If you're looking for hearts and flowers, hit Hallmark around Valentine's Day.
You want unabashed honesty? Talk to USF men's basketball coach Rex Walters.
You've heard the term "rose-colored glasses," right? It's usually dropped in conjunction with someone who opts not to acknowledge the negative. Someone who puts a positive spin on everything. Someone who seems to live in a world where something great is about to happen any minute.
As it relates to Dons basketball, those glasses would be green-and-gold-colored. Those wearing them would note the 8-3 record. The narrow loss to still-unbeaten -- and 24th-ranked nationally -- Murray State at the Great Alaska Shootout. The West Coast Conference title that's well within reach.
Don't expect to hear much of the sort from Walters. He doesn't own any such shades. He lives in a world in which everything, as he told me during a lengthy conversation earlier this week, "black and white."
That's not to say Walters is negative. He's simply a straight shooter -- figuratively and, as his college and NBA careers attest, literally.
And when you consider the coaches for whom he played in college and the NBA, it makes all the sense in the world.
Roy Williams. Stan Van Gundy. Pat Riley. Williams and Riley are legendary figures in the game. Van Gundy isn't, but he's hugely respected among those familiar with basketball at its highest level. All three are among the men who shaped Walters' approach to building a winner on the Hilltop.
"I've had a lot of great coaches, a lot of coaches a lot smarter than me," he told me. "And I've taken something from all of them."
Accountability is one of the lessons Walters learned from the aforementioned hoops icons, and it's an essential ingredient to team-building and team success.
It's why Walters is brutally honest when he says his team still has a "long way to go" in terms of taking care of the ball. The Dons are turning it over about 14 times a game, and that's not going to cut it when WCC play starts. You can survive such carelessness against Dartmouth, Montana and Pacific, but Gonzaga and Saint Mary's and Santa Clara will send you home with a hurtin' if you haven't cleaned it up by the time you cross paths with them.
It's why, when a Don makes what's less than what Walters considers "the perfect pass" in practice, it's not just the offender who gets punished with extra running. It's his whole squad.
"When you make a mistake in the game, you're hurting the whole team," Walters explains.
He explained many other elements of his philosophy to me as we chatted, but it can all be boiled down to this: Walters learned from some true greats, and greatness is what he seeks. Anything less doesn't quite register.
"Silence from me, I think, is golden," he says in response to a question as to how his players know when they've done a good job.
"If you get a compliment from me, you know you've really earned it."
Mychael Urban (USF, '91) is a longtime member of the Bay Area sports media and currently a regular co-host on "The Wheelhouse" at 95.7 FM The Game. Follow him on Twitter @BigUrbSports and check out his blog at www.urbsunchained.com.
