By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Foundation

Matt Knoll hasn't quite reached the level of Louisville's Rick Pitino in basketball or Alabama's Nick Saban in football when it comes to coaching trees.

But, Baylor's 21-year head men's tennis coach added two more branches earlier this month and might have the most impressive coaching tree in the smaller world of men's college tennis.

All told, he's had seven former assistants lead programs at 11 different NCAA Division I programs and now has four at Power 5 conference schools - Notre Dame, Purdue, LSU and North Carolina State.

"The thing about Matt is he thinks differently than everyone else," said Chris Brandi, a former Baylor assistant coach (2009-11) who was named the co-head coach at LSU with his father, Andy, on June 13. "I learned a ton about not just tennis, but in terms of how to run a team, how to think differently than everybody else and how also to do things your own way. Matt has his own style, but he doesn't think people should copy his style. He thinks people should figure out what their personality is and try to have your program fit that personality."

Part of Knoll's success, both with his own program and in developing assistants that become head coaches, is his philosophy of bringing in "really bright people" who have a desire to learn all aspects of the job and the ambition to lead their own programs.

"Guys that are bright and intellectually curious want to have a broad role. They don't want to be put into a corner and given a narrow role. They're not comfortable in that situation," said Knoll, who is 489-140 in 21 years at Baylor with 20 consecutive NCAA Tournament berths, a combined 21 Big 12 championships (13 regular-season, eight tournament), the 2004 NCAA national championship and the 2005 ITA National Indoor Championship.

"I think it's about investing in people. We invest in our players and we also invest in our coaches so that they can grow. The last thing we want is for them to be less than they were when they came. For our players, hopefully they grow and are ready to go play professional tennis, or they grow and become ready to take on a dynamic, fantastic job. And my assistants, hopefully they grow and are ready to be a coach in a big situation."

Kyle Spencer, a former Baylor assistant (2006-09) who was hired on June 14 to take the head coaching job at North Carolina State, said Knoll gives his assistants "total, open access, as it relates to everything to do with building a program, sustaining excellence, recruiting perspectives, development perspectives, scheduling."

"I felt like I was ready to go after that first year," Spencer said. "It was amazing how much I learned in that first year, just the idea of trying to get a little bit better each day. That passion he brings, it carries over. . . . He doesn't give it to you, but you earn it and learn it. And if you're passionate about it, he's a great resource for making sure you're looking at things from all perspectives."

This is actually Spencer's second head coaching job. He left Baylor after '09 to become the head coach at Maryland, where he lead the Terrapins to their first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance in 2011 and was named the Atlantic Region Coach of the Year the next season. But, men's tennis was one of seven programs cut by the athletic department after the 2011-12 school year.

"We were doing some special things, and it was a little unlucky to go into a situation not knowing that there was any remote possibility that something like that was going to happen," Spencer said. Spencer added to his resume with four years as an assistant at SMU, leading the Mustangs to back-to-back NCAA Tournament berths and a trip to the Round of 16 a year ago.

"He just needed an opportunity," Knoll said of Spencer. "Everyone in the country knows what a good coach Kyle is. The tough part is you get branded. It's the way the industry works. You get branded as an assistant at 'School X.' And then, all of a sudden, your name doesn't pop up when openings become available. But to his credit, he and Carl (Neufeld) have done a good job up at SMU and got that program going again. That's allowed him to kind of raise his profile. And once you get Kyle in an interview, he's lights-out."

Brandi and Spencer added to a coaching tree that has former Baylor player and assistant coaches Pawel Gajdzik and Dominik Mueller at Purdue and Old Dominion, respectively, and former assistant coach Ryan Sachire now in his fourth season as the head coach at his alma mater, Notre Dame.

"When Bobby Bayliss, the coach at Notre Dame at the time, called me and said, 'Hey, Matt, I'm just giving you a heads-up, I'd like to talk to Ryan about being my assistant,' my first thought was he wouldn't go," Knoll said of Sachire, leaving to become Notre Dame's assistant coach in 2006. "That's where I was a little naïve. In the moment, I didn't see clearly that that's his school and his wife's school. His wife was a cheerleader when he was a great tennis player there. . . . They're in their dream scenario, both working at a place they love, and have had a lot of success."

