STAND-UP GUY
MENTION THE NAME “WILEY BROWN”
anywhere in Kentuckiana, and there’s a good
chance someone in the room knows him and
watched him play ball: first, basketball at the
University of Louisville, and later, football for the
NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles, or -- perhaps -- even
as the originator of the high five?
Now, the head basketball coach for IUS’s men’s
basketball team – and the winningest one in the
program’s history – Brown talked to Extol about
his legacy, local lore and leadership.
Hailing from Sylvester, Georgia, Brown was
recruited by UofL to play basketball for Denny
Crum in the late 1970s. Yes, he’s the same Wiley
Brown who played on the 1980 NCAA UofL
winning team, besting UCLA 59 to 54. He’s also
the same Wiley Brown who played defensive
end for two seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles
before suffering a knee injury and opting to
return to basketball, playing around the globe
with various leagues. And, some would have
it, he also originated the high five move with a
teammate at UofL.
“We won the (NCAA) championship in 1980,
and that’s when the high-five thing came along,”
Brown says. “We had some very fortunate players
who could jump, and (were) very athletic and
were very good players. It didn’t make (any)
sense for us to do low fives when we could jump
up and do high fives.
“It all came about with Derek Smith, who was a
very, very good friend of mine who passed away.
One of us stuck our hand out – I can’t remember
which one of us – and the other one said, ‘no, up
top!’ So we invented that right then and there.”
(Go ahead and hit up the term “high five” on
Google. We’ll wait.)
“The reason it got so famous was because we
played a lot of national television games back
in the ’80s and it was very well-publicized when
you can get a lot of games like we played on TV,”
Brown says. “That’s how it got so big and became
40 EXTOL : FEBRUARY/MARCH 2020
a national thing to do.”
In 1992, Brown returned to UofL to earn a
degree in communications, and “fortunately,
I got a job there,” he says. “I was (coaching) up
under Denny Crum, who I played for, for a long
time, and then when Rick Pitino came in, I was
up under him for a while.”
Today, Brown serves as the men’s basketball
coach at IUS, where he’s coached for the past
13 years. “I’ve been enjoying myself,” he says. “I
always wanted to do coaching. … Fortunately,
we’ve been doing well since I started here. But
when I first came here, we had to go out and
search (for players). We do a lot of recruiting in
the Southern Indiana and Kentuckiana area. …
Louisville, Kentucky, Bellarmine and all those
other big schools that recruit can’t get all the
players. Fortunately, we get some of those kids.”
As a head coach, Brown also serves as de facto
dad to many of his young players, some of whom
are just out of high school. “I love seeing these
young freshmen come in and become young men
and be able to take care of their families at the
end of the day,” he says. “Getting their degree,
that’s the most important part of it. I tell them
that all the time. I’ve won a championship, I’ve
been all over the world playing professional
sports, but when I got my degree, that was my
most important success story.”
And the world, Brown says, is not always kind.
“At the end of the day, it’s not all about
basketball,” Brown says. “The kids that I get,
most of them aren’t going to get the chance to
play professional sports. They can develop their
life skills and be successful at a job out there
and be able to take care of their families. They
come in, and they’re not fully developed yet.
They become men in the four or five years that
they’re here, look people in the eye and make
great decisions. That’s what I love.”
And that love for others deserves a high five.