Matt Buchi has been head coach of the Fighting Illini Men’s Wheelchair Basketball Team Since 2013. Matt has acted as assistant coach for the Fighting Illini Men, the Alabama Women, and the USA Women’s National Team. After his assistant coaching career, he took up Head Coaching at Oklahoma State University before landing his dream job as Head Coach at the University of Illinois.

In this episode, we discuss Matt’s transition from college basketball player to coach, the international experiences that strengthened his love for coaching, and the unique challenges that come from this season as well as the future of the college division. I hope you enjoy my chat with Matt in this episode of the Push Podcast. For more wheelchair basketball content, follow my instagram @push_sports_mag. To learn more about the Illinois wheelchair basketball program, follow them on instagram at @illiniwcbb.

Note: the coach quoted as saying “Ask me in [10] years and we’ll see how successful these [my team is] Then I’ll be able to tell you if I succeeded as a coach” is Coach Ward Lambert, who coached John Wooden as a college basketball player at Purdue University.