This past season turned out very well for Adrian and his Edgewood College team, which won the Northern Athletics Conference title, and then beat WIAC champion UW-River Falls in the first round of the NCAA Division III tournament.
Adrian's back at UWEC on Monday, as he is the first of four finalists to interview this time around. He says while he's happy in his current position, the opportunity to coach at UW-Eau Claire is unique.
"I'm happy," says Adrian, "and I love our guys at Edgewood and I'm really appreciative of all the work they put in and how they've treated us at Edgewood College, and in Madison, but having said that, this [UWEC] is one of the few jobs that I would move my family for, and put away the resume paper and lose those files, because I'm not applying anywhere else, this is it, because it has everything that anyone in the Division III level could possibly want, on and off the court, so it's not a destination job, it's more of a dream job."
When it comes to recruiting, Adrian says his goal is to build a figurative fence around the area, while still maximizing his contacts around the state and beyond.
Adrian says, "I want to make the Eau Claire Blugolds men's basketball program a lot like Tonja's [UWEC women's basketball coach Tonja Englund], the epicenter of basketball in the Chippewa Valley and in this region, including Minnesota. I think thirteen years ago when I came into this state, anybody that was a really good basketball player and that was good academically was going to Eau Claire, there was no other option, and that's what my goal is, for the state of Wisconsin, to be that way, and then also, our neighbors to the west, where there's a lot of talented players."
"We're going to have to get in the car," says Adrian, "we're going to go shake some hands and tell people what we're doing over here. It's going to be hard to tell us no, I can tell you that much, with as much work as our staff's going to do, and then the great kids that we already have in the program."
Todd Adrian's been the head coach at Edgewood since 2006. From '03-'06, he was an assistant at UW-Platteville, and prior to that, an assistant at Lakeland.
Tuesday, Ashford University (IA) head coach and former Blugolds assistant Oliver Drake is on campus at UWEC for his interviews.
