One day in 1965, Danny Nee walked into his Brooklyn, N.Y., home and found his parents talking to some guy named Al McGuire about some university called Marquette in some place known as Milwaukee.
Nee, then a starter on the basketball team at now-defunct Power Memorial High School and a teammate of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then Lew Alcindo), didn't even know where Milwaukee was, much less who this McGuire guy was.
Before long, Nee had signed on to play for an unfamiliar coach at a place he couldn't locate on a map.
"I came to Marquette strictly because of Al," Nee said. "He was so charming. He just drew people to him."
Forty years later, Nee finds himself in McGuire's position, making house calls during recruiting season and trying to charm his way into the hearts of the players he believes will help his program succeed.
Now the head basketball coach at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pa., Nee has spent his coaching career observing the methods and manners of others.
"I've found that the best way of learning is finding a very successful person, borrowing their philosophies, and piecing them (all) together," Nee said.
As part of McGuire's first recruiting class, Nee witnessed the Marquette legend's coaching style up-close, though Nee never actually got to play for him.
At that time, freshman weren't eligible to play on the varsity roster, so Nee played on the freshman squad under the guidance of another Marquette coaching great, Hank Raymonds.
"Danny was tremendously competitive," Raymonds said. "He played very large, even though he wasn't all that tall."
While Nee could make up for his physical shortcomings with effort and determination on the court, he found it more difficult to adjust to his struggles off it.
Nee had a tough time adapting to the academic demands of college life and received little financial support from his family.
"I was not equiped emotionally or mentally to stay on my own at that point," Nee said.
So at the end of his freshman year, Nee dropped out of school and joined the U.S. Marine Corps. Two years later, Nee left the military with an honorable discharge, having served his country in Vietnam.
After earning a degree in English and physical education at St. Mary of the Plains College in Dodge City, Kan. in 1971, Nee set off in search of a job.
"I found out that if I was willing to coach, I had a better chance of getting a teaching job," Nee said.
While spending the next four years coaching cross country, track and basketball and teaching at a high school in New Jersey, Nee realized where his deepest passions lay.
"The candle was lit," Nee said. "After the high school stint, I knew that I didn't like the teaching part as much as I liked the coaching."
From 1976 to 1980, Nee worked as an assistant basketball coach under Digger Phelps at Notre Dame. Over those four seasons, Nee watched and learned the intricacies of Phelps' schemes and then parted ways to test out those schemes on his own.
Nee's first head coaching opportunity came at Ohio University, where in six seasons, he led the Bobcats to two NCAA tournament appearances.
In 1986, Nee left to take the head coaching position at the University of Nebraska, where he would stay for 14 years and break the school record for wins with 254. Five of Nee's Cornhusker squads earned NCAA tournament bids.
After a brief stint at Robert Morris University in 2000-'01, Nee became the head coach at Duquesne.
Over 33 seasons as a basketball coach, Nee has moved from place to place, soaking up the knowledge of surrounding coaches and infusing it into his own plans.
After years of reflecting on the charisma of McGuire and the schemes of Phelps, Nee has developed a coaching style of his own.
"Danny's teams have a lot of intensity without him doing a lot of screaming," Phelps said. "He gets the most out of his players' talent."
The once-Marquette freshman who performed beyond his natural ability is now coaching his players to do the same.