the room. Obviously, if you’ve gotten to the Division 1 level as an assistant coach, you’ve probably got some good ideas about running an offense, but this makes it seem like Marquette no longer has a specialist in that department.

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