Guest Post: Joe Moran

In between bracketology postings, here's a post from Joe Moran on his last publication, a biography on Al McGuire. I'm about halfway through the book and have found a lot of great content so far.

Joseph Declan Moran, a 1980 graduate of Marquette, recently released the Centennial Edition of "You Can Call Me Al: The Colorful Journey of College Basketball's Original Flower Child, Al McGuire." Moran wrote the biography with the cooperation of the late Marquette coach and college basketball analyst.

This fifth edition of the biography includes an Introduction that recounts the beginnings of the MU basketball program in 1916. It also includes photos of every Marquette basketball coach from Ralph Risch to Steve Wojciechowski, as well as those from Coach McGuire's funeral in 2001.

Moran spent two years researching the history of the basketball program, which included countless hours in the Marquette University Archives, as well as going through digitized versions of the Marquette Tribune, Milwaukee Sentinel, Milwaukee Journal, Milwaukee Leader and other local dailies as far back as 1916. Moran also scoured team scrapbooks, the Marquette Hilltop yearbooks, game programs, correspondence, the business ledgers and photo morgue. There were also interviews with subjects who had knowledge of the early days of the basketball program.

As a Marquette graduate, Moran is proud to be Coach McGuire's biographer and the first to tell the history of the basketball program.

Currently, the book is available at the Marquette Spirit Shop and via Moran's website (www.jdmpress.net).

The website includes photos, cover quotes, newspaper reviews, comments, Moran's biography and blog for the Centennial Edition of both "You Can Call Me Al" and his second book, "Goin' Uptown: Marquette's March to Madness and Return to the Final Four."