A coaching staff that Crean credited for not only his but the team’s success multiple times all went its separate ways to seek a new future, but still are in contact with each other according to assistant coach Jeff Strohm, who was the new guy on the staff last season.

Horn and Stevens “called us (after the St. John’s) game and asked us how everything was going,” Strohm said. “We all still call each other from time to time.”

This season, Bo Ellis and Brian Wardle, like Horn and Stevens, have returned to their alma mater.

Ellis and Wardle both had amazing careers at Marquette, with Ellis leaving as one of the school’s top scorers and rebounders in 1978 and Wardle as another Marquette great who finished as the school’s third leading scorer with 1,690 points.

Ellis was an assistant coach at Marquette after his NBA career, serving under Bob Dukiet, Kevin O’Neill and Mike Deane from 1988-’98. In 1998, he left Marquette for a head coaching job at Chicago State for five seasons but was fired in January after a 23-104 record.

Wardle joins the staff as the director of basketball operations. Wardle played in the NBDL and the CBA following his time at Marquette. He averaged 18.8 points in the 2000-’01 season as a senior, ranking second in Conference USA.

Kyle Green, the only new face on the staff who does not have a history with Marquette, said his reason for being here all started with a simple how do you do.

While on a recruiting trail in Madison, Green met Crean and Stevens at an open gym game and struck up a conversation.

“It was hard to not be drawn in by his enthusiasm for the game and for Marquette,” Green said.

Green said he ran into Crean a couple more times throughout the 2002-’03 season and when there was an opening, Crean called Green personally and offered him the job.

“I thought, ‘Would I ever get another chance like this?'” he said.

Green was a recruiting coordinator at Northern Iowa and held his first head coaching position at Western State College in Gunnison, Colo.

Green said he had never been on the Marquette campus before, but was intrigued with its atmosphere.

“I’d never seen a campus with so much support for their team,” Green said. “This campus community is very unified.”

The three new coaches will help Crean in his test for bringing back the success the team had last season.