Coaching Tree: Dwaine Knight
Rebel Wolf
Dwaine Knight’s Coaching Tree
Coaching trees have long been an area of interest in other sports such as football where fans and the coaches themselves make a big deal of tracing the “lineage” of a coach back as far as they can. One of the most notable examples of this is the Bill Belichick tree which includes numerous high profile and future hall of fame coaches. Despite college golf’s expansive history, this idea of tracing coaching trees has not received as much time or attention. It’s time we change that as we delve into college golf coaching history.
For this post we look at one of the most extensive coaching trees in college golf. Legendary hall of fame Coach Dwaine Knight’s career spanned five decades between two universities, and his 15 assistants created branches that, as of the start of the 2024-25 season, has amassed and incredible 132 total coaches/leaves on the Knight tree.
*Note: Underlined text is a link to a reference material and/or more details
BACKGROUND
University of New Mexico athletic director Lavon McDonald announced in early February 1977 that after 25 years at the helm, long-time UNM men’s golf coach Dick McGuire was going to retire at the end of the season. Coach McGuire’s replacement was set to be one of his previous players (1965-69) Dwaine Knight who was leaving the PGA Tour to take the post. Knight told the local newspapers:
“I know I have really big shoes to fill in replacing Dick McGuire. He’s done everything in college coaching except win the national championship. And he’s come pretty close to that. As close as any Lobo team in any sport.”
Coach McGuire’s response:
“[Dwaine Knight] will make an outstanding golf coach. He has knowledge, experience, and personality, all the ingredients of being a super coach.”
“Super coach” is probably the shortest and most accurate way to describe Dwaine Knight. In his 44 year head coaching career, Knight nurtured two different programs - New Mexico and UNLV - into national contenders, mentoring an impressive number of players and assistant coaches, and earning a wide array of coaching honors.
COACHING TREE
Something we should address up front is that although this is specifically looking at Dwaine Knight as the top of this tree, the fact is that this could conceivably be called a (very significant) branch of the Dick McGuire coaching tree as it appears that Coach Knight was in fact a paid member of the UNM athletic department in the spring of 1977 before he took over as head coach that fall. According to newspaper reports, Knight took the “number 2 team” to the Bing Crosby Invitational at Guadalajara in March while the “number 1 team” was returning home from the John Burns Invitational in Hawaii.
This was actually atypical for the time, which is why it is notable. While Coach McGuire had several assistants over the decades, they were all specifically noted as being assistant pros at the University South Course without any mention of being involved with the team. However, if we were to count that assistant pro post as also being the assistant coach, who else would be on that McGuire tree? Legendary New Mexico State coach Herb Wimberly was such an assistant for a time between playing for Coach McGuire and starting the Aggies golf program.
Note that in the interest of completeness these branches of the Coach Knight tree include those recognized as volunteer assistant coaches and - as NCAA rules have changed in recent years - additional assistant coaches, creating some overlap in years of service. While many coaches will (rightfully) include former players when discussing their tree, we chose to only list coaches for this exercise. Perhaps in the future when our roster databases are more robust we will revisit this topic to expand these trees out further.
Let’s dive in and explore some of these branches!
JOHN FIELDS [UNM, Knight assistant 1981-82]
One of Coach Knight’s first actions as UNM’s new coach in 1977 was to bring in two exciting freshman recruits: Curt Byrum and John Fields. After his playing career, Fields took on the title of assistant coach under Knight for the 1981-82 season. Six years later (1987-88), Fields took over as head coach of UNM. In one of those fun historical notes, Fields may have gotten a taste for coaching college golf when he was put in charge of the team his senior year (1981) on their trip to the John Burns Invitational in Hawaii while Coach Knight remained at home in the hospital, being treated for a kidney infection.
At the beginning of the 1997-98 season, Coach Fields left UNM to become the head coach at Texas, a position Knight was said to have considered taking. The crazy thing is that this isn’t the last connection between these two coaches. In fact, there is a rather weird triangle between UNM, UNLV, and Texas which intertwines the coaching tree branches in some subtle ways we’ll touch on below. Perhaps the biggest crossover, however, came when long time Texas assistant coach (2020 Jan Strickland Award winner) Jean-Paul Hebert became the head coach at UNLV after Coach Knight retired in 2022.
Now, nearly three decades later, Coach Fields has gained his own legendary status in the game. NCAA team championships in 2012 and 2022 as well as a plethora of team and individual wins, awards, and recognitions has made Coach Fields one of the most successful coaches in all of college golf. He is respected as much for his actions outside of golf as for what his teams have accomplished on the course, and he has publicly attributed part of this to things directly learned from his old coach, Knight.
