Reflections Magazine Issue #68 - Fall 2008 | Page 10

Athletics Feature

Siena Who?

In 1977, Braun was content as a young high
school basketball coach in Racine, Wis., when then
Siena Heights athletic director Orby Moss called.
“He had just taken the job (at Siena Heights) and
was somebody I knew back in Racine,”Braun said.
“I didn’t have any interest in becoming a college
coach. But he kept trying to recruit me to (Siena
Heights). He said, ‘It’s a great opportunity.’I said,
‘I’m happy coaching in high school.’He said, ‘You
can always go back to high school, so try college.’
He must have been a heck of a recruiter, because
he convinced me to go to Adrian.”
When Braun arrived at Siena Heights, he realized
the immediate challenge at hand. For starters,
Siena did not have a gym, except for the archaic
half court in the basement of Sage Union. That
meant practice and home games were played at
the Piotter Center a few blocks from campus.

Becoming a Saint

Leaving Siena

Once he got a taste of coaching college basketball,
Braun was hooked. In fact, he thrived in the Siena
environment, and not just on the basketball court.

The man who was reluctant to even get into college coaching was now being courted by larger
schools. One of those schools was Eastern Michigan, which offered Braun an associate head coaching position in 1985.

“Siena had a real nice feel about it. It had a real
warm atmosphere,”Braun said. “Every day somebody would come up, stop by the office and say
hi. One of the Sisters would come by and give
us a blessing for the day, and they would tell us
how happy they were that I was there, which was
unique. I just felt at home there.”
Braun also got a chance to teach not only on the
court, but in the classroom.

“We played in a bingo hall. We practiced in a
bingo hall. We recruited out of a bingo hall,”said
Braun of the Piotter Center, which had a maximum capacity of about 200 people. “They were
hanging off the stage there. When you talk about
crackerbox, that was an all-time crackerbox.”

“That was huge,” Braun said of Siena’s current
athletic complex. “Our program kind of turned
around in conjunction with that.”
The results on the scoreboard proved that. Braun
was 8-21 in his first season with the Saints, but
Siena finished 24-6 the next. In fact, Braun did
not have a losing season again, winning at least
20 games four times in compiling a 148-103
record with the Saints.

And he said the relationship between academics
and athletics was another distinctive aspect of
Siena Heights.
“There’s some tremendous people who are still
associated with Siena Heights who not only were
great for the community academically, but they
were very supportive of basketball,”said Braun,
rattling off familiar Siena names such as Doug
Miller, Pat Palmer and Bob Gordon. “That’s
something a lot of big colleges miss. These are
people who had hard jobs on the academic side,
but they would always manage to get over and
were big supporters of our program.”
And he still misses meals at those “mom and pop”
restaurants in Adrian. “You felt like you were