As first reported here, Matt Henry (assistant coach) and Sam Atupem (graduate assistant coach) were officially announced as members of the men's basketball staff on MountAthletics.com today.
Ahmad Dorsett and Mike Farrelly are expected to be announced soon as they probably have to fulfill the remainder of their contracts at Bowie State and Hoop Group, respectively.
It appears the staff has already been to work based on this Tweet by coach Dorsett on July 1 at 12:05 p.m.:
"Lunch time @ Rocky's with the Staff!"
Rocky's, of course, is the pizza place in Thurmont, Md., frequented by Mount students and employees.
Ahmad Dorsett is expected to be hired as the final member of Mount basketball head coach Robert Burke's coaching staff in the near future, according to a source.
Although Dorsett has not been officially hired as of early Thursday, it appears that a deal is in place to bring him to Emmitsburg.
Dorsett's most recent stop has been as an assistant coach at Bowie State University in Bowie, Md., where he served for the 2009 - 2010 season.
This move would round out the coaching staff hand-picked by Burke in his first year as an NCAA Division I head coach after serving as an assistant coach at American.
While no members of the staff have been officially announced by the school, the lineup under Burke is expected to be as follows, via the reports of this blog:
Assistant coaches: Matt Henry, Mike Farrelly, Ahmad Dorsett. Graduate assistant: Sam Atupem.
The pending hiring of Dorsett means that no member of Burke's staff will have previous Divsion I coaching experience as Henry previously served as the Director of Basketball Operations for the Georgetown Hoyas while Farrelly worked for the New Jersey-based Hoop Group. Dorsett coached at Longwood University for a time, but during the school's transition period from Division II to Division I.
It should be noted that no member of Milan Brown's staff - Brion Dunlap, Kevin Robinson Jr. and Dan Engelstad - had previous Division I assistant coaching experience before coming to the Mount.
Additionally, Brown (Howard) and Dunlap (Old Dominion) played on the Division I level while Farrelly (St. Joseph's, as a walk-on) and Dorsett (George Mason) did the same. All four also played for a team that made at least one NCAA Tournament appearance.
Another notable aspect of this hiring is the fact that Dorsett is black. Like it or not, the Mount, like most schools, needed at least one black coach on staff. That statement is not to be confused with the proclamation that Dorsett is a token hire, which is clearly not the case. He is more than qualified and will be great addition and potentially the cornerstone of Burke's assistants.
Dorsett made an NCAA appearance as a member of Jim Larranaga's George Mason squad in 1999 and was a team captain in his final three seasons. For one season before joining the BSU Bulldogs he was an assistant at Division II Mount Olive College. He has previous head coaching experience on the high school level and, as mentioned previously, also served as an assistant at Longwood University.
What this also means, quite obviously, is that Greg Paulus will not be brought on staff. Reports were the Paulus initiated contact with Burke, not the other way around, and was given serious consideration for a position on Burke's staff as recently as this week.
To summarize, Henry brings experience from a successful Big East program as well as a familiarity with Burke from his days as an assistant under John Thompson III.
Dorsett won a conference championship at the Division I level, has served as an assistant on various college levels and has head coaching experience, albeit on the high school level.
And Farrelly played for a St. Joseph's University program in the pinnacle of its success with two future NBA starters. Additionally, he appears to have been a prominent member of the Hoop Group staff for three years.
Interestingly enough, the makeup of Burke's program very closely mirrors that of the one Brown employed in his seven years as the Mount head coach. In addition to the fact that all of the returning players were Brown's recruits, Burke and Brown are also fairly close in age and both employed three young assistants for their staff. This may continue the cycle of comfort and trust between the players and their young coaches, and hopefully lead to a smooth transition to the Burke era.
It appears that Burke took a very reasonable amount of time - 41 days - to compile a staff with great potential. Although there are a number of question marks entering his first season as head coach in Emmitsburg, it does not appear that he has created any additional reasons for significant skepticism than would have already existed with any new coach.
The final piece of the puzzle that many of us are eagerly awaiting to take shape is the use of the remaining two scholarships. I agree, Richard, that it could be best to eat the two scholarships and use them with an entire year of recruiting as opposed to picking up a borderline player late in the process. I do, however, think that at least one of them will be used and as I get more concrete information on the subject I'll post it.
Additionally, I know very little of the upcoming schedule; a tentative one does not even exist as of a week ago. I'm not saying there are no non-conference games on the docket, just that there is not an actual piece of paper that lists them all yet that has been made available.
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Lastly, and probably least importantly to you all, is that I verbally agreed to take a job on Tuesday. I'll write a post on it when I get a chance for anyone who is interested. Thanks for all your support and reading.
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Tweet of the Night during the first half of the NBA Finals from Michael Jordan's son, Marcus: "@SASBMJ NO ONE...And I mean NO ONE should EVER com par kobe Bryant to my dad an say that he is anywhere near close to my dad He's jagging this game"
And hopefully no one compares Marcus's grammar to that of a fourth grader. Twitter or not - he would lose.
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Interesting fact: My dad turned 50 yesterday - along with Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho". Who else had a birthday yesterday? 2Pac Shakur (the best rapper of all-time), Phil Mickelson (best left-handed golfer of all-time) and Dana Collins - a fellow class of 2009 graduate, who pole vaulted for the Mount track team. I'm glad to know that my dad is in good company for birthday celebrations even if 2Pac couldn't make dinner!
Any alarm due to the lack of announcement of coach Robert Burke's staff is still largely unwarranted due to a couple factors both internal and external.