Amazingly, the Coach Fields tree has had a direct impact on the women’s side in the Texas golf program as well. His first assistant at Texas was Greg Allen from 1998-2000. During that same timeframe, the women’s assistant coach was Martha Richards. The next year, both Allen and Richards accepted head coaching positions elsewhere. From 2000-07, Coach Allen was the head coach at Arizona while Coach Richards was the head coach at Vanderbilt. Beginning with the 2007-08 season, Richards left Vanderbilt to become the head coach for the Texas women’s team, and her replacement at Vandy was...Coach Allen, who still resides in that position as of the 2024-25 season! Coach Allen’s replacement at Arizona was his previous assistant, Shelly Haywood (head coach 2007-10), and her replacement was her own assistant, Laura Ianello (head coach 2010-24). When Coach Richards stepped away from coaching the Texas women’s team (head coach 2007-14), her replacement was Coach Fields’ longtime men’s assistant, Ryan Murphy. After 10 seasons at the helm of the Texas women’s program (2014-24), Coach Murphy stepped down and was replaced by...Coach Ianello to begin the 2024-25 season!
LEAVING (FOR) LAS VEGAS [1987]
In early September, 1987, a bomb dropped in New Mexico as news broke that Coach Knight was likely to leave UNM for UNLV. Though he supposedly was not one of the 60+ applicants for the job left vacant by retiring 20-year Head Coach Michael Drakulich, Knight was nonetheless one of six finalists to get an in-person interview. Why was the job in such high demand?
One selling point on the Vegas program is that Knight no longer will have to bust his tail raising funds - a task that is a thorn in the side for all coaches of non-revenue sports at UNM. “That $160,000 budget, well, that’s big time,” said Knight. “That takes away a lot of pressure and give me more time to work with the players. Money just won’t be a problem up there.”
UNLV AD Rothermill was heavily invested in emphasizing golf and determined to get a coach who could deliver the school’s first NCAA title in the sport. The expected announcement came just a week before UNM’s annual William H Tucker tournament, so it was agreed for Knight to finish out his duties running the tournament before joining the Rebels on Oct 1, 1987 for the 1987-88 season. Then-assistant coach Zane Zwemke filled in as interim head coach for the Lobos until John Fields was officially hired in November, and the rest was history.
BRUCE HEPPLER [UNLV, Knight ast 1989-1991]
After getting his accounting degree, Bruce Heppler went to work as a CPA. That profession was short-lived, however, and a year later he entered the masters program at UMass. As he told Mike McGraw on the latter’s Better Than I Found It podcast interview (see below), while working in the intermural department there, Heppler took an opportunity to gain some extra pay coaching the men’s and women’s golf teams at nearby Amherst. The next year, Heppler made his way to UNLV as a part of an internship that placed him in the athletic department. Doing the accounting for UNLV/Coach Dwaine Knight’s foundation turned into running events, and being detail-oriented helped make those events successful. So successful in fact, Coach Knight insisted on making Heppler his full-time paid assistant coach.
After gaining two years of valuable experience under Coach Knight, Heppler then made the move to Oklahoma State. There, he was assistant to the great Coach Mike Holder from 1991-95, culminating in a national championship. You can read more about Coach Heppler and the Holder Coaching Tree in an earlier post here:
JT HIGGINS [UNLV, Knight ast 1991-97]
Jim Higgins, like legendary Coach Dave Williams [Houston], wasn’t a golfer before getting into college golf coaching. He played baseball and basketball in college [Eastern Oregon] before starting at UNLV as an assistant sports information director in 1990. In the Fall of 1991, he became the Rebel assistant golf coach under Knight, in charge of academic advisement, fund-raising, and recruiting for the next 6 years. One of the most prominent recruiting opportunities came early in that tenure as Higgins - and basically every other coach in the country - tried to land a young California high school phenom named Tiger Woods. UNLV came achingly close to getting Tiger on campus, a fact that Coach Knight apparently used to his advantage when recruiting for decades afterwards.
An opportunity came to complete the loop between New Mexico and UNLV golf programs when Coach Fields left UNM for Texas in 1997. Higgins was one of two finalist for the Lobos head coach position, ultimately getting the job over legendary coach Marlin “Cricket” Musch who enjoyed tremendous success at UTEP, a program he started in 19811.
