Brandon Schneider wins at KU

Schneider work ethic Creating success in Kansas

By LEE PASSMORE

Things happened that were a long time coming for Brandon Schneider in 2022, at least according to his timetable.

Schneider, a 1990 Canyon High graduate, is coming off his seventh and most successful season at the helm of the University of Kansas women’s basketball team. Last year Schneider led the Jayhawks to a 21-10 record and a fifth-place finish in the rugged Big 12 Conference.

Kansas earned a bid to the NCAA Tournament and reached the second round. Schneider was recognized by being voted the Big 12 Coach of the Year.

“We reached a lot of milestones,” Schneider said. “A lot of things happened that hadn’t happened since 1999-2000.”

That includes making the NCAA tourney for the first time since 2013, the first 20-win season since 2011 and the most regular season and conference wins since 2000.

The 50-year-old Schneider appears to have established something in Kansas. But it didn’t quite happen overnight.

“We came here with aspirations of turning around the program,” said Schneider, who came to Kansas from Stephen F. Austin in 2015. “It took us quite frankly a little bit longer than what we wanted. In 2019-20 we were really close. We were going to go to the postseason that year and then COVID hit, and in 2021 we had four seniors opt out about midway through the season.

“We knew the last couple of years we were making strides internally that others weren’t aware of on the outside.”

Steady progression

Despite not reaching competitive respectability as rapidly as he expected, Kansas has shown steady progression since Schneider’s arrival. The 6-25 record in his initial season of 2015-16 is easily the poorest in his 24 years as a head coach at Kansas, SFA and Emporia State, but in each of their four seasons after that, the Jayhawks improved on their win total from the previous season, concluding with a 15-14 mark in 2019-20, Schneider’s first winning record at the school.

The program took a step back in the COVID-plagued 202021 campaign, falling to 7-18. Last year, though, made that a distant memory.

Schneider felt his team was on firmer footing heading into last season, and that was confirmed with a strong showing against perennial power Tennessee early in the season at a shootout in Las Vegas. Kansas was 4-0, but Schneider still was trying to find out how good his team was.

“We played Tennessee, which was ranked five or six when we played them in a Thanksgiving tournament,” said Schneider, whose team lost that game 68-58. “We were really competitive and had chances to win that game. One of our best players played limited minutes due to foul trouble. That was a game that affirmed a lot of things for our players.”

Kansas went 9-1 before opening Big 12 play and was prepared for the rigors of a competitive conference. The Jayhawks were sparked by a seven-game winning streak during the heart of the schedule in February, including a come-from-behind 71-68 vic-

Kansas women’s basketball coach Brandon Schneider communicates with his Jayhawks during a tense game at Texas Tech on Feb. 19, 2022. Kansas won, 71-68, as Schneider’s parents, Bob and Barbara Schneider, and brother, Brett Schneider, watched from the stands. Bob is a retired hall of fame coach, and Brett coaches the Frank Phillips College women’s team. (Photo by Mike Haynes)

tory over Texas Tech in Lubbock. Their record also included a 70-66 overtime win at perennial power Texas and two losses to always formidable Baylor by a total of 11 points.

An 11-7 record in the Big 12 was an accomplishment in and of itself, and that helped the Jayhawks get into the NCAA Tournament, where they routed Georgia Tech 77-58 in the first round before falling to Final Four participant Stanford 91-65 in the second round. Last season showed that Schneider and his staff finally had hit on a formula that could lead to long-term success, something that was a bit of a mystery when he first got to Kansas.

“We took some risks maybe on some players in hindsight from a talent standpoint that we would not take now,” Schneider said. “As a staff we really built our recruiting efforts around culture and chemistry first and made decisions based on fit rather than what a player could do on the court. That has really benefited our program and our staff.”

The long haul

It would have been logical for Schneider to be concerned about job security heading into last season. In five of his first six seasons at Lawrence, the Jayhawks posted losing records.

But Schneider always was thinking long haul, and after last season he was given a four-year contract extension. He’s been at KU longer than his athletic directors.

