[Southsider2k12]

I am really excited about these guys. It would do nothing but good for these kids to have programs they can look forward to being involved in. It will help with grades and disipline.

http://thenewsdispatch.com/main.asp?Sectio...amp;TM=32931.22

Coaches ready to start winning

Adam Parkhouse
Sports Editor, The News-Dispatch

A new era of Michigan City High School boys basketball and football is about to begin, and the two men ushering in that era answered questions Wednesday for the first time since being hired by the school board Tuesday night.

Bob Buscher and Craig Buzea sat shoulder-to-shoulder in the east wing of the Wolves Den, also known as Heritage Hall. Behind them were cases chock full of memorabilia commemorating City's rich sports tradition.

Buscher and Buzea both hope the programs they're taking over will soon replicate those past successes.

"I'm extremely excited for this opportunity," said Buzea, who took the football job after spending the last 13 years as Portage's head coach, accumulating a 107-45 record.

Buscher added, "I know I have to prove my value and my worth. This was a prayer that was answered for me."

Buscher has also spent plenty of time in the coaching game. He spent five years (1983-88) as boys basketball coach at Hamilton Heights, compiling a 54-53 record, and the next eight campaigns at Andrean High School (134-50). He also coached at Chesterton from 1997-2002 (61-48).

Bob "Bear" Falls, City's athletic director, has personal experiences and relationships with both Buscher and Buzea. Because he knows them so well, he knows that good things are on the horizon for the respective programs.

"I've coached against both of these guys, and I can tell you Michigan City got the best coaches in the business," Falls said.

Buscher and Buzea have each been hired as an administrative assistant of Student Services, in addition to their coaching duties.

So what exactly is that?

"Both gentlemen will be working as part of the high school administration team," Superintendent Michael Harding said. "They will have a lot of control over the school during the day, doing patrols and sweeps.

"We're implementing a totally different model, and we have two good educators to help implement that model."

Both men have master's degrees, with Buscher's coming from Indiana University and Buzea's from Ball State. Buzea did his undergraduate work at The University of Indianapolis.

Because of their academic backgrounds, both Buscher and Buzea stressed how much weight they put on their athletes' performance in the classroom, rather than just between the lines.

"We have a job to do here, and that takes place between 7 (a.m.) and 3 (p.m.)," Buzea said.

Buscher added, "We're in the teaching business. I do expect the kids to do well academically because there are more important things in life than basketball."

Contact Sports Editor Adam Parkhouse at aparkhouse@thenewsdispatch.com or 874-7211, Ext. 461.

[Roger Kaputnik]

JUST IN TIME because my son just started high school! Go Raiders--I mean, Wolves!

[Southsider2k12]

More raves for Bob Falls selections as coaches...

http://heraldargus.com/archives/ha/display.php?id=379834

Hirings are as good as City could have hoped
Comment on this story

Michigan City got it right.

Tuesday’s hiring of Craig Buzea and Bob Buscher couldn’t have been much better for two athletic programs that have had little success in recent years.

Since the resignation of the Bennie Edwards and Bob Holmes, the rumors were that those two jobs were attractive to outside coaches despite their history. The word was with the talent, not only in the programs, but coming along and roaming the halls, the right kind of coach can win there.

Well, everyone is about to find out if that is true.

The football program couldn’t have dreamt a better scenario than landing a coach with the credentials of Buzea. I figured the Wolves would do well to land a young, upcoming coach to breathe some life into, quite frankly, the Duneland Conference’s worst program.

Getting Buzea was a coup.

In the former Portage coach’s worst five years of his 13 with the Indians, he had 16 wins. The Wolves have 17 wins total in that same time span. Throw in three perfect conference seasons, six titles, five sectional championships and a state finals appearance and it’s safe to say it’s rare to land a coach like that at a moribund program.

