Blue White Illustrated

MANY HAPPY RETURNS A 2006 Penn State alumnus, Adam Fisher knows the Nittany Lions' men's basketball program inti- mately. He was a student manager for head coach Ed DeChellis during his un- dergraduate days, then, after stints as a graduate manager at Villanova and an assistant coach at Boston University, he was hired by Patrick Chambers to be Penn State's video coordinator and di- rector of player personnel. He left for Miami in 2013, but after eight seasons with the Hurricanes, he's back at his alma mater, having been hired by Micah Shrewsberry as the team's associate head coach. Blue White Illustrated's Nate Bauer caught up with Fisher recently to learn more about his experience in Miami, his return to Penn State, and his first weeks back with the Lions. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. BWI What specifically did you learn from Miami coach Jim Larrañaga that will prepare you for this opportunity? FISHER I learned from him how to treat people. He just treats everybody [the same], he is first class, no matter who it is. Your walk-on, your star player, the bus driver, the athletic director – he treats everybody the same, with a great amount of respect. I think that's some- thing that I will always take, the way he interacted with everybody. And his ability to stay positive, through any situation. He always would find the positive in things. We had a no- complaining policy, so when the head guy is not complaining about anything, there's no way as an assistant you're going to complain. So that made me look at things like, let's not worry about what we don't have, let's be grateful for what we do have and what we had at the University of Miami and be able to show that to people. We didn't have the best dorms, and they built brand new dorms last year, but he never made that a negative, he just talked about all the positive things that we had. BWI If you could summarize it, what style of basketball do you prefer? FISHER We're still going through it here, but I believe in an NBA-style of- fense, which is a lot of pick-and-roll, spread the floor, let players make plays. They can't be robots, and we've talked already about that. We've got to give guys freedom and space to do what they do best. So I think hopefully we're going to look into that, spreading the floor, pick-and-roll, making the right reads, and having multiple guys do it. It's not just a point guard, a two, a three, a four and five. Our four man has got to be able to handle the ball. Maybe he's in the pick-and-roll. So I think those are things that I relate to because that's what we did. We always wanted to prepare our guys for the NBA, so we did- n't want them to get lost if it's a pick- and-roll, spread-style offense right now the way it is. BWI What's your relationship with Shrewsberry and how did those first in- teractions unfold? FISHER Coach Shrewsberry was with the Celtics for six years. Coach Lar- rañaga's son was also an assistant with the Celtics. I didn't know Coach Shrewsberry that well. We had ex- changed a couple of texts here and there. And then we played Purdue in the [ACC/Big Ten] Challenge this year, so when he came to play at Miami, he came over and talked. And I always joke with him because [at Miami] I'm the offen- sive coordinator and we had 14 points at the half. Now, we did come back to beat Purdue. But we spoke that day, and I just loved his energy and got his phone number. They beat somebody and I'd be like, "Hey Coach, great win." And I knew he ran the offense there, so I might text him, "Wow, what a play on the base OB at 18:22 of the second half." But besides that, not much. I had texted him congratulations [when he got the Penn State job]. I just said, "Coach, I want to congratulate you. I'm so excited for you and your family. My alma mater is in great hands. I know you'll do great things at Penn State," not thinking anything, just like, hey, thanks. He probably got a thousand of those. And then about an hour later, he texted me, "Hey, can you talk tonight?" Again, I'm thinking maybe, "Can you help me out with anything at Penn State?" Adam Fisher couldn't envision going back to his alma mater again. Then Micah Shrewsberry called M E N ' S B A S K E T B A L L ADAM FISHER Penn State Athletics

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