Omaha Needed to Make Great Hire, and Mavs Did with Buttermore
OMAHA – For my money, the best performance in the career of Trev Alberts was on the final night of his Cornhusker football career when – with his left arm in a cast/brace – he sacked Florida State’s Charlie Ward three times in a single game.
Nebraska would lose that 1994 Orange Bowl 18-16, and with it lost a chance at a national championship. Of course, that also sprang the Huskers into one of the most dominant four-year stretches of NCAA football.
While I’m not ready to say new Maverick coach Matt Buttermore has the foot speed of Charlie Ward, I think there is a good chance Alberts’ ability to grab him and bring him to Omaha to lead the volleyball team could be a program and university changing accomplishment.
April 1, 2019, will not only go down as the day Alberts officially announced the hiring of Buttermore, but it could very well be remembered as the day Alberts made it clear to the rest of the Summit League that he isn’t fooling around with the future of his volleyball program.
In this volleyball-crazed state, people have long looked at Omaha volleyball as a sleeping monster. Alberts faced tremendous pressure with this hire. Not just to get the right coach to lead the program, but to do it with some limitations.
This isn’t exactly the prime time to be hiring a volleyball coach at any level – let alone Division I. Mostly, the coaching carousel in volleyball begins spinning in early December and really picks up speed around the Final Four in the middle of the month and has generally started to settle back down before its time to hit the recruiting trails in the Spring. Trying to hire a college volleyball coach in the middle and late parts of March is no treat.
And while Omaha is pretty much in line with its head coaching pay in volleyball for a school its size, it wasn’t necessarily the amount that could have brought in an experienced Division I – or even II – head coach or associate coach at a major program.
So, at a bad time of the year and without any money to splash around with, Alberts and the Mavericks set out to find a new coach and sticked to their guns that they wanted someone that has proven to be a winner as the head coach of a program. Someone that understood the local volleyball community and what the sport means to those in the area. A coach that could take the baton from retiring coach Rose Shires and haul butt with it to Summit League championships, NCAA Tournaments and new heights the program has never seen.
Alberts found that coach in Buttermore. He found a coach that has already taken Hastings College to new heights. He found a coach that has won conference championship and national championships. He found a coach that looked at this sleeping giant of a program and saw it has a new challenge instead of a reward for past success.
Alberts found the right coach, and should be commended for it, as well as the process that led to the decision. It was quick. It was professional. It was targeted and it was successful.
It’s not to say that Buttermore will instantly take the Mavericks to the NCAA Tournament and win 30 games a season. Maybe he does. Nothing can really be guaranteed.
But, it’s safe to assume that if anyone can do it, it will be Buttermore. He’s a Nebraskan with unparalleled passion for the sport and that state. He understands how coveted the position he got is and just how badly everyone will be pulling for him to be successful. He, of all people, understands just how uniquely positioned Omaha is for volleyball success.
What will make Buttermore successful at Omaha, though, is being Matt Buttermore.
To understand just how badly he himself wants to be successful at Omaha, is to understand how hard it was for him to leave Hastings and his team behind. Buttermore didn’t take the Omaha job because it is paying some outrageous amount of money. While there is plenty of talent on Omaha’s roster, Buttermore left behind a really, really talented group at Hastings with some big time recruits coming in. He uprooted his family from everything it was comfortable with and left a job where he had an insane level of job security for the sometimes unforgiving world of Division I athletics.
You could almost argue Buttermore came after Omaha as much as the Mavericks went after him. He’s pushed countless athletes out of their comfort zones over the year to get the maximum potential out of them. What kind of coach would he be if he didn’t do the same himself.
I have no doubt Buttermore will be successful as he takes on this challenge. The Maverick – and local – volleyball fan base should be excited for what the future holds.