Tuesday, July 6, 2010
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
COACHES
From Page 11
iTO P E NE with aspirations of placing the pro-
OSIjnAlexander, a Detroit native, got
A FILLING UP FO R iOhisfirstt toching in clinics
at the University of Detroit Mercy.
From there, he briefly worked as Play-
ers Programs Coordinator with the
Detroit Pistons before returning to
J:,the court with the Harlem Globetrot-
ters. But after 498 shows, Alexander
-- --- 7retired and went back to coaching,
i'iG 'first at his alma mater and then at
r -____Ohio University and Western Michi-
gan University before being hired by
Beilein.
-_ -------_ -- He will mainly be working with
the post players, a very young group
FREE W iWFREE HDTV ACADEMIC LEASES AND for the Wolverines without a single
AIL INCLUSIVE RATES AS IOW AS $599!rince. But Alexander is confident in
his ability to forge relationships with
-- the young Michigan squad and look-
ingforward to doing so.
"What basketball has really done
-1 for me is that it's opened up doors to
build long lasting and meaningful
relationships with people from all
walks of life," Alexander said. "And
r that also is the essence of sports in
general. It brings people from dif-
ferent socioeconomic backgrounds,
belief systems and mesh(es) them all
together."
In 1999, Alexander received UDM's
Si 'imost outstanding senior student-ath-
lete award, an award demonstrating
how he holds in high regard the value
of a quality education. He sees him-
S- self as an educator of the young men
he coaches and sees a deep connec-
tion between the relationships a coach
has and the influence a coach has on
its players, which is what has drawn
him to every school and coach he has
coached with.
"They're all educators first," Alex-
ander said of the coaches he has
-,worked under. "I always have taken
great interest in being associated
with people that are educators first.
The common denominator academi-
cally for all of those coaches is that
they've graduated in the 98th per-
centile of their players, which is very,
very important to me. Obviously we're
hired to win games and put competi-
T H E tive teams on the floor, but at the same
time, the academic piece is something
" C U TYRED S * that'sreallyattractive."
Additionally, Alexander has been
S T U D E N T AP A RTM E N a four-time winner of CollegeInsider.
coms 'Runway to the Fashionable
Four,' a title that declares him the
' 734.994 .6 7 most fashionable coach in college bas-
ketball.
www.thecourtyardsannarbor.comfWith his move to Mil gan, hope-
fully CollegeInsider will find maize
and blue just as fashionable on Alex-
ander.