Paulus changing culture at Niagara, one day, one game at a time

In first season at Niagara, Greg Paulus has Purple Eagles positioned for best long-term standing in MAAC in almost a decade. (Photo by The Buffalo News)

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — To the casual observer, watching and listening to Greg Paulus conduct himself as a coach may evoke comparisons to one of the all-time greats in college basketball, a winner of over 1,100 games, five national championships, and the man under whom Paulus — now in his first season as the head coach at Niagara University — once played as a point guard in the mid-2000s.

The Mike Krzyzewski influence is profound when observing the 33-year-old Paulus, one of the youngest head coaches in the nation. His coaching style, mannerisms, inflections, and even the little things such as addressing the media on a first-name basis all draw similarities to Coach K and his four-decade tenure at Duke, where Paulus turned down North Carolina to play four years for the Blue Devils. All of those things, though, are part of one single goal for Paulus in his new endeavor at Niagara, to create a lasting culture at one of the harder Division I schools to recruit to and enjoy prolonged success at.

“Our individuals and our team have shown great growth throughout the year,” Paulus remarked before the Purple Eagles face Rider Thursday in the quarterfinals of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament. “To finish in the top six certainly strives to what we would like build on, and our team has done a good job of working hard. We’ve tried to lay down the foundation for what we want our program to stand for in the future.”

“We’re trying to create a foundation, we’re trying to create a culture, and our guys — from the very first day — have been two feet in, and as a result, they’ve seen tremendous individual growth, team growth, and our program has taken steps forward. It’s been fun to watch our belief, our growth, our ability to be connected as a group, and as a result of it, some really good things have happened.”

Niagara has struggled in recent years since Joe Mihalich left for Hofstra in 2013, only finishing over .500 once since then, in the 2017-18 season. Thrust into the job two weeks before the season started after Patrick Beilein resigned for personal reasons, Paulus did have a long-term vision, but approached it incrementally in the hope that it would lead to a greater payoff.

“At that time, I wasn’t thinking about that,” he admitted. “When the opportunity came, which I was so grateful for, the first thing that I focused on was our players and spending time with them, making sure that they knew that we were going to support them, believe in them, continue to push them and challenge them to get better. It was day by day. That’s what our mindset was and where it’s been.”

“That’s something that we want, to create a program that’s about something bigger than one person. Moving forward with our program in the time to come, when we have a chance to look back at this first year, it’s certainly going to be one where we have laid some bricks for the foundation that we would like to have. For us, I want us to be a team that plays connected on both ends of the floor. I want us to be a team that when you turn on the television or you come to a game, that you’re proud of how hard we play and how together we are. That’s something that our guys are learning. It’s only been a few months, but we’ve certainly gotten better at that over the season.”