Mike DeFabo | Lansing State Journal

Nick King, Lansing State Journal

LANSING – There are no championship banners in the basketball gym at Great Lakes Christian College. No shiny trophy cases. No murals.

But there’s a story here at this small college in Delta Township, just west of Lansing. Even if you've never heard of GLCC or its basketball program, it's worth listening to this one.

It stars Jahmal Eggleston, a sophomore guard who lost multiple friends to gun violence in Baltimore before he turned into the Crusaders’ leading scorer. It includes a scout-team player, Jalen Huff, who everyone thought would play Division I basketball before a few poor report cards and two torn ACLs brought him to GLCC. It features starting center Basit Seidu, who grew up in a single-parent home and feared he’d lose his mother, too, when she battled breast cancer … twice.

“A lot of the players on this team faced a lot of adversity,” Seidu said. “We all grew up in bad parts of where we come from. A lot of us, this is probably our last chance.”

Nick King/Lansing State Journal

Together, this mismatched group of players has pulled off one of the most remarkable turnarounds in small-college basketball.

For years, GLCC was one of the worst small basketball programs in the country. Winless in 2015-16. Just one win the next year.

At one point last year, the roster had just six active players and 6-foot-1 point guard, Isiah Reed, was defending a 7-foot center.

“Everyone looked down on us throughout the region,” junior guard Ja’Quin Jones said. “We’re like the little brother. We’ve had to prove ourselves.”

But that's starting to change. The Crusaders went 19-11 this year, including 11-2 against National Christian College Athletic Association Division II opponents.

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Thursday, GLCC will play in its first-ever NCCAA Division II National Tournament as the four seed in the eight-team tournament.

So what’s the spark for this turnaround?

Go out to a practice. Right there, in the middle of the Crusaders’ 2-3 zone, hunched into a defensive stance with his hands outstretched and a whistle clenched between his teeth is coach Richard Westerlund.

At just 27 years old, he’s a basketball version of Minnesota football coach P.J. Fleck, who speaks in full paragraphs and is armed with catch phrases like “failure can’t cope with persistence” and “change your best.” He’s not afraid to jump into the action during practice, talk some trash and hoist a couple heat-check 3s.

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Great Lakes Christian College men's basketball team makes NCCAA tourney

When Westerlund took the job as the coach and athletic director this offseason, he became GLCC’s third coach in as many seasons and inherited just three players. That didn’t stop him from proclaiming the Crusaders one of the best teams in the NCCAA before he even saw them pick up a basketball.

They’ve become exactly that.

“I really believe your vision has to scare some people,” Westerlund said. “I want to play Michigan State. I don’t know if Tom (Izzo) would ever schedule me. But I’d try. I’m not scared of anything.”

Growing up fast

As a kid, Westerlund used to tell people he was going to become the youngest Division I coach in NCAA history.

He started that journey at 19, when he was attending Lancaster Bible College in Pennsylvania, taking 15 credits and playing two varsity sports (baseball and soccer).

Barely a year removed from his own high school basketball career, Westerlund was named varsity basketball coach at Harford Christian School in Darlington, Maryland.

He drove an hour each day to Maryland for practice and an hour home.

None of this seems out of character for Westerlund, who comes across as mature beyond his years.

The son of a car salesman, he grew up in Ellicott City, an unincorporated community about 20 minutes west of Baltimore, in a household with seven kids. Two of his brothers — Bill Jr. and Dave — battled muscular dystrophy, a disease that eventually forced both boys to undergo multiple surgeries and to use wheelchairs and BiPAP breathing machines.

“Having my two brothers with muscular dystrophy forced me to grow up,” Westerlund said.

He began his coaching career at Harford with great expectations … and then the team went 6-22.

“I thought I knew everything,” Westerlund said. ‘I knew nothing.”

He immersed himself in the game during the offseason. While teammates enjoyed college life on the weekends, Westerlund watched film and studied coaching DVDs in his dorm room.

Within two years, the six-win team had flipped its record. It went 24-6 and won the school’s first state championship.

He parlayed that success into his first college job just days before his 22nd birthday at a small school in Minnesota.

