ESPN Men's Basketball

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(Information in this team report is as of October 1.)

With a resume that includes successful stints as an assistant at Michigan State, North Carolina and Notre Dame, it was just a matter of time before Doug Wojcik became a head coach.

Wojcik didn't want just any job, though. He wanted to coach a program with a realistic chance to win, a program that had proven itself over time. He got that when he took over at Tulsa in the spring of 2005.

"You don't know as much about the job as they do about you when you take a job, but Tulsa's been such a pleasant surprise in so many areas -- and not just the basketball tradition," Wojcik said. "It's a very good job. It's a job that can be a destination. Our football coach has done a marvelous job. Our football team won the Liberty Bowl last year and he's a young guy, a good guy, a family guy. Our women's team came one minute from reaching the Sweet 16 last year. Our new athletic director and I worked together and became friends at Notre Dame.

"Campus life is good and Conference USA is a good fit for us. There's just a lot of positive things going on on this campus that make it more of a destination than it was in the past."

Tulsa hasn't had a winning record or even won more than 11 games since 2003, but this is a program that has sent 13 teams to the NCAA Tournament since 1984 and sent coaches such as Nolan Richardson, J.D. Barnett, Tubby Smith, Steve Robinson, Bill Self and Buzz Peterson to bigger jobs during that span.

Wojcik's first Tulsa team may have gone only 11-18, but the Golden Hurricane accomplished a lot in 2005-06 that can't be seen in the record. The coaches spent considerable time and effort trying to instill a more positive environment and building a sense of team that helped a young team endure some difficult times.

"Coming off the Final Four at Michigan State and looking back at the team with really six pros -- with Kelvin Torbert and Chris Hill playing in Europe, and Alan Anderson with the Bobcats, Shannon Brown with the Cavs, Maurice Ager with the Mavs and Paul Davis with the Clippers -- going from that to a situation where there's some problems, my expectation level had to change a little bit," Wojcik said. "But looking back we really did do some good things considering some guys left the program and we were a little depleted. For us to be picked 10th or 11th in the conference and then finish sixth was a real victory for us. We had the toughest schedule in the conference and did some nice things.

"The team building, the chemistry and camaraderie, the culture of the program has changed. I have to give my staff a lot of credit for that because they spent a lot of time with the kids. We have some talented kids who are also good character guys.

"I like talking about being passionate about basketball and they've shown that. They've worked hard all offseason. Our upperclassmen were here for both sessions of summer school and our new guys were here for the second session of summer school. They do things together. They live together. Hopefully that will go a long way."

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