Hawkeye Conversations: Duez Henderson

In this edition of Hawkeye Conversations, we catch up with former Iowa hoops player Duez Henderson. We look back at his recruiting process and how it kind of got turned upside down before he committed to Iowa as well as what it was like to be part of the program during a coaching change. We look back at his time with the Hawkeyes, playing overseas, and now being married and coaching with a fellow former Iowa women's hoops standout.

Q: Let’s start with you as a high school player and when you started getting attention?

HENDERSON: It was probably around my sophomore year in high school. I was always one of those kids that was kind of big and athletic, but kind of goofy for my age. By today’s standards, I probably got a late start. I actually started playing organized basketball in 7th grade, which is unheard of these days.

Once I started getting involved, I just played a ton. I played pickup ball and played in parks and in open gyms. By the time I got to my freshman year I had a couple of different high schools looking at me to come there. Then the summer after my freshman year was the first year I played true travel ball in AAU.

My sophomore year was when things really started to heat up and it kind of took off from there.

Q: Who were you playing AAU with at that point?

HENDERSON: At that time I was playing with a local team out of Detroit that was sponsored by one of the larger churches. That was my first AAU experience and we were really good. I think from that team we have four or five guys that ended up playing D1 basketball and everyone else played college ball at some level.

Then the other half of the summer I played with an Adidas team called Team Detroit that was coached by Ernie Zigler, who is actually now an assistant coach at Mississippi State. After that I played with a team that was a combination of Motor City Mavericks/Team Michigan. At the time that was the premier organization in Michigan. We had two other guys who played in the Big Ten and two that played in the Big East off that team. By today’s standards we would have been one of the elite EYBL type teams in the country.

Q: When do the offers start rolling in and when does Iowa start to get involved? I’m going to guess Coach Walker was the guy from Iowa that found you.

HENDERSON: Coach Walker did find me. (laugh)

It was really interesting because I grew up a huge Michigan fan. That was the time of the Fab Five. When I started getting seriously recruited by them, that was when they had Louis Bullock, Maurice Taylor, who went to high school about ten minutes from my house. He was the coolest thing ever for me. I remember one time he gave him his phone number and told me to call him if I had any questions about anything.

So Michigan and Michigan State were the two schools that were on the radar at the time. Michigan State recruited me, but they were loaded and never offered, which was ok because I was a Michigan fan. In my junior year I would talk to schools, but I was kind of set on Michigan. Some of the other schools that recruited me pretty hard were USC and Northwestern. I would talk to them, but it was kind of known that I was planning on going to Michigan, but I wanted to wait a little longer. Fast forward to late summer going into my senior year, which was when I was going to commit to Michigan.

Iowa started getting involved late. I remember Coach Walker and I were talking and I told him I was probably going to Michigan and he just talked me into coming for a visit. He said you have to give it a look. So we took an unofficial visit to Iowa and I loved it. I loved everyone and got along great with the coaches and the players were awesome, but on the plane ride back I kept thinking it’s still probably going to be Michigan.

I got back from Iowa and I think I was planning to commit about two weeks later and then late that summer or early fall Coach Fischer got fired. At that point, Iowa had made it hard anyway. I really liked it, but I was still going to be a Wolverine, but once he got fired that changed everything and I decided Iowa was the right place for me.

I was really grateful that Coach Walker had convinced me to come out for a visit because it was a no-brainer for me after Michigan made the change. I didn’t want to go through a situation where I would be learning about a new staff. So I think it was about two or three days later after talking with parents that I gave Coach Walker and Coach Davis a call and said I was going to be a Hawkeye.

Q: Did you have any hesitation about Iowa? Was there anything known at that point about Dr. Tom not being kept on longer as the head coach?

HENDERSON: That’s the crazy thing about it. I think it was about three weeks after I committed that Iowa announced that he would not return after the end of his contract.

So in like the span of a month, a school that grew up dreaming about and that had a coaching staff that I loved was gone. Then I find a great place at Iowa and I am going into that same situation. But there were no second thoughts or pulling back on the verbal commitment. I loved Iowa and Coach Davis and Coach Walker.

Q: That first year you are at Iowa, that’s a pretty veteran team, but there’s so much going on with the emotions of Dr. Tom being in his final year. Was it strange for a freshman to get dropped into something like that? A lot of the veteran guys who had played for Dr. Tom were pretty emotional about it.

HENDERSON: I didn’t really have that much of a feeling about it. Part of it was probably being young and dumb. (laugh) The only thing I knew was this was the most exciting time of my life. I’m playing college basketball in the Big Ten and I’m going to practice every day busting my tail trying to get better and earn minutes.

Looking back on it now and being a coach, I am sure that there were a lot of things that I was just oblivious to at the time.

