Matt L. Stephens

matthewstephens@coloradoan.com

Larry Eustachy pulled out his iPhone, leaned over and pressed play.

It was an old voice mail. Older than the one he played from San Diego State coach Steve Fisher that dated back to December 2014, praising Eustachy for having the only undefeated team in the Mountain West. The voice on the other end was Bo Ryan, Wisconsin’s basketball coach at the time.

“I don’t email, text, tweet or 'snapface,' but I do call,” Ryan said.

Fumbling through his old-model iPhone — admittedly fumbling through his old-model iPhone — he tells me he’d prefer to have a flip phone again. In an era of sports and social media, an era where coaches are supposed to be engaging to combat college basketball’s dwindling attendance figures, Eustachy is different. He’s like his friend, Bo Ryan, who reached the NCAA title game last year. He doesn’t know marketing. Or how to snap-face or chat-book. What he does know is basketball, and he challenges anyone in Colorado who thinks they may have more knowledge of the sport. That includes Tad Boyle.

We’re sitting there in his office discussing what the big picture is for CSU basketball. Like any coach, Eustachy’s desire is to win a national championship, but let’s face it, no mid-major program has done so since UNLV in 1990.

What about consistent conference titles and NCAA tournament appearances?

Obviously. Colorado State University is on track to do so, Eustachy said, by relying less on junior college and Division I transfers.

Anything else?

“I want to get to a point where you (the fan) come, not because who you’re playing, but because of who’s on your team. That you come watch Colorado State regardless of the opposition,” Eustachy said. “We have Wichita State coming in here next year, we have the neutral game against Kansas State. You try to build your schedule based on what your team is going to be, but I would be ecstatic if I was a fan about what’s happened over the past four years and what’s happening right now.

“I’ll say it. We have a base of 2,500 solid fans and the rest will show up when we play Colorado. This is a special place and we’ve worked diligently to put us on the map.”

Eustachy and staff’s hard work over the course of four years has yet to evolve into what he wants CSU basketball games to be: an event. Like what you see at San Diego State and New Mexico. And he knows Fort Collins is unique. People move here from all over. They graduated from Nebraska or Kansas or Directional Tech, but can’t they adopt the Rams as their second team?

Winning won’t fix everything. He learned that last season when CSU put together its best record in school history (27-7) and Moby Arena reached its capacity of 8,745 once. Two years earlier, Eustachy’s first at CSU, there were four sellouts. What boosted those attendance numbers wasn’t a team on track for the NCAA tournament, though it didn’t hurt; it was four seniors named Pierce, Dorian, Greg and Wes who’d stuck with the program for four years and fans felt like they knew on a personal level.

The only player remaining from that 2012-13 team? Joe De Ciman. No other freshman has stayed more than two years under Eustachy at CSU. He understands that. It’s another reason why he’s weaning CSU off the transfer pipeline and focusing on four-year guys. What freshmen Prentiss Nixon and J.D. Paige have done this year off the bench helps justify that approach moving forward.

Let’s hope that works. For the sake of the student-athletes who are playing in front of the third-smallest crowds in the Mountain West (only Air Force and San Jose State average fewer fans), let’s hope building winning teams with familiar faces rectifies the situation. But if not, then what? Because fans want to like their coach, and Eustachy’s on-court persona doesn’t always come off well.

So I proceeded to ask about outreach. Making it more of a grass-roots approach, the way his friend Tom Hilbert made CSU volleyball such a (relatively speaking) well-attended event. Has he ever considered that?

“I’m not a marketing expert. I graduated with a degree in P.E.,” he said.

He continued, explaining that while marketing the program is part of his job as a head coach, the more time he spends out in the community, the more it takes away from coaching. He doesn’t mind schmoozing with fans, but he can’t go to bars; he refuses to go anywhere alcohol is prevalent. He’s been that guy before, and, as he elegantly put it, “it was ugly.” We all know how that story ended.

Instead, Eustachy invites small groups over to his condo for dinner, and if there’s an event he’s been asked to speak at, he’ll oblige. But coming up with marketing ideas isn’t his job.

What about doing something with the students? Like painting his stomach a la Bruce Pearl during a Tennessee women’s basketball game or being more active on social media. Something to show the fans he has more of a personality than what they see on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

“People say 'Eustachy isn’t out enough.' That I’m not part of this community. I learned a long time ago that you have to be yourself. I like to speak, I enjoy being around people, I love doing the radio show … I go to King Soopers and shop every day,” Eustachy said. “But I’m not going to come up with marketing ideas. My job is to put a product out there that’s enjoyable to watch, and I feel like I’ve done my job.

“Put this in the article. Anyone who has any idea about what I need to do, tell them to call me. I’ll do it. I’ll stand on my head at the mall for an hour. Put me in a dunk tank at the mall. What do you need me to do to reward these players for their hard work with the big-time crowds they deserve?”

Perception all too often is reality. Eustachy knows that. He knows how he appears. He stomps up and down the sideline, he yells at his team in the huddle and there are those occasional technical fouls he’s whistled for. That’s what everyone knows him for and why pockets of CSU fans have grown disgruntled. He knows that. Wishes people would see him for more. But he knows that.

He’s also not going to change. Because behind the curtain of rage, of black button downs and Diet Cokes, there’s a coach who cares. Not about what you think of him. About his team that he puts through hellish practices in order to build a winning program. And there will be down years — at 10-8 (2-3 in the Mountain West), this appears to be one of them — but his goal is to have his players praised by fans for the work they put in, even when the Rams aren’t a 20-win team.

What’s Eustachy’s big picture for CSU? It’s making a place where people care.

For insight and analysis on athletics around Northern Colorado and the Mountain West, follow sports columnist Matt L. Stephens at twitter.com/mattstephens and facebook.com/stephensreporting.