Wesley Matthews shows off his coaching chops at The Basketball Tournament

The Basketball Tournament is a $2 Million Winner-Take-All tournament comprising of some fringe NBA players, international players, and former college players. There are a number of NBA players involved with this rapidly growing venture, one of whom is the Dallas Mavericks own Wesley Matthews.

Matthews is coaching his fellow Marquette Alumni Golden Eagles who beat the Kansas State Alumni Purple & Black today 84-77 to advance to the Midwest Regional Championship.

Some of the players Matthews is coaching may sound familiar: Dwight Buycks was an integral part of the “Orlando Mavericks” the Champions of the Orlando Summer League, Darius Johnson-Odom formerly played for the Los Angeles Lakers and Philadelphia 76ers, and Jamil Wilson just signed a two-way contract to play with the Los Angeles Clippers.

Matthews, sporting a new hairstyle, has his chance now to put himself in Rick Carlisle’s shoes (at least for 6 games) to get some coaching experience and help his alma mater. But what kind of coach would Wesley Matthews be?

On the NBA court, Matthews is a fiery, competitive, no non-sense arrow slinger that goes all out—but as a coach he’s more reserved at times.

Watch this play when Juan Anderson absolutely obliterates this layup attempt and in the top right corner of the screen you can see Matthews in the gray shirt and blue shorts not even flinch.

ESPN

One thing that did warrant some expressive response from Coach Matthews was not getting back on defense. Watch Wes will one of his players back on defense when he was complaining to a ref, but of course it’s straight back to business afterwards.

ESPN

One attribute that would translate into any coaching job is the amount of clapping Matthews does when he team defends well or needs a pick me up.

Then of course there is the halftime interview. An art that few coaches have perfected. Coach Popovich has his…um, style; Coach Kerr attempts to answer every question with some humor, and Coach Carlisle looks like he would much rather be riding his bike through the grass with Dirk Nowitzki (but who wouldn’t?).

Matthews took a matter-of-fact approach to his halftime interview with Jennifer Hale.

Then late in the game the fiery NBA player we all know resurfaced.

ESPN

Here’s a look inside Coach Matthews’ huddle when the game was basically decided.

After the game Coach Matthews had a few thoughts about the victory:

And if there was any question whether or not Wes would actually want to coach, we got our answer...

Wes Matthews looks like a pro already coaching his Golden Eagle Alumni to another victory. The Golden Eagles play Ohio State Alumni Scarlet & Gray today (Jul. 23) at 11:00 AM CST in The Basketball Tournament on ESPN. If you don’t tune in for the basketball, just watch to listen to Fran Fraschilla—he knows everything.

*Thanks to our friend Rob Lopez at Def Pen Hoops for the videos.