Baylor Bear Insider
Tony Greene went against the grain.
Growing up in the football-crazed state of Texas, where you pick up a football before you can walk, Greene was the only basketball player in a family with eight brothers and a sister.
"Everybody played football," said Greene, who parlayed his basketball skills into a college education and a 27-year coaching career, joining Nicki Collen's staff at Baylor this summer. "I'm a little different. I started out playing football and didn't really start playing basketball until I was in the 7th grade. But, all of my brothers played football."
A star point guard at Dallas Roosevelt High School, Tony made three college stops at Cedar Valley Community College, East Central Oklahoma and Langston University, finishing under former New Mexico State head coach Weldon Drew.
"Basketball tricked me into graduating from college," he said. "I grew up thinking that I was going pro. After my senior year, I was so close to graduating, I said, 'I might as well take these last six or nine hours I need.' But, basketball was always the carrot out in front of me that I was chasing."
Greene planned on chasing his professional dreams, getting a contract offer from a team overseas. But, an academic advisor at Langston encouraged him to finish his degree first, because "I don't know how long you can make this money."
"That lady changed my life," Tony said of Rosalind Washington. "I really wanted to go overseas, but she called my mom. I'm serious. She told my mom I was about to make a mistake, and she needed to talk some sense into me. Miss Washington steered me in the right direction and guided me where I needed to be. And I ended up finishing my degree."
Going somewhat against the grain again, Greene stayed on at Langston as a graduate assistant with the women's basketball program. He became the Lady Lions' first full-time assistant the next year and stayed with coach Donnita Drain-Rogers for 17 years, following her to Grambling State for the last four (2008-12).
"I always kid with her that she's my best friend, but I'm not sure if I'm her best friend," Greene said. "She had been a high school head coach in Texas when Langston hired her. We were both rookies on the college level together. We made a lot of mistakes and we made a lot of adjustments, and it was great growing through the good times and the bad times with her."
As the only assistant at Langston, an NAIA school in Oklahoma, Greene did everything from washing the uniforms to sweeping the gym floor to offensive and defensive schemes to scouting and recruiting. "I even went door-to-door selling ads, and we designed our own game program. At that level, we did it all," he said.
Langston made six NAIA Division I National Tournament appearances with Drain-Rogers and Greene at the helm, including a trip to the Elite Eight in 2007, and went undefeated in conference over the last two seasons.
Making the leap with Drain-Rogers to the NCAA Division I level at Grambling, Greene helped get the program "going in the right direction" and signed a 2012 recruiting class that was ranked No. 42 overall and ninth-best among mid-major programs.
"That's pretty unheard of at that level," Greene said. "We signed a couple top-100 kids there, which was great."
Joining Cynthia Cooper at Texas Southern, Greene was part of a last-to-first transformation, leading the Tigers to a SWAC regular-season championship and their first WNIT appearance. When Cooper left to take the head job at USC, Greene was promoted to associate head coach under Johnetta Hayes-Perry and made two more WNIT appearances
Joining Tricia Cullop at Toledo in 2015, Greene helped the Rockets make their first NCAA Tournament appearance in 15 years with a 25-win season and an upset of Northern Illinois in the Mid-American Conference championship game.
"That was Tricia's first time ever making the tournament, so I got the opportunity to share that with her and our staff in my second year there," Greene said.
Returning closer to his roots, Greene spent two seasons at Ole Miss, "which was a great opportunity for me to see how good I could be at recruiting and coaching and developing kids at the Power 5 level," he said.
While the Rebels suffered through two losing seasons, Greene helped bring in a recruiting class that was ranked No. 1 in the SEC and 13th nationally with a pair of five-star prospects. That was the core of a team that made it to the WNIT championship game last season.
Joining Megan Duffy's staff at Marquette, Greene helped lead the Golden Eagles to a 19-7 record overall, a runner-up finish in the Big East and an NCAA Tournament appearance, losing to Virginia Tech in the first round.
"I focused on defense at Texas Southern and was Tricia's defensive coordinator at Toledo," Greene said. "Megan gave me the opportunity to look at both sides and give suggestions from both sides of the ball. I enjoyed everything about Marquette and working for Megan . . . besides the winters. The winter was a bit much, but we had a group great group of girls to coach and the administration supported us 110%. It was a great setup."
The other difficult part was the 17-hour drive from Milwaukee to Dallas, where his parents still live.
"When we decided to leave Mississippi and go to Marquette, we drove through Dallas and Oklahoma from Mississippi, just to see our family before we actually moved up," Tony said. "I hugged my dad, and he cried. That's the first time my dad ever cried on one of my moves. That affected me so much that my wife and I prayed about it and put it on our vision board that we wanted to move to a Power 5 school close to Dallas."
Not only did Baylor fit the bill on that end, the Lady Bears are "one of the top five programs in the country when it comes to women's basketball," Greene said. "Coach (Kim) Mulkey did an awesome job taking this school to a level that a lot of people probably didn't even imagine it could go to."
When Collen was hired from the WNBA's Atlanta Dream to follow Mulkey, she took her time in building a staff, hiring Greene as an assistant coach nearly a month after plucking Oklahoma State grad Tari Cummings from Arkansas-Fort Smith.
"One thing I've learned about Coach Nicki is that she takes her time and makes sure it's right," Greene said. "It's hard to believe that anybody can rush her. Maybe her kids. But, she has her own pace, and she made that very clear to me the first time we ever talked on the phone. And I'll be honest, we didn't talk a lot of basketball. Which was pretty cool."
A first-time head coach on the college level, Collen says Greene is a "great fit for Baylor's mission of preparing champions for life."
"I'm a big believer in everybody doing a little bit of everything," Collen said of Greene's role. "I'm not going to say I hired you because of X, Y and Z. He may be more focused on the defensive side of the ball and he's going to work with our guards from a player development/skill development perspective. But, I hired him because of his overall knowledge. And we're all recruiting. We're all out there pounding the pavement."
Making his sixth move in 13 years, Greene said the transition to Waco "was the first time out of all my moves that everybody was happy."
"My kids were happy, my wife was happy, my parents were happy," he said. "When I was younger, the distance really didn't bother me as much. When my kids were younger, the distance didn't really bother me as much. But now that my youngest daughter (Anieya) is going into her senior year of high school, the distance started to bother my kids, which affected me."
Tony and his wife, Aniece, have four daughters, Toni, Nadia, De Naijia and Anieya; one son, Charm; and two grandchildren. Nadia is a senior sprinter on the track team at Oklahoma Baptist and De Naijia is a sophomore nursing major at Langston.
As for any career or personal goals, Greene said he once dreamed of being a head coach by the time he was 35. But now that he's 50, Tony says he's "learned to sort of stay out of my own way and listen to the voice from the man upstairs."
"I just want to walk in his purpose," Greene said. "I understand there's a reason why I'm here. Sometimes it's not about basketball. Sometimes it's not about my job. My kids may have needed to be in Ohio. My wife and I have tried to instill in our kids: Let's not look at moving as a negative thing. What's our purpose? It may be a classmate, it may be a co-worker, that we need to have an impact on. Let's find our purpose and be good stewards and do the right thing."
Returning two starters from a 28-2 team that made it to the Elite Eight, the Lady Bears will open the season with exhibition games against Texas A&M-Commerce (Oct. 27) and West Texas A&M (Nov. 3) before tipping off the regular season with a home game against Texas State on Nov. 9 at the Ferrell Center.
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