Featured Testimonial About Creighton University
By Jon Nyatawa
Creighton associate men’s basketball coach Alan Huss knows what you’re thinking. And yes, he can admit that he’s allowed himself to momentarily ponder the incredible thrill of what lies ahead for him, as improbable as it still feels.
He will be the next head coach of Creighton’s basketball program.
That is happening. Someday. Perhaps sooner than later.
There’s no official countdown clock on display to indicate the status of Greg McDermott’s eventual retirement. The Bluejays’ all-time winningest men’s basketball coach (and the architect of the program’s recent rise to national prominence) will decide when it’s time, when he’s ready to hand the reigns over to his protégé. Maybe next season. Maybe two or three years.
Until then, McDermott’s fully in charge. Just like the last time Huss was here on staff (from 2017-2023). And Huss, who gave up a successful head-coaching gig to return to an associate head coach role at his alma mater, said he’s perfectly comfortable with this dynamic.
“Mostly, it’s been business as usual, and it’s been a lot of fun,” Huss said.
The culture and atmosphere that McDermott’s established for coaches working within his program is a major reason why. There’s no need for Huss to daydream about what he might do in the future — he can scheme up new tactics and strategies to implement now. McDermott’s always encouraged his assistant coaches to think like head coaches, even if they can’t have the final say every day.
Huss runs practices. He takes the lead on recruiting evaluations. He dives into the film and the numbers to help players get better. He brainstorms new ideas to utilize in game plans.
“It really is a collaborative setting with a sound methodology, where we as a staff go through our meetings or our game-planning process and we work through it all together,” Huss said. “Coach Mac is never going to say ‘no’ just for the sake of telling you ‘no.’ It’s your job to present your approach and your plan, rooted in facts and data.
“By the end of it, everybody walks out of that room all in lockstep — if we’ve changed course or if we haven’t, we understand why. And Coach Mac, he’s a maestro in that space.”
Huss says he’s just grateful he gets to soak up a few more lessons from a legend.
After all, when Huss took the High Point head coaching job in 2023, he says he essentially tried to recreate the best traits of the Creighton program at his new institution. It was more challenging than he realized, Huss said.
But his efforts produced unprecedented results. Huss led the Panthers to back-to-back regular season Big South Conference championships, twice won the league’s coach of the year award and helped High Point earn its first NCAA Tournament berth in 2025.
Several Division I programs looking for new head coaches reached out to Huss during his tenure. He quickly became a rising star in the profession.
It’s why McDermott wanted Huss back at Creighton, for the long haul.
In April, Huss was named an associate head coach and the coach in waiting. It was announced then that when McDermott retires, Huss will take over. The succession plan isn’t a new concept in college sports — but it is rare. Often, its effectiveness is determined by the cohesiveness and the vision of the coaches involved.
Huss and McDermott have been aligned for a long time. There’s mutual respect. They have symmetrical mentalities. They both love the game, and the chance to help young men grow on and off the court.
What McDermott says he’s always most appreciated about Huss, though, is his ability to think outside the box.
During his first stint as an assistant, Huss helped the Bluejays win a share of their first BIG EAST Conference regular season title in 2020 and reach the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight in 2023.
Huss was integral in ensuring Creighton was ready for a new college sports landscape in 2021, when student-athletes began benefiting financially from their name, image and likeness. The Bluejay players actually ended up partnering with a marketing agency that year and hosted their own fan fest event at CHI Health Center Omaha.
Huss built the key relationships to ensure Creighton won major recruiting battles. He led the charge as the program moved to incorporate analytics and advanced statistics as a guiding tool within its player development models and game-planning strategies.
On the court, Huss has always had a knack for offensive ingenuity. He and McDermott masterfully created a perimeter-based attack to highlight the strengths of the 2019-2020 championship Bluejay team, overcoming its severe lack of height and size. McDermott was named the BIG EAST Coach of the Year that season.
A couple of years later, McDermott shared a classic mid-timeout conversation he had with Huss that showcased the all-too-common nature of their everyday exchanges.
Huss, in the heat of the moment, prefaced his suggestion with a tongue-in-cheek caveat — “you’re going to think I’m crazy.” Then he proposed that Creighton put the ball in the hands of a freshman reserve to clinch a double-overtime win at Marquette. McDermott went with Huss’ plan and the rookie delivered, guiding in a layup with 17 seconds left.
“A good coach is always bringing ideas to the table and Al's one of the best at that,” McDermott says. “He spends a lot of time studying the game, studying people that he respects, and studying systems that are successful — and then he’s always thinking about how we can take what they do and make it fit with how we play, without reinventing the wheel.”
It's no wonder the transition back to Creighton has worked out so well for Huss in preparing for this season.
There’s a lot of places to focus your attention as a coach dedicated to helping this program succeed. The Bluejays are replacing one of the best players in program history, Ryan Kalkbrenner, and they’re doing it with a reshaped roster full of newcomers.
If you let him, Huss could go on and on about his priority list …
Do we have the personnel to blitz pick-and-roll screens and double team ball handlers on the perimeter? Can we be a team that plays multiple defenses in a game? Should we? How fast can we play? Do our guys understand our non-negotiables on offense? What drills might help them in practice?
When his mind wanders, this is usually where it goes. Not multiple years forward. But right now — how do we get better today?
“When Al was here before, especially the last few years that he was with us, he had a voice in a lot of what we did, just like other assistant coaches have had,” McDermott says. “And now that he's back and he's been the head coach, I think he's got probably a more complete understanding of the chair that I sit in. From that standpoint, it’s made him even better.”
And Huss still sees so many ways that he can keep growing. That’s his humility surfacing, and it often ends up being a driving force for him to avoid complacency.
He’s not joking when he says he can’t believe how his professional arc has played out. He played four years at Creighton from 1997 to 2001. He graduated with a business degree and took a “real” job back home in Illinois — but a local varsity basketball coach sat him down at a summer festival and persuaded him to coach the high school freshman team.
From there, Huss began building prep school programs, including the now-powerhouse La Lumiere in Indiana. He was an assistant at New Mexico before joining McDermott’s Creighton staff.
“The fact that I get to do this at all, I just count my blessings,” Huss says. “I'm thankful because I know that there are so many coaches, so many people that I have worked with and competed against, who don’t get the big breaks.”
And now Huss is home again, working for a man he admires, within a program that means so much to him. He’s the head coach in waiting, for however long it takes. He couldn’t be happier about it.
“Had it not been my alma mater, had it not been Coach Mac, I would've hung the phone up at anybody else who asked me to do this,” Huss says. “But I’m so incredibly grateful to be back. I’m still kind of laughing at all of it, actually, because I don’t know how the heck I’ve been so lucky.”