“I’ve had three ADs here in seven years and two chancellors, so I think as a coach when you start worrying about those things you might not be making the best decisions in the best interests of the program,” Schneider said. “I’ve made other stops at Emporia State and Stephen F. Austin, and we always felt like if every decision

(Continued from previous page) we made was in the best interest of the program, then we would build a successful and sustainable program. I think as a coach if you start making selfish decisions and survival-based decisions, you’re not going to build a sustainable program.”

That’s a lesson he learned from his father Bob, a coaching legend in Canyon. Bob Schneider’s coaching career included building Canyon High’s powerhouse girls program before he spent a quarter century as the women’s head coach at West Texas A&M and earned a spot in the Panhandle Sports Hall of Fame and in the national Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame last summer.

Brandon couldn’t help but absorb Bob’s example.

“There’s a couple of things that really stand out,” Brandon said. “Number one, I don’t know that there’s a better fundamental teacher of the game of basketball. I also really learned the importance of being yourself. I grew up around my dad, Joe Lombard and Dean Weese, the Texas greats, if you will.

“All of those individuals have much different personalities, and the thing that my dad always tried to stress with me is just don’t try to be somebody else. The players will see through a phony in a second.”

Those coaches all stressed discipline. They got hold of the system at the junior high level and made sure all the practices were structured similarly, a lesson Brandon and his brother Brett, who coaches the Frank Phillips College women, have taken to the next level.

Grew up with basketball

Bob said Brandon always was willing to learn the secrets to coaching well before he ever diagrammed a play.

“He’s been around the game for a long time,” Bob Schneider said of Brandon. “He was around a lot of coaches in high school and college because I had a lot of basketball camps. I would hire a lot of the successful coaches around here that I liked. We all lived in the dorm. We would have some free time at night, and we just always talked.

“We’d stay up and talk basketball probably until about midnight. Even after he went to college, he’d come back and help us.”

Now Brandon is in a position to build a legacy of his own. Numbers indicate that his greatest success at Kansas may be yet to come. The Jayhawks return their two leading scorers from last season, senior guards Holly Kersgieter and Zakiyah Franklin, both of whom averaged in double figures. Another senior, 6-foot-6 post Taiyanna Jackson, is an imposing figure in the middle. Schneider also has been recruiting in foreign countries, as six players hail from Europe. Brandon Schneider “We only lost two players from a year ago,” Schneider said. “Going into this season we have four juniors, eight sophomores and two freshmen, so we feel like we’re really set up for the next couple of years to be really competitive. We feel we can be one of the teams who have an opportunity to compete for the conference championship. The farthest a University of Kansas women’s basketball team has ever gone is the Sweet 16, and we have goals of accomplishing second weekend participation in the next couple of years and even beyond.”

That will be a challenge in the Big 12. Schneider said Texas and Baylor will be title contenders as usual and that Iowa State and Oklahoma return a lot of talent.

It won’t be easy duplicating last year’s success for any school in the conference, as Schneider estimates as many as six teams in the Big 12 could ranked in the top 20.

Schneider has been coaching in Division I since he made the jump to Stephen F. Austin in 2010 after winning the Division II national championship at Emporia State. He’s had far more wins than losses; in 24 seasons, he’s posted a 482-261 record.

If Kansas has any sort of success resembling last season, Schneider will hit a major coaching milestone in 2022-23 with his 500th career victory.

“That would be an accomplishment for a lot of players over the years and a lot of other staff members and assistant coaches,” Schneider said. “It’s still well short of 50 percent of what my dad did. That’s one of those things where he’ll give me a pat on the back and a wink, wink.”

Not that Bob would ever be disappointed if Brandon eclipsed his successes. With a 1,045-293 career record, Bob has left an untouchable legacy of his own and thinks Brandon can live up to it.

“He’s my son, but he’s very intelligent,” Bob Schneider said. “He’s also very dedicated, and he wants to win. He’ll work his tail off to get that type of success. At college, if you don’t win, it’s adios.

“Records are meant to be broken, and I hope he breaks mine. He’s on a higher level now, and I’m sure he can do that. He never gave up and kept working hard.”

It’s in his blood.