West Virginia State interim athletic director Nate Burton was given a luxury not every AD gets in a search for a new women's basketball coach. He got to watch his top choice coach against West Virginia State less than two months ago.
When he watched then-Glenville State women's coach Charles Marshall guide the Pioneers against the Yellow Jackets, he saw disciplined, energetic players. That memory remained strong when Burton began his search at the beginning of March and targeted Marshall.
"Once I had an initial conversation with him and knew he was interested," Burton said, "I knew he was the guy to lead our program."
In WVSU's hunt for a Mountain East Conference championship, the Yellow Jackets looked to a coach with one already on his resume. State introduced Marshall, who won the 2014 MEC regular season and tournament titles, as its new women's head coach on Monday.
Marshall replaces David Smith, who led WVSU for the past four seasons and was let go March 4.
The head coach of the Pioneers for the last three seasons, Marshall will bring a frenetic pace on both offense and defense and a knack for scoring points in bunches. In those three seasons, Glenville State never finished lower than second in the MEC in scoring and led all of Division II twice. He led the DII with 97.2 points per game in 2013-14, when the Pioneers finished ninth in the final Division II top 25 poll, and again this past season with 89.2 points per game in a 17-12 campaign.
The secret to those scoring totals, he said, isn't an intricate one.
"Get up tons of shots," he said. "You've got to shoot."
That was a Pioneers staple. In 2015-16, Glenville State put up 83.2 shots per game, taking at least 100 shots four times. The next closest competitor was Shepherd at 67 shots per game. The Pioneers also led Division II in 3-point field goals (377) and offensive rebounding (19 per game).
"It's a numbers game," Marshall said. "We look at it from a standpoint of the more shots you get up, the more opportunities for it to go in the basket, and that's the way we practice. We shot 100 shots before we even start practice, and that's not counting what we do when are in practice."
Something else stood out to Marshall during his courtship with West Virginia State - just how much they desired him to become the program's 11th head coach.
"They really went after me and wanted me to be here," he said. "For me and my family, that was huge, and it's going to be a great opportunity for me and my family."
Burton loved Marshall's basketball resume. Before his three seasons and his 2014 MEC title as Glenville's head coach, he was a GSC assistant under Bunky Harkleroad from 2010-12. He also was an assistant coach at his alma mater, Berea College in Kentucky, where he was a Kentucky Intercollegiate Athletic Conference first-team all-conference pick and an NAIA honorable mention All-American. He was inducted into Berea's Athletic Hall of Fame in 2013.
Burton's further research made him appreciate Marshall as a person.
"When I started to look at his success in the conference, I went after him," Burton said. "And when I started having conversations with people around the conference and the community, they speak about the man he is as well. I'm really looking forward to seeing what our young women achieve on and off the court under his leadership."
The Yellow Jackets have had just 10 winning seasons since 1978 and one in the past six. They finished this past season at 13-16, falling to the University of Virginia College at Wise in the first round of the conference tournament.
Yet State also has the reigning MEC freshman of the year, Laura Szorenyi, who finished seventh in the conference with 16.3 points per game. WVSU lost just two seniors from its roster and returns its top three scorers. Now the program has a coach with a championship ring in his possession, but Marshall said that prize will only do so much in gaining the trust of the team.
"People look at you and go off of how you work," he said. "If the young ladies come in the gym and see me there at 7 a.m. or 6 a.m., hitting it hard, just as hard as they are, they've got to believe. If they need anything, I'm right here, a phone call away or a knock at the door."