Q: That first year you are at Iowa, you guys make that run in the NCAA Tournament. You probably felt some of those emotions of the moment with Dr. Tom after the win over Arkansas. What was it like in that run when everyone knew the next game could be the last one for Dr. Tom?

HENDERSON: One thing I do remember was you knew it was there, but you didn’t, if that makes sense. Coach Davis would never bring it up, but some of our seniors would bring it up. Jess, and Kent, and Jason Bauer, the guys that went through all of this with him. When those guys would bring it up, Coach Davis would just shut it down right away. His approach was the same every game. He never put any extra pressure or expectations on us.

I do remember this like it was yesterday. After we beat Arkansas in the second round to get to the Sweet 16, we get into the locker room and we are all super excited. Coach Davis gets us all settled down. When he would get excited his voice would get really high pitched and said, well guys, good win. We are off to Phoenix, Arizona. Let’s go home and re-charge batteries, get our sun glasses and we are off to Phoenix.

This is a great coach not going out on his own terms who just won a huge game and that was his post game speech. I’m sure there was little more to it, but that was basically it. That was how normal Coach Davis was.

Q: After that season ends, a guy named Steve Alford walks in. That’s a different style than Tom Davis. What were your initial impressions of your new coach?

HENDERSON: I didn’t know anything about Coach Alford at the time. I knew he was coming off a great tournament run with SMS. I was excited. I was a new start and looking back it now, it was kind of the same feeling I had my freshman year where I’m kind of young and dumb and don’t know. A lot of guys would feel like because I wasn’t recruited by this guy that I wouldn’t get a fair shake and I never felt that.

All I knew was it was time to get to work and try and get better. It was two totally different styles of basketball and two totally different approaches and as I continued to get better as a player and now getting into coaching, I am really happy I got to play for two totally different coaches who had contrasting styles.

Q: From your perspective, it had to help that he kept Coach Walker on his staff.

HENDERSON: It was huge and for myself and some of the other players, especially for the guys who he recruited to Iowa. We certainly voiced our opinion. I have no idea if it was listened to at the time, but we did say that we really wanted that to happen. Coach Walker was certainly a great bridge from Coach Davis to Coach Alford.

Q: Then in the first game under Coach Alford you play UCONN, the team that beat you the previous year in the NCAA Tournament. The game is at Madison Square Garden and you guys win. You are probably thinking, well this is going to be ok.

HENDERSON: It was crazy. We play UCONN in Madison Square Garden and we beat them? You can’t script a better start for Coach Alford’s first game. New era and new coach and we just beat UCONN, so we must be pretty good, right?

What gets lost in the shadows of that win in the first game is the next night we played Stanford, who absolutely put it on us. I was an undersized four man that year and they had the Collins twins along with Casey Jacobsen. I don’t remember the final score, but they certainly brought us back to reality quickly.

One great story from that trip to New York. We all know the great things that John Streif has done for the University of Iowa over the years. The day of the UCONN game we are on our way to Madison Square Garden on a bus. It’s the middle of the day and we are in New York City traffic and the bus breaks down.

We aren’t super far from the arena, but it’s New York City and there’s traffic everywhere. I’m sitting on the bus thinking what are we going to do? Are we going to walk to the Garden or what? I thought that might be pretty cool. Anyway, John Streif says don’t worry and hops off the bus and stops traffic and gets us six or seven cabs. He then gets us into six or seven cabs and he’s yelling at the drivers to get them to the Garden and I will pay you when I get there. It was unreal. Not too many people could pull that off in the middle of New York City traffic, but he got it done for us.

Q: The next year you get Reggie Evans and Luke Recker to join the team and a strong group of freshmen. How did things change when you get that group of players on campus?

HENDERSON: I remember when Reggie came on his visit. I hosted him and we were playing pickup and I knew right away that he was a beast. If you would have told me that he would have had the impact he had in his first year, I wouldn’t have believed it. A lot of it was because he wasn’t a skill guy. He just rebounded and worked so hard and it was unbelievable.

Then with Luke, he was a year ahead of me in high school, so I had played against him a little bit in the summer. So you throw him into the mix with a guy like Ryan Hogan and we have a real chance here.

Q: Did you get Reggie hooked on Wig and Pen pizza?

HENDERSON: (laugh) We did go there on his visit. We have hooked up a few times in Iowa City since then and every time we go there for pizza. There also may have a been a few pizzas that made their way to Coffeyville Community College to try and recruit him. (laugh)

Q: One thing we didn’t cover about Alford’s first year was that trip to Indiana. His first game there against Bob Knight. What was that like for you guys?