It took a perfect set of variables to get Buzea to leave Portage as the relationship between him and an unstable administration grew too tense for comfort on either side. Given a couple investigations in the past year and a lack of clear leadership, it was simply time to move on for Buzea and the Wolves should reap the benefits.

On the basketball side, it’s also pretty rare that a guy who has 250 wins, mostly at big schools, is just sitting on the sidelines ready to jump at a job, but that’s where Michigan City found Buscher.

After a couple years serving as an assistant, the situation was finally right for the former Andrean and Chesterton coach to return to the lead job. He had applied for several jobs in the past couple years, but family and other outside circumstances kept him from doing so until this year.

It’s good news for City and great news for the Wolves’ Division I prospect, Jarrod Jones, as Buscher has coached a handful of DI players, including his son Brett just a few years ago. He knows what Jones needs to do to increase his offers and then be successful at the next level, which will make the player and the team better.

If nothing else, the names involved will increase the excitement surrounding Wolves athletics. The worst thing for an athletic program is apathy and that’s were things were headed in Michigan City. These hirings should put a bounce in the step of the athletes, the fan base and in turn the younger kids that can really change the future of Michigan City sports.

Getting the best athletes in the schools to be interested in varsity sports would improve the Wolves by bounds alone.

That could happen here.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that both coaches do have some past transgressions that allowed them to end up at Michigan City. Both have some controversy and scandal around their names, but both have also been largely cleared of anything serious.

It’s foolish to think they would have been touting Michigan City Wednesday at a press conference for their hiring without that past, but those things don’t matter now.

Everyone said the right things at what turned into a lovefest at the gathering, now all that’s left is to find out if the coaches can deliver on the much-talked about potential.

DOUG ELISH is the sports editor of the Herald-Argus. He can be reached at 326-3866 or delish@heraldargus.com

[Southsider2k12]

http://heraldargus.com/archives/ha/display.php?id=379833

Doug Elish, 1-866-362-2167 Ext. 13866, delish@heraldargus.com


Photo: By Wendy Thoms
Michigan City football coach Craig Buzea speaks during Wednesday’s press conference in Michigan City’s Heritage Hall.
More photos from this shoot


Former Portage football coach excited to try and make City into a contender

MICHIGAN CITY -- It’ll be understandable if there’s moments when Craig Buzea feels a little out of place in the next few months.

Not only will he be working in a new school district in a new profession position for the first time in a long time, but the newest Michigan City football coach going from one end of the football spectrum to the other.

During his 13-year head coaching tenure at Portage, Buzea led the Duneland Conference’s winningest program. He won six conference titles and 65 games in those seasons. His teams had just two losing seasons and one of them was a 3-4 campaign.

The Michigan City program he’s inheriting has won 17 games (including a winless season in ’94 as Rogers before the consolation in 95) total in those 13 years. It has had five winless seasons and three seasons with just one win. The best year was in 2000 when the Wolves went 7-4 overall and finished in fourth place in the DAC at 4-3.

“Fourteen years ago, I took over a program that was struggling for the most part,” Buzea – who was offensive coordinator at Portage before taking the head job – said. “They were coming off a sectional title, but had 10 lettermen and just two starters coming back. Everyone wondered why I wanted to take the Portage job. They thought I couldn’t win there. But I thought we could and we got to work and before you knew it we were playing in the state championship game. That’s the only way I now how to go about things.”

Buzea did make the state title game going 13-1 in his first season leading the Indians, but even though they weren’t the team they became, they were better off than the Wolves are currently.

Portage was coming off an 8-4 season and had gone 27-22 in the previous five years. Michigan City is coming off a 1-9 season having gone 16-35 in the past five seasons. While it’s seems true there is a good amount of talent and potential at Michigan City, it has never really been realized.

“It’s exciting,” Buzea said. “The intrigue of going to a Penn, Ben Davis or Warren Central isn’t there for me, it’s been done there. It hasn’t been done here and before you end your career you want to look for the biggest challenge and see what you can do. This is certainly a challenge, but there is a lot of other things that go into it. I am looking forward to taking the challenge on.”

