6/16/2026 5:00:00 PM | Men's Basketball, Paul Coro, Lopes Insider Blog
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Lopes' Mueller coached for MCC team starring Knicks' Brown
By: Paul Coro
On a hardwood floor tucked inside modular masonry, the basketball passions of two men destined for divergent greatness crossed paths from 1988 to 1990 at a junior college gymnasium in suburban Phoenix.
Long before his leadership revolutionized Grand Canyon into the nation's largest Christian university, GCU President Brian Mueller was an intense, hard-working assistant basketball coach at Mesa Community College.
Long before his leadership ended the New York's 54-year NBA championship drought Saturday, Knicks head coach Mike Brown was a young, relentless player on those MCC basketball teams.
"I'll be honest – not a shock with either guy to see what they've done," said Dana Achtzehn, a former MCC teammate who later became an Arizona high school teacher and coach.
Brian Mueller at MCC
Mueller, GCU basketball's most ardent supporter, holds an eternal flame for hoops that burned bright when he taught and coached at Concordia, a Nebraska NAIA college that is his alma mater. After moving his family to Phoenix in 1987, Mueller was pursuing a doctoral degree with intentions of returning to coaching and teaching when MCC coaching legend Tom Bennett needed a staff replacement for Royce Youree, another Arizona coaching legend, and made Mueller an offer that started a friendship spanning four decades.
A year after Mueller's arrival, Brown came to MCC as an Air Force kid who was living in Germany, where former Glendale Community College head coach Ron Johnson saw him play in a men's league and recommended that he go to Mesa.
"He was a remarkable person and an unbelievably hard worker," Mueller said of Brown. "You could tell he was different with his maturity even when he was 18 years old. So it's not surprising to see what he's done."
In Brown's and Mueller's final year at MCC, the Thunderbirds became the first Arizona junior college basketball team to reach a No. 1 national ranking, won 30 consecutive games and reached the national semifinals with six players who continued playing at Division I programs, including Brown at San Diego.
"Those guys (Brown and Mueller) have gone on and reached exceptional heights, but the entire team was just loaded with high-character people truly," said Bryant Moore, who is in management for a North Carolina medical device company and was MCC's starting point guard until a broken wrist necessitated Brown inherit the role. "I was the young guy coming from inner-city San Diego so it was an eye-opener for me. Coach Mueller was extremely intense and very passionate about the game. He provided a lot of value to our team. Coach Bennett was our leader, but Coach Mueller was a valuable, trusted member of the team.
"Mike has been the same guy the entire time. He was an extremely hard worker. While many of us enjoyed being away from home and were finding ourselves, Mike lived in the gym. He worked his tail off to become a much-improved jump shooter and better player. Working for him later, he was the same guy that he was in school."
Mike Brown at MCC
A two-time NBA Coach of the Year, Brown added Moore to his first head coaching staff with Cleveland, where he teamed with LeBron James for the Cavaliers' first NBA Finals trip. Mueller received a James-autographed basketball during that time, showing the sort of loyalty Brown became known for at basketball's highest levels, just as he was a well-rounded young man when he won MVP and citizenship awards in the same tournament for MCC.
"Players trust him," Mueller said. "You can see it. The guy's very authentic. Al McGuire used to say Rule No. 1, 'Never lie to a player.'
"Mike was a physically strong kid and played hard, but he didn't have NBA-level speed. What he's done from a coaching standpoint has been remarkable. When I talk to Tom about him, he says, 'Yeah, he's just a really special human being.' That's so true with him being able to navigate that world with those players."
The deflective humility and collaborative nature that Mueller saw in Brown at MCC has remained evident throughout his five NBA head coaching stops and four previous NBA championships as an assistant coach.
That same ability to lead, build trust and elevate others would define Mueller's own career — just in a different arena.
After his coaching era, Mueller transitioned into higher education, helping grow the University of Phoenix into a pioneer in online learning by expanding access for working adults and helping redefine nontraditional education at scale. He then took the helm at GCU, where what followed became one of the most remarkable turnarounds in modern education: explosive enrollment growth, national prominence, increased academic breadth alighned to workforce needs and a reimagined model for integrating faith, work and purpose.
Yet, basketball never left him.
"Brian was an incredibly high-energy, extremely intelligent man," Achtzehn said. "We could always tell that, even with us being dumb 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds. We loved it when he ran practices because he was always the high-energy guy, and he was an interesting guy on all our long van trips to have conversations with. You always knew he was going to do something big."
At GCU, the basketball DNA became part of the university's identity. From moving athletics to Division I to building a nationally recognized gameday atmosphere, Mueller infused the same passion, discipline and culture-building he once brought to practice gyms into a thriving university ecosystem.
"I love what Brian's done with GCU, the arena, the atmosphere, everything," Achtzehn said. "It's awesome.
"He's a brilliant person. When he became the president of GCU, I was not shocked. I remember telling my coaching friends, 'That's why GCU is basketball-heavy. The guy in charge is a basketball guy."
The MCC defensive principles implemented by Bennett, whose son Randy became Arizona State's head coach this year, remain clear in the way Brown has coached in the NBA, where he was charged with leading Golden State's championship defenses and was the only new Knicks piece charged with lifting New York this year.
Now, Brown is in a category of two for Knicks' NBA champion head coaches with Red Holzman (1970 and 1973).
"Mike always knew, 'Hey, I'm not this former bigtime player so I have to hang my hat on something,' " said Moore, who also played at Texas Tech and was a Pepperdine assistant coach. "And so for him, it was his work ethic. I'd be curious to find anyone who has a bad word to say about him."
Not Mueller, who said Brown's leadership abilities were more obvious than his basketball skills as he elevated from 1988-89 bench player to 1989-90 leading scorer.
Brown executed whatever the coaches instructed. He exemplified the team's hard work and unity, qualities that Mueller remembers about that entire team. As he separated from coaching to lead higher-education revivals, Mueller also held onto key collaborative qualities but without the thrills a team can evoke.
Mueller maintained a love for basketball and filled that passion with Phoenix Suns season tickets before part of the GCU transformation included moving the Lopes' athletics programs to Division I and a working relationship with basketball icon Jerry Colangelo, who serves as a GCU Board of Trustees member and GCU Athletics special advisor with the university's College of Business named for him.
As Mueller often tells GCU students, "If you want to give God a good laugh, tell him what your plans are."
That MCC assistant coach and father of four could not have seen what was coming in his career and how it would reconnect him with basketball over the past 18 years at GCU.
"For me, it's unbelievable to be a part of it," Mueller said of GCU basketball. "Not only do I get to be around the program and help recruit the players, then we bring Jerry in and he wants to be around the program. We've now got a culture here that is beyond what I thought was possible."
Just like the 1989-90 MCC Thunderbirds, with a historic year that launched a pair of legendary careers for Brown and Mueller.