Coach Higgins spent the next 4 seasons at the helm of the New Mexico program before moving over to Texas A&M (19 seasons) and finally USC (3 seasons). Along with earning Texas A&M its first NCAA team championship in 2009, Coach Higgins’s impressive career also includes mentoring a large number of assistant coaches and creating a fairly sizable coaching tree himself.
GLEN MILLICAN [New Mexico, Higgins ast 1998-2001]
Glen Millican gained an incredible amount of college golf experience at UNM. His playing career began under Coach Fields starting in 1993, and concluded in 1998 under Coach Higgins. Not long after graduation, Millican joined the UNM golf staff as an assistant coach under Higgins. After three seasons and Coach Higgins’s departure for Texas A&M, Millican took over head coaching responsibilities at his alma mater in 2001. He held that position for 22 seasons before moving over to Missouri to start the 2023-24 season.
An interesting note with Coach Millican’s own extensive coaching tree is how much it intertwines back with both of his coaches’ branches. When Millican assumed head coaching responsibilities at New Mexico, his first assistant coach hire was former teammate Ryan Murphy. After four seasons working together (2001-05) and three seasons as the men’s and women’s head coach at St Edwards, Murphy joined his former coach John Fields as the assistant coach for the Texas men’s team. The pair enjoyed tremendous success for the next 6 seasons (2008-14) including a national championship in 2012 and the Jan Strickland Award for best assistant coach in 2013. In 2014, Murphy took over head coaching responsibilities of the Texas women’s program, a position he held for the next decade.
Jim Anderson, who lettered 4 years under coaches Higgins and Millican at UNM (1999-04), was Coach Millican’s assistant for two seasons at New Mexico from 2007-09. After the 2009 NCAA championship, Anderson joined Coach Higgins at Texas A&M as his assistant for three seasons (2009-12). Coach Anderson took on the head coaching position at Arizona beginning in 2012, and has remained there ever since.
Coach Millican’s assistant for the next four seasons (2009-13) at New Mexico was another former UNM teammate, Brian Kortan (played 1990-94 under Coach Fields). Kortan then moved to Texas A&M where he was Higgins’s assistant starting in 2013. Following the abrupt end to the 2019-20 season and Coach Higgins’s move to USC, Coach Kortan took over head coaching responsibilities at Texas A&M.
JONATHAN DISMUKE [Texas A&M, Higgins ast 2008-09]
Jonathan Dismuke, a Mississippi native who played for Auburn (2001-04), only spent one year as an assistant coach under Higgins at Texas A&M, but it was an incredibly impactful one. The 2008-09 season was the first time that the NCAA team championship was decided by match play. Texas A&M was not the favorite to win the title, but they played incredibly well at the right time and in the end were the ones hoisting the trophy. After playing a crucial role helping to coach the Aggies to their first national title, Dismuke took over as the head coach of Houston where he continues to enjoy tremendous success.2
1998 NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP [UNM COURSE]
Prior to the 1998 championship, the University of New Mexico had previously hosted the 1976 [during Coach Dick McGuire’s UNM tenure] and 1991 [Coach Fields] championships, won both times by Oklahoma State. This time it was UNLV that came into the championship as the favorites. The Rebels had faced letdowns the past two postseasons, and even early in the 1997-98 season they looked...lost.
After an early Fall loss to the entire field at Alabama’s Jerry Pate tournament, Coach Knight “joked” he was going to skip the next tournament, leaving the team in the hands of assistant coach Casey Whalen so he could go out to recruit new players. Message received. The UNLV players turned things around in a hurry and went on to win 7 events over the course of the season on their way to a #1 ranking heading to the NCAA Championship and familiar turf for Coach Knight.
"I was 72 shots better. That's a whole round of golf," Berry said. "In 1996, I lost coach Knight a national championship, and in 1998 I kind of won one for him."
Berry and his UNLV teammates combined for a record-breaking 34-under total which beat out Clemson by 3 strokes to take the national championship.
JC DEACON [UNLV, Knight ast 2011-14]
JC Deacon has publicly and emphatically stated how much Coach Knight has meant to him and his career. Deacon played under Coach Knight at UNLV 2001-05, and eventually returned to coach the Rebels as an assistant to his mentor for three seasons (2011-14). After that, Deacon became the head coach at the University of Florida, where he continues to apply all he has learned with incredible success.