HENDERSON: We knew all the hype about the game and there was a ton of media coverage and he had a lot of friends there. As a player it’s there, but you try not to really notice it.

The time I really felt the gravity of the moment was we were out on the floor warming up and then all of the sudden you hear this huge roar. We were looking around trying to figure out what’s going on and it’s Coach Alford coming out of the tunnel. It was a pretty cool moment and you really don’t expect it on the road. It was all of the sudden the band goes quiet and everyone is giving him a standing ovation. It was pretty cool and I can’t imagine what was going on in his mind.

Q: Back to your junior year, the Indiana game in Iowa City when Luke just goes nuts in the second half and you guys come back and win that game. That was a crazy game with Luke going against Indiana.

HENDERSON: You understand what people are going through as a teammate for the most part. Maybe not to that level, but when I went back to play at Michigan or Michigan State, I really wanted to play well. But, with Luke being from Indiana and playing for Indiana and now playing against him with Alford on the sidelines, you want see him succeed and there’s plenty of extra motivation there.

I remember with Luke and I we were kind of interchangeable on defense. I usually guarded the better outside player and he would take the other player. I remember when he got cooking in the second half, I said whoever you are guarding, just let me know who you want so you can rest on that end. Then I would just try to screen for him to get him open because he was really going.

Q: You guys were really rolling at that point and then Luke gets hurt and you lose seven of the last eight and go into the Big Ten Tournament and no one is expect you guys to do anything. Every day there was a new story about will Recker be back or will he not be back. Then you guys go out and win four games in four days. What was that run like?

HENDERSON: I loved playing at Carver. There’s no better place, but there’s also a calmness on the road because your routine is the same. As a player then and a coach now, I love being in a routine. I just remember winning that first game and then we get our food and we go back to the hotel and watch film and get treatments. We just kept it rolling and kept doing the same things.

We had some people step up and put together some unbelievable individual performances. I think our top seven players all increased their scoring and rebounding in those four games. It was probably the best four game stretch that I had at Iowa. Honestly probably six games if you take it out to the NCAA Tournament. I think I was double figures in points and probably around eight rebounds a game or so.

There were some upsets on the other side that may or may not have helped us, but we were just playing really well. No one expected us to be there and to make a run.

One of the back stories of that tournament was I think it was after the first or second game that we won, we were getting pretty close to maybe getting an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. The big question was when was Luke going to be back? I think Luke was in street clothes for the first and maybe the second game. Then we had him dress and he might have even done a little bit in pregame to give that illusion that maybe he’s coming back or close to coming back. We knew there was no way in hell he was going to be back. (laugh)

Q: Then in the NCAA’s you play Creighton and you had a really good game and after that Kentucky and Prince, who was really good that game. Did you have to guard him in that one?

HENDERSON: Yeah, Prince and Keith Bogans were really talented and tough covers. That was a really tough Kentucky team coached by Tubby Smith. We didn’t play bad. They were just better. I remember Reggie and Dean Oliver had great games. Glen Worley played well, but we just got beat by the better team.

Q: In your senior year, there were so many expectations. A top ten type team preseason with plenty of hype with everyone but Dean Oliver back. Can you figure out what went wrong that year? It was just kind of a strange year.

HENDERSON: Honestly, I don’t know. You are right, it was just strange. I don’t want to say it was expectations, but it was just strange. I really don’t really know. When you look at what we had coming back. You took away Dean, but we added some talented pieces. We just couldn’t get out of our own way. I can tell you what didn’t happen. I know people said Luke and Reggie were looking at the NBA and they felt like they had to produce and I can for sure tell you there was none of that. One paper we were great and it didn’t transfer to the floor. We had a series of team meetings and a series of meeting with the coaches. We played at Kansas State in December and we beat them and I thought we had kind of got it going, but we just didn’t end up putting it together. In sports, stuff like that happens. You look at the Lakers when they had four Hall of Famers and you think they are going to win the NBA title. From the inside on that team there was no internal issues that I was aware of where you would say, well that makes sense, that’s why that happened.

Q: Then magically after that rough regular season, you guys put together another magical run in the Big Ten Tournament and that one was the Luke Recker show. Did you guys just get to the point where you were like, just get Luke the ball and get out of the way?

HENDERSON: Yeah, just get out of his way. He was just hitting huge shots. He hit back to back game winners. I always give Luke crap because the baseline shot that he hit against Indiana in the semifinal game, I was the one that set the screen for him. The entire gym knew where the ball was going. There’s a saying in basketball that you set a good screen and you get yourself open. I could not have been more wide open. I’m not saying I should have gotten the ball at all, but his shot was so contested. That was just how locked in he was at that moment. Everyone knew where the ball was going and to hit a shot like that with that type of pressure on you is really cool. He had the confidence to take that shot and make it and let you know about it afterwards.