The school is now defunct but it was called Crossroads. It was an apt name, because what Westerlund didn’t know at the time was his life was about to face one, too.

Nick King/Lansing State Journal

A coach at a crossroads

In his first season at Crossroads, his team won a national tournament.

Professionally, he was right on the trajectory he'd imagined. Off the court, his personal life suffered. A relationship crumbled. The woman he was engaged to marry “did some messed up stuff” and the wedding was called off.

The kid who studied film in his dorm room while teammates partied started drinking to cope with the broken relationship.

“I almost messed up my coaching career because of it,” Westerlund said.

One afternoon, Westerlund flew home to Maryland. His twin brother, Sean, had planned a surprise breakfast with coach Luke Gibson, who was at the time an assistant soccer coach at Lancaster Bible College.

The two brothers drove to York, Pennsylvania, to meet their coach at a roadside diner. Little did Westerlund know that he was there for more than pancakes.

The coach lit into Westerlund about his drinking.

“I couldn’t thank my brother more and thank my coach more,” Westerlund said. “If I didn’t get that talk, I don’t know If I’d be here right now. That talk has stayed with me forever.”

That tough-love message was exactly the wake-up call Westerlund needed and at the time he needed it most.

Over the next couple of years, he'd endure personal and professional hardship that would test him.

Crossroads cut his pay from $30,000 to $8,000. He lost his father, William Sr., to lymphoma. His brother Bill Jr. had died when he was in college. He decided to move to a coaching job in Ohio to get closer to family and help care for his brother Dave. Dave died the following year.

What could have been the start of a downward spiral only narrowed the coach's focus.

“When I coach and I live my life, I’m living it for three other people,” Westerlund said. “That’s why I try to have to much joy and enthusiasm and purpose behind it. I have a ‘why’ to what I’m doing. My ‘why’ is to impact lives and to provide for my momma and to make sure I’m doing my dad and my brothers proud.”

From 3 players to NCCAA tournament

Westerlund prayed for a full-time opportunity after his father and brothers died, one that could help him provide for his wife and impact players in the same way his coaches changed his life.

That's when he heard about the opening at Great Lakes. At the time he interviewed, the roster featured just six players. One was more trouble than he was worth. One wouldn’t even talk to the coach. And one transferred to a D-II school.

That left the first-year coach with just three players when he started.

“When we heard he was coming, we didn’t know what to expect,” said Reed, a Flint native and junior guard. “We were filling out other schools’ applications to transfer somewhere else.”

Westerlund sat down with the three remaining players. He told them his story. They began to appreciate his journey and believe in his vision.

"Coach Rich gives the coach feel, but he’s like a big brother," Jones said. "All the trials and tribulations, he can relate to a lot of the players who have been through a lot of the struggle."

He took those three players, added a handful from his previous coaching stop at Wright State University Lake Campus in Ohio and then brought in a full recruiting class thanks to a little help from his wife, Tricia, a flight attendant with some free Delta flights.

By September, he had assembled a group of 21 players, enough for three teams and, in Westerlund's case, three different teams: one inherited, one that followed the coach and one recruited.

Through what the team calls “Seal Week” or “Hell Week,” depending who you ask, he molded them into one.

The players woke up at 4:30 a.m. and completed 500 burpees before the sun came up. Westerlund sprayed them with hoses and dumped buckets of water on their heads while they held plank positions. They ran to the Lansing Mall and back while passing 45-pound weights back and forth.

Pushed to their breaking point, the players learned something about themselves.

"Who is tough," Jones said. "Who got heart. Who we’ll have to push a little more to get the strength in us and get the inner kill out of us."

'We're here and we're surprising people'

Nick King/Lansing State Journal

The whistle blows and sneakers squeak to a halt during one of the final practices before the national tournament. Westerlund calls his team together at center court. He acknowledged they are not the biggest team in the tournament. Not the strongest. Not the most physical.

But they are the team that’s been through the most.

"I don’t know how many coaches would have recruited the guys that we got," Westerlund said. "I know some of the top teams at our level wouldn’t have recruited my guys.

"But we like that," he said, "We’re OK with that. We’re here and we’re surprising people."