Coach Deacon and the Florida Gators added the most recent NCAA team championship to the Knight Coaching Tree (5th overall) when they took home the title in 2023. Along with that team victory, Deacon earned another personal victory when he was named the Dave Williams Coach of the Year for the first time in his career. As he told Rick Young of ScoreGolf, his immediate thoughts were on his former coach:
“Coach Knight won this award (twice) back in the day, and I would never have been in coaching without him,” said Deacon, his voice cracking with emotion. “I was still playing, still trying to chase Mondays and keep my playing career going, when he called one day and said, ‘Man, you gotta come to do this. I think you’d be a great coach.’ Not once had I considered that until Coach Knight suggested it. I’d see that award hanging on his wall, and it’s incredible how this has come full circle. I owe a lot of this to him.”
TIMELINE
This chart is hard to read, but if you zoom in you can get a sense of the timeline of the various coaching moves among the men’s teams. The gold highlighted text represents the NCAA team championship years (1998, 2012, and 2022).
In the future we’ll have a much cleaner way to display this info, but that program is still being developed. If anyone reading this can fill in blanks or would like to flesh out their own tree, we definitely wouldn’t mind the help!
CONNECTING TREES
As with any coaching tree this extensive, Coach Knight’s tree has a number of interesting connections to others (that we will explore in the future) via assistants who either previously or later served under other head coaches. Let’s take a look at some of the more prominent connecting branches.
MIKE HOLDER’S TREE
In an earlier post we explored Mike Holder’s coaching tree, which as we’ve seen above, connects with the Knight Tree in several different ways. When you have time, we highly recommend checking out our post on the Holder Tree to get a sense of the incredible accomplishments made by one of college golf’s greatest and most impactful coaches.
CHRIS HAACK’S TREE
In 1996, legendary coach Dick Copas retired after 26 seasons (1970-96) as the Georgia men’s golf coach. In stepped longtime AJGA director of operations, Chris Haack, who has now held the position for nearly 30 seasons.
The connection between the Knight and Haack trees comes through a Coach Hybl assistant. After playing for Coach Haack (2001-04), Ryan Hybl joined the Georgia golf staff as an assistant coach from 2005-09. Coach Hybl enjoyed a tremendous amount of success at Georgia, and he brought that winning attitude with him to the University of Oklahoma, finding success immediately in his first season as head coach in 2009-10. Half a decade into his tenure at Oklahoma, Coach Hybl hired Jim Garren as his assistant coach to begin the 2014-15 season. Coach Garren - who would serve three seasons in Oklahoma under Hybl before taking the head coaching position at Coastal Carolina - had spent the previous season at New Mexico as an assistant to Coach Millican, thus connecting these two great coaching trees.
SILVERSTEIN CONNECTION
Justin Silverstein, head coach of the Southern California women’s program since 2018, serves as a connecting point of the Coach Knight tree to the Rick LaRose (Arizona men HC 1978-2012), Andrea Gaston (Southern California women HC 1996-2018), and Chris Zambri (USC men HC 2006-20) trees. After playing under Coach LaRose, Silverstein served as a volunteer assistant under his coach for the 2009-10 season. The next two years, he served as the assistant coach on the women’s side under Laura Ianello who, as we covered above, is on down the line on the Knight coaching tree. From 2012-16, Silverstein served as the women’s assistant coach at USC under Coach Gaston, winning a team national championship in 2013. After serving two years as the USC men’s associate head coach under Coach Zambri, Silverstein took over coaching the USC women’s team to begin the 2018-19 season after Coach Gaston departed for Texas A&M.
DWAINE KNIGHT’S LEGACY
Dwaine Knight is an extraordinary coach whose impact extends well beyond what a cursory glance at college golf record books might suggest. His burgeoning coaching tree, nurtured through numerous assistant coaches who worked with him and the many proteges they went on to mentor themselves, is a testament to his exceptional skills as both a coach and a mentor. Clearly, Coach Knight’s legacy will continue to shape and inspire future generations of coaches within his ever-growing tree.
Two videos worth your time:
Thanks for reading!
Let us know what coaching tree we should explore next!
This came just a week after Higgins was one of the finalists for the Kansas State head coaching job which was taken by UTEP’s [1990-1997] Tim Norris. It’s interesting to think what may have happened if Higgins had gotten the Kansas State job and UNM went with Cricket Musch, who had an exceptional run at UTEP before leaving in 1990 to be a high level director for the Sun Bowl then Ping.
Note: Coaches Jonathan Dismuke and Ryke Dismuke are (somehow) not related! Crazy but true
It’s really neat to see these coaching trees laid out and how they connect to each other. I really appreciate all the work you had to put in to create this!