There are clearly other issues beside football that led Buzea to make a career change. Portage is under IHSAA probation for an assistant coach recruiting a player and Buzea came under fire from the Portage administration when it thought he tampered with the process of hiring a new boys basketball coach. Buzea was cleared of wrongdoing in both cases, but tensions remained between him and an unsettled situation at the top of the Portage athletic program. Portage still doesn’t have a permanent athletic director in place and has lost many coaches in recent years.

Those factors made the Michigan City opening more attractive to the successful coach. He had a personal relationship with athletic director Bob Falls and after meeting with superintendent Michael Harding decided it was time for a change.

“I am extremely excited by the opportunity Michigan City schools have given me,” Buzea said. “I have been asked many times why I am making this move, the best thing I can come up with is to compliment (Michigan City). At Portage, I am leaving the best team I have had in 14 years. I am leaving the best athlete I have had. I am leaving great quality individuals. My daughters are a year or two from leaving school. I was not going to leave unless there was a tremendous opportunity. As a talked to Bear (Falls), I got more and more intrigued throughout the process. This is not about football, it’s about people.”

On the football side, Buzea has already started the process of trying to turn the Wolves into a contender as he met with the team Wednesday and started implementing his system immediately. He has limited knowledge about his personnel from playing against the current players, but said he didn’t want to put any time tables on when he thinks the Wolves will start winning. He plans to work closely with the feeder programs for future seasons, but he doesn’t want to count out the group he’s getting to know now.

“My personal thought in that is we are not going to put a timetable on anything,” Buzea said. “We are going to work as hard as we can in what we believe in and that’s all you can do. If I come in here and say we are going to be good in three or four years, we are doing a disservice to the players we have now.

“We are going to start putting our system in (this past Wednesday) if that’s quick enough.”

Buzea’s system is a little different from what Michigan City is used to. On offense, he tries to use a lot of deception to mask what he hopes will be a power running team that passes to mix things up.

“We’re a multi-dimensional team,” Holmes said. “We have about 60 different formations in my concept of ‘multiple simplicity.’ For the defense, it will look like a lot more than we are giving them. You have to run the ball to be successful, but it is a lot of fun to throw it too. We are going to stretch the field from sideline-to-sideline.”

Being an offensive guy, his defensive concept is much simpler. He will scrap the 3-5 that the Wolves ran in past seasons for either a 4-4 or a 3-4 depending on the players’ skills.

“Defensively, we are going to be aggressive, we are not going to complicate things,” he said. “We are going to get the ball as quickly as we can and arrive in a bad mood.”

No matter what changes Buzea makes and how much success he can bring quickly to Michigan City, it’s unlikely the Wolves will be as competitive as the Indians next season or in the immediate future. But that’s something that he’s OK with.

“Portage is going to be as good as any program in the state the next few years, I will take pride in that,” Buzea said.

They can throw any coach in there and be fine. It was a challenge to get the program there and it will be a challenge to get this team there.

“We are very excited.”

Craig Buzea

All-time record: 107-45

Sectional record: 26-7

Sectional titles: 5

Semistate titles: 1

DAC titles: 6

Last job: Head coach at Portage

History: Head coach at Portage (13 years)

A whole new world
The conference records of the teams in the Duneland Conference in the past 13 years (Buzea’s tenure at Portage).

Team W-L

Portage 65-26

Valparaiso 58-33

Merrillville 56-35

La Porte 47-44

Crown Point 43-48

Chesterton 40-51

Michigan City 17-74

(Lake Central is 2-26 since replacing Hobart in 2003)

[Southsider2k12]

Two-a-days have started for MCHS football! August 10th is the first scrimmage, and the 17th is the first game.

[Roger Kaputnik]

Boys Cross Country starts right around there, too.