GREGG DOYEL

Doyel: Joel Cornette's legacy as friend, leader

Gregg Doyel
gregg.doyel@indystar.com
Pallbearers escort the casket of former Butler basketball star Joel Cornette off the court at Hinkle Fieldhouse on Monday after a celebration of life.

INDIANAPOLIS – The closed casket was at midcourt, with Butler’s No. 33 jersey draped on top. As guests filed into Hinkle Fieldhouse on Monday morning, the video screen above was showing a montage of pictures — smiling, playful images of Joel Cornette.

Then came the video, highlights of his playing career capped by one of the most memorable quotes of Butler’s rise from mid-major nobody to college basketball powerhouse:

"On paper, people tell us we're nothing," Joel Cornette was saying on March 23, 2003, after Butler had beaten Louisville to advance to the Sweet 16. “But we're still playing for a national championship. We … are … still … here."

Which brought up a story.

And there were so many Joel Cornette stories on Monday during a ceremony called “A Celebration of Life.” So many people came to remember the beloved Butler alum after his death last week at age 35, including former teammates and almost every coach from the Butler ascension: Barry Collier, Thad Matta, Todd Lickliter, Brad Stevens and Chris Holtmann.

Doyel: Butler's Joel Cornette 'elevated everybody around him'

Former Butler teammate Mike Monserez told the story behind the story of those defiant words Cornette spoke in March 2003 — “We are still here,” Cornette had said, punctuating every word — and traced it to that preseason. Todd Lickliter was the Butler coach, and he gathered his team one day and revealed a grease board with the team’s goals. Win 20 games, it said. Win the Horizon League. Reach the Sweet 16. Players were nodding. Butler hadn’t reached the Sweet 16 in 40 years.

Cornette was shaking his head: No.

“We’re Butler,” Cornette told Lickliter, then looked around the room. “Butler isn’t satisfied.”

Lickliter nodded and wrote one more line on the board:

Win the national championship.

Monserez told that story and then gestured at the banners hanging above Joel Cornette’s casket, including back-to-back Final Fours in 2010 and '11.

If Butler had ever decided to be satisfied, Monserez was saying, “those banners up there never would have happened.”

* * *

“This is the first time I’ve ever gotten to the doors of Hinkle Fieldhouse and been hesitant to enter.”

— LaVall Jordan, Cornette's teammate at Butler, on Monday.

* * *

When Barry Collier left for Nebraska after the 1999-2000 season, Cornette told Jordan it was up to him — as the team’s captain — to march right over to the school president’s office and demand Butler promote assistant Thad Matta to head coach.

LaVall Jordan said he’d do it — on one condition.

“Joel, you’re coming with me,” Jordan said. “I’m not brave enough to do it alone. And you’re a better leader than me.”

Jordan was telling that story on Monday, his voice cracking at the end. Then he told another one, another example of Joel’s leadership, from the 2001 NCAA tournament. Butler had drawn Wake Forest in the first round, and Wake Forest players had been honest when asked what they knew about Butler: Nothing, the Deacons had said. Didn’t even know Butler was in Indiana.

Joel Cornette used that in his pregame speech.

“After (the speech) was over,” Jordan said, “I promise we could have beaten the Lakers.”

At halftime it was Butler 43, Wake Forest 10.

Butler won that game, then lost in the Round of 32. After the season Thad Matta called a team meeting to tell the Bulldogs he was leaving for Xavier. Butler athletic director John Parry then took over the meeting, describing the process of hiring a replacement, when Joel Cornette stood up and pointed at assistant coach Todd Lickliter.

“That’s who we want as a coach.”

Like Matta before him, Lickliter was promoted.

LaVall Jordan later told the story of Butler’s 2000 NCAA tournament loss to Florida. It’s a story Butler fans know. He had two free throws with 8.1 seconds left in overtime and the Bulldogs leading 68-67. He missed both. Florida’s Mike Miller then drove for the game-winner.

LaVall Jordan, a former teammate of Joel Cornette, said Joel was always the first to celebrate or grieve with a friend.

Jordan told the rest of the story, a story Butler fans might not know. After the game. Locker room. Players leaving, but not LaVall Jordan. He couldn’t get up and go. Too distraught.

“The guy that remained there with me, the entire time, was Joel Cornette,” he said Monday.

Jordan then listed real-life examples of friends and teammates who had been through life’s ups and downs: the birth of children, the death of parents. He finished every example this way:

“The first person there was Joel Cornette.”

* * *

“Joel was my best friend, and I bet if I asked for a show of hands of everyone in this room who’d say the same, a lot of hands would go up.”

— Mike Monserez, Cornette's teammate at Butler.

* * *

After playing at Butler and coaching with Lickliter at Iowa, Joel Cornette went to work as a basketball agent for Mark Bartelstein of Priority Sports.

The way Bartelstein was telling it Monday, applicants like Cornette — even with Brad Stevens talking him up — face a grueling process to get the job.

“Five, six, seven interviews to get final acceptance,” Bartelstein was saying. “But Joel came in that first time, and I was awed. I pretty much asked him for a job when it was over.”

A few years later, a Bartelstein employee called with a problem. It was the NBA’s pre-draft combine in Chicago. A group from Priority was at a hotel when a competing agent — “One who didn’t operate the Butler way,” Bartelstein was saying — walked up to smallish Priority agent Andy Shiffman and tried to intimidate him.

Bartelstein was livid and wanting answers. A few minutes later, still furious, he found Shiffman and asked him for an update.

Shiffman: It’s been handled.

Bartelstein: What happened?

Shiffman: Joel found out.

“Turns out,” Bartelstein was saying Monday, “Joel walked over to the guy, put a finger in his chest and said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ And I never heard from (the competing agent) again.”

* * *

“I say this as someone who has four beautiful kids: Joel (Sr.) and Christi, what you’ve done, if there’s a Hall of Fame for parents, you’ve earned it.”

— Mark Bartelstein to Mr. and Mrs. Cornette.

* * *

Jordan Cornette spoke last. He described Joel as his older brother, his idol, and in the last several years his best friend. He described visiting Indianapolis over the years and meeting people and telling them his name: Jordan Cornette.

Joel Cornette's brother, Jordan Cornette, Jordan Cornette described Joel as his older brother, his idol, and in the last several years his best friend. His was the most heartbreaking speech in an emotional day, Gregg Doyel writes.

He described the reaction he often received: “Are you the Butler one? Or the other one?”

“I’d tell them I’m the one who went to Notre Dame,” Jordan Cornette was saying, “and you should have seen the look on their face. They were so disappointed I wasn’t the one they’d been hearing about.”

Jordan talked about that news conference in 2003, after Butler had beaten Louisville to advance to the Sweet 16. He quoted his brother from that podium in Birmingham, Ala., when Joel Cornette had said: “We are still here.”

And this is how Jordan Cornette wrapped up the most emotional, heartbreaking speech on an emotional, heartbreaking day. He spoke to his brother, Joel, in the casket behind him:

“You are still here,” Jordan said. “You are still here with me. I love you.”

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.