Gajdzik was one of the key pieces in Knoll's amazing "worst to first" turnaround at Baylor, helping the Bears earn their first NCAA Tournament berth in 1998, reaching the quarterfinals the next year and then winning the first Big 12 title during his senior year in 2000.

It's been a slower build for him at Purdue, but he's taken the Boilermakers to the NCAA Tournament twice in the last four years after a 12-year drought.

"Sometimes, you wish you could do it over a short period of time, but it's usually going to take a few years, maybe two or three recruiting cycles before you get to where you want to be," said Gajdzik, who also coached one year at Northern Illinois before taking over the Purdue program in 2009. "It's not like it was 20 years ago when it was sort of unchartered territory to go somewhere overseas and get the best players. There's been a lot of NCAA changes as well. I don't think anything close to what Matt did in the late '90s at Baylor is going to happen again anytime soon."

Mueller was 19-6 in his first season at Old Dominion, losing to top-seeded Rice, 4-3, in the Conference USA Championship final. He won four regular-season Big 12 titles as a player at Baylor (2007-10) and spent one year as a volunteer assistant before being Knoll's assistant coach for the next six seasons.

"He's off and running there," Knoll said of Mueller. "That's a school that's never been to the NCAA Tournament. It's hard to go in in one year and change everything. But, he's building a culture, he's got a great group of guys coming back, he's got a great recruit coming in. They're building something there, and I think it's something that's very sustainable. I expect Old Dominion to be in the NCAA Tournament next year and from now on. He'll break through this year and then it will start rolling."

Sam Winterbotham, another Knoll disciple, coached at Colorado and Tennessee before being let go at the end of the 2017 season. He led the Volunteers to three SEC championships and an NCAA runner-up finish in 2010. Kevin Kowalik, Knoll's first assistant, was the head coach at Wichita State and Oregon before moving back home to Kansas City, Mo., to be a director of tennis at an area club.

"Who can fault a guy for making a family decision and going back to where he and his wife are from and making that important to him?" Knoll said.

Additionally, former volunteer assistants Michael Kokta and Robin Goodman are assistants at Arizona State and New Mexico, respectively, and Mike Fenwick is the women's assistant at Penn State.

"I think the Baylor tennis family is the most impressive in men's college tennis," Brandi said. "The former players love Matt, the former coaches love him. Every one of us would do anything we could for Matt, because we all know he would do anything for us."

Although his former assistants relish the chance to go against their former mentor - Gajdzik's Purdue Boilermakers won four of six first sets in singles before falling, 4-0, back in February - Knoll said it makes him uncomfortable.

"Once the generation of players that the coach has worked with are gone . . . I still don't like to do it," he said. "It's just tough, because it's in your head. Tennis is a little more personal, in a way. It's not 11 guys on a team, or five-on-five, it's six one-on-ones. So, it's a little more combative in that sense. But, we've played Pawel's team. And once all these guys that Dom coached get out the door, we'll probably play Dominik, too."

Other Baylor Coaching Trees:

KIM MULKEY, Women's Basketball: Richard Barron, University of Maine, 2011-17; Karen Aston, Charlotte, 2007-11, North Texas, 2011-12, Texas, 2012-present; Rheka Patterson, Southeast Missouri, 2015-present; Edsell Hamilton, East Texas Baptist, 2015-17

SCOTT DREW, Men's Basketball: Matthew Driscoll, North Florida, 2009-17; Grant McCasland, Arkansas State, 2016-17, North Texas, 2017-present; Paul Mills, Oral Roberts, 2017-present

CLYDE HART, Track: Todd Harbour, Baylor, 2006-present; Steve Gulley, Tulsa, 2000-present

Joey Scrivano, Women's Tennis: Alison Ojeda, Tennessee, 2016-present

JAY GOBLE, Women's Golf: Diana Cantu, Maryland, 2014-present