That was a great run and then in the championship game we played Ohio State and we are having flashbacks to the year before. We went in thinking let’s get this done. That Ohio State team was really good. Talented guards with my high school teammate Brent Darby. It was really cool to play against him and our high school coach was at the game on the staff at Ohio State. Darby went crazy that game.

So we ended up playing LSU in the NIT and that was bittersweet. That’s not the way you want your senior year to end. That ended up being the end of my ride.

Q: After that you go overseas and play for seven or eight years. What was that like? Had to be a great experience.

HENDERSON: It was a great experience. I played over in Germany my entire career and bounced around with three different clubs there. I played in the second division over there, which was a respectable league at the time. I had some opportunities to play in other countries at a higher level, but that was later and I was a little more established and wasn’t planning on playing a whole lot longer. Just being able to do that and have that experience in Germany and being able to go over to France was incredible and now as I think about those days I am even more appreciative of that time.

From a basketball perspective, I was probably better at 24 than I was when I was 20. I just felt like I was getting better as a player and over there I think I had more freedom. Look back on it, for three years I played with three guys who had NBA caliber careers and when you have that there are only so many opportunities. Overall, it was a great experience. I have great stories and some horror stories. That’s pretty typical of that experience.

Q: And then you get into coaching and now you have really gotten into it. Was that just something you always wanted to do?

HENDERSON: Yeah, I have already really enjoyed the skill development side of the game and seeing guys get better. I’ve always loved helping people get better. Then I was able to combine that with AAU coaching and that took a little bit of a different path than a lot of people that get involved with that.

I wanted to coach good players and players who worked hard, but I never needed a team stacked with D1 and D2 players. I just wanted to coach good kids who wanted to get better. I was able to do it my way, which makes it really satisfying for me. I ended up coaching really good kids that went on to play at a high level. One of the favorite things I have in my office is a picture that I have of a group that I started with 6th grade that were average players at that time. Of that group we had two changes from that group all the way up to 17U. We saw that group grow and beat a bunch of teams we had no business beating. I have a great relationship with all those kids and their families and many of them are playing at some college level and one of them is a walk-on running back at Iowa. The real payoff for me was having that group that stuck with me all those years and seeing them have success.

Q: How did you end up marrying fellow former Hawkeye Randi Peterson?

HENDERSON: Great question. Randi played at Iowa at almost the same time that I did. She was there from 1997-2001. I knew of her and she knew of me, but I don’t think we said two words to each other during college. We might pass each other in the tunnel or something and maybe there might be a wave. It’s funny to look back upon now because we have a lot of mutual friends that we hung out with in college and we would realize we were at the same places a few times. I joke with her that she thought she was too cool for me in college. (laugh)

Fast forward to 2012 and they had a charity basketball game at Carver and they invited a bunch of former Iowa athletes back. I remember I was down on one end of the floor shooting with Jason Price and Darryl Moore and I looked down the tunnel and said who is that? Then I was like, oh that’s Randi, huh.

We ended up being on the same team in that charity game. She always gives me crap that she just continued to do what she was good at in college, which was offensive rebound all my misses during the game. (laugh)

She was coaching at Coe College at the time and I sent her an e-mail that night because I was too shy to do anything else. From there we exchanged a few e-mails and I went up and watched a few practices and it turns out I was training one of the players who to this day takes credit for us being married.

So now it’s eight years later and here we are. We are married and have two kids, three moves, two job changes. It’s funny because everyone thinks since we both played basketball at Iowa at basically the same time that we must have dated in college, nope.

Q: You guys are coaching together at Washington University in St. Louis. She’s the head coach and you are the assistant. Is that fun?

HENDERSON: It is fun. We have worked together before. In her last years at Coe, I would help at practice, but not in an official capacity. Then when I was running some camps she would come around and help there. So we had kind of done it unofficially for a while.

Then with the move here to St. Louis after she had worked at Charlotte for former Hawkeye Cara Consuegra. Once we moved here, she asked me if I would be interested in doing it. For the first two years we were here I helped in a part-time capacity. I was still doing my training and was back and forth between here and Iowa. I was probably back in Iowa 10-12 days a month. As I thought about it, I think it was the right move for me and our family. I really enjoy it and feel like I am having more of an impact on the team.

Working together has been really good. We believe in the same things enough that it works and we also have enough differences that it works. We butt heads a lot. (laugh) But, she’s the head coach, so for some reason it always works out her way. (laugh) Honestly, she’s really open and I’ve seen how she interacts with her assistants in the past and she also understand how I view the game of basketball, so that’s been great. To be able to do it here at Wash U is really good. It’s a special place academically and athletically.