Walberg Vows to Make Waves at Pepperdine
It didn’t take long for Vance Walberg to realize that his latest coaching stop would be followed with great interest by more than the usual suspects in the Pepperdine men’s basketball community.
“The first day I had 13 JC coaches call me up and say, ‘Don’t screw this up,’ ” Walberg, the longtime high school and junior college coach with no previous Division I college experience, said Thursday in Malibu after being introduced as the Waves’ 12th head coach.
But Walberg doesn’t intend to feel the pressure as much as he does apply it, using the same frenetic style that helped him compile a 133-11 record and win a state championship in four seasons at Fresno City College.
“We’re going to press from the beginning to the end of the game,” said Walberg, vowing to use at least 11 players each game. “We press on makes and misses. It’s a complete up-tempo [style] and we just get after it from baseline to baseline.”
Walberg, 49, who described his offensive philosophy as “shoot, shoot, shoot some more,” said he expected the Waves to qualify for the NCAA tournament by his second year and be ranked in the top 25 by his third year, lofty projections for a program that went 7-20 last season in Paul Westphal’s final year and has not been to the NCAA tournament since the 2001-02 season.
“The biggest thing is going to be that transition year, that first year, because it’s going to be a shellshock for a lot of these guys,” said Walberg, whose son Jason will be a senior guard next year for West Coast Conference rival St. Mary’s.
“They’re good kids, they know what to do, but they’re going to be pushed to a level they’ve never been pushed to before. Once they get that behind them, you’re going to see some good things happen.”
Walberg said he did not expect the Waves to match the scoring output of his Fresno City teams, which averaged more than 100 points, but he said, “if these guys do their job right” they would average between 80 and 85 points and be ranked in the top seven in the country in scoring.
Freshman guard Michael Gerrity, one of five returning players who started at least 10 games last season, said the Waves were eager to learn Walberg’s system. They will get to spend 10 days under his tutelage before leaving on a European tour this summer.
“Everything we know about Coach Walberg and his system seems fun and exciting, so we’re ready to get started,” Gerrity said. “His expectations are to give 110[%] every time we’re out there. He wants us to play at his [definition of] hard, so that’s what we have to get to and find out what it is.”
Pepperdine has a history of promoting coaches without previous Division I college experience, including Jim Harrick and Lorenzo Romar. Wave Athletic Director John Watson said Walberg’s sustained coaching success and passion separated him from the other candidates.
“My expectations are that he’ll give a full effort and bring out that passion in our players,” Watson said of Walberg, a finalist last year for the Fresno State job. “We hope to have a better record than we had this year, but I don’t expect a national championship next year.”
Walberg said he hoped to complete his coaching staff with Loren LeBeau, an assistant at Fresno City, as well as two assistants with Division I experience.
