William Clifford Musselman (September 13, 1940 – May 5, 2000) was an American basketball coach in the NCAA, the ABA, the WBA, the CBA, and the NBA.
Musselman was the second of five children. His father, Clifford Musselman, was an auto mechanic and band promoter. His mother, Bertha (Combs) Miller, later married James Miller. The young Musselman played basketball, football, and baseball at Wooster High School in Wooster, Ohio. When he graduated in 1958, he was the school's second all-time leading scorer. After high school, he attended Wittenberg College (now Wittenberg University) in Springfield, Ohio, where he played basketball for Ray Mears.
Kent State University High School
In 1963, at the age of 23, Musselman was hired as the head men's basketball coach at Kent State University High School in Kent, Ohio. In Musselman's first season of coaching, the KSUHS Statesmen finished 14–5 and earned a share of the conference title.
In 1964, after one season of coaching high school basketball, Musselman was hired to assist with the football and basketball teams at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio. In August 1965, Ashland's head basketball coach left for another coaching position. With only a few months before the start of the 1965–66 season, Musselman was promoted to head coach. In his first season, at the age of 25, he guided the Eagles to a 10–10 record. Over the next five seasons, Musselman's Ashland teams had a collective record of 109–20.
While at Ashland, Musselman's teams reached the NCAA College Division Tournament (the predecessor to the current Division II and Division III Tournaments) four times and had 13 All-America players. His 1968–69 Ashland team allowed an NCAA-record-low 33.9 points per game.
University of Minnesota (NCAA)
Following the 1970–71 season, Musselman left Ashland for the University of Minnesota.
In 1971–72, he led the Gophers to an 18–7 record and their first Big Ten Championship in 53 years with a roster featuring Dave Winfield, Jim Brewer, Bobby Nix, Keith Young, Clyde Turner, Corky Taylor, and Ron Behagen. The Gophers lost to Florida State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, 70–56, before rebounding in the Midwest Region Consolation Round, downing Marquette, 77–72.
The following season (1972–73), Musselman guided the Gophers to a 21–5 mark. Minnesota began the season ranked fourth in the nation and ranked as high as No. 3 in the country in March 1973.
During the 1973–74 campaign, the Gophers dropped to 12–12 under Musselman. His starting lineup that season featured Flip Saunders, who would go on to have a successful NBA coaching career.
In his fourth and final season at Minnesota, Musselman's team went 18–8 and included a roster of future NBA players Mychal Thompson, Mark Landsberger, and Mark Olberding. His overall coaching record at Minnesota is 61–32 with a .656 winning percentage. During Musselman's time at the University of Minnesota, home attendance increased from 4,000 per game to nearly 18,000 per game, according to The New York Times.
Musselman's tenure at Minnesota was tainted. There was an incident during the 1971–72 season when Taylor and Behagen assaulted Ohio State center Luke Witte. The attack on Witte came near the end of the Gophers-Buckeyes game. Witte was seriously injured, taken off the court on a stretcher and hospitalized with injuries, including to an eye, that negatively impacted his basketball career. Two other Ohio State players were also hospitalized as a result of the brawl. Musselman maintained that he had nothing to do with the incident. Still, critics claimed he had stirred his players into a frenzy before the game that night and encouraged overly aggressive play. A September 1, 1985, article in The New York Times described Musselman's Gophers as "an extremely physical basketball team."
After Musselman left to coach in the ABA, the NCAA placed the Gophers on probation after discovering more than 100 rule violations.
On July 28, 1975, Musselman left the college ranks to join the pro game when he was hired to coach the San Diego Sails of the American Basketball Association. The team only lasted for 11 games of the 1975–76 season before folding with a 3–8 record.
According to the book Obsession, by Bill Heller, Musselman signed a three-year contract worth more than $135,000, considerably more than the $23,000 salary he had received at the University of Minnesota.
A week after the ABA's San Diego franchise folded on November 11, 1975, Musselman was hired to coach the league's Virginia Squires. Musselman went 4–22 with the Squires before he was replaced by Jack Ankerson on January 21, 1976.
In the book Obsession, by Bill Heller, Musselman said, "I found the players [in Virginia] were talking more about the [team's] financial troubles than basketball. They worried more about the next payroll than they did about the next practice. It was difficult for them to concentrate on basketball."