Internally it is OK because we know that Matt Henry and Sam Atupem are already here to help. Externally, I'd like to share information regarding other schools in our conference that underwent recent coaching changes.
First let us take a look at the situation at Wagner. Dan Hurley was announced as the school's new head coach on April 5. Eight days later he hired is brother, Bobby as an assistant. I'm sure that wasn't much of a search process. Seventeen days later he brought Bashir Mason on staff before rounding out his assistants by adding Luke Murray on May 3 - 28 days later. So Hurley, who already had his brother in his back pocket, took 28 days to fill out his staff.
Robert Morris's Mike Rice recently moved on as well as you may have heard (although you wouldn't know if you clicked this link listing RMU's coaches at the time of this post), opening the spot for Andrew Toole, who was announced for his new role May 11. As an already existing member of the staff, he was able to retain Robby Priedgen, who was not asked to follow Rice. It took 15 days - May 26 - for Toole to announce Matt Hahn as his first outside assistant. And as of right now, 25 days later, his final assistant has yet to be named.
As for Quinnipiac's Tom Moore and his staff acquisitions in 2007, the details are not as easy to find but still help prove my point. Moore was announced as the new head coach on March 29 of that year, and while two of his assistants - Sean Doherty (Moore's long lost twin) and Eric Eaton - apparently had been on staff for weeks, they were not announced until May 10 - 41 days later. The third member of his staff, Scott Burrell, was not announced until JULY, according to his bio. So assuming he was hired at the earliest possible date of July 1, that would mean a 92-day window between Moore's hiring and the rounding out of his staff. With an NEC title game appearance last season and coach of the year honors in the conference, I'd say Moore's plan worked out just fine. (Burrell and Doherty are still on staff while Eaton is not.)
Which brings us back to our situation at the Mount. Burke was announced as head coach on May 6. Although Atupem still hasn't been officially named to any position, he has been around the whole time and aided Burke since his first day on the job. Then there's Henry, who has been around the office for weeks and I believe - although I cannot say for sure - that I saw him in the ARCC after the press conference. If that was the case, then he has been around for the duration of Burke's tenure as well.
Burke did not have the luxury of keeping anyone from the old staff as they all followed Milan Brown to Holy Cross, but he was fortunate to have Atupem - a strong link to the program who has great familiarity with it as well - stick around. Then he wasted little time in bringing in Henry. While it would be nice to have an official announcement on these things, it seems that we may have to wait until the entire staff is in place. That means the announcement could come tomorrow, or if it goes anything like QU's process in 2007, July - we do not really know.
Multiple assistant coaching candidates report as recently as Wednesday that they still have not heard a yes or no in regards to their hiring. It has been 32 days since Burke was announced, but at this stage of the college basketball season cycle that is not as long as it sounds, as evidenced by recent staff searches in the rest of the NEC. We know the whole staff will have our support when its named, even if it may be a little longer before we know who exactly we are supporting.
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Shoutout to Kevin Kalis, Mount class of 1999, for the beer and round of Long Island Ice Teas at Ott's last night.
All this talk about the interview process and you’re probably wondering who exactly had a chance at this job. Well these were the six finalists who were brought to campus for interviews:
Those who doubted my belief that Powell has more confidence in Burke now than he ever did in Milan Brown, that Burke would be given more to work with, and that Brown was set up to fail has never been more evident than it is now.
Consider that Burke’s salary will be approximately 125 percent of what Brown made in his seventh season at the Mount. That’s right; Brown clawed his way to a six-figure salary needing a conference championship and the school's first-ever NCAA tournament victory just to “earn” a five-year contract extension.
Now all Burke had to do upon his selection was walk in the door and sign the papers and he was granted thousands upon thousands more in salary to go with his initial five-year contract.
(I’d like to see someone who works in the school anonymously comment on that.)
This undoubtedly will mean higher salaries for the three assistants on his staff (in the neighborhood of $50,000 each) when it is named.
And when it is named, an additional paid position akin to a graduate assistant thats existence was never granted for Brown will be occupied by Sam Atupem.
In summary, Powell is giving Burke more money, more positions, and in turn, a bigger vote of confidence. I have no problem with most of this – I wish he could give Burke more than he already is.
My problem is that Brown was never given any of these benefits.
Was it because he’s not Catholic? I don’t know I’m just asking based on Powell’s comments in the press release:
“Coach Burke was selected for his strong leadership and coaching skills, devotion to Catholicism and commitment to the academic success of his student-athletes.”
Brown certainly displayed the strongest of leadership, great coaching skills and made the graduation of his players a priority in his tenure – but while he is a devout Christian, he is not Catholic.
(For the record the Mount’s president is the only position on campus that requires its occupant to be Catholic, as Powell once informed me. I’m sure that wasn’t counting anyone involved with the church such as the Rev. Brian Nolan.)
I do know that since Burke has not officially announced the hiring of anyone for his staff yet, there are only two minorities in the Mount athletic department. They are both assistant coaches for women’s basketball, which means that head coach Brian Whitten chose them and Powell simply signed off on the decisions.
But as we learned from the press conference, as well as from my interview about his sister-in-law (from this story; definitely read it), Powell makes all the hiring decisions:
“Nobody gets offered a job at Mount St. Mary's until they get a letter from the president offering a job. There's only one person who's allowed to offer people jobs and that's me,” Powell said in January 2008.
So then we should give him credit for all the black professors he employs. Let’s count them:
Susan Samples…
(Crickets.)
That’s it. Scroll down to the “D” section of this page and click on each department, then click on faculty, and she is the only black professor you will find. (I don’t know who J. Michael Harpe is in the education department, but I’ve never heard anyone refer to him as a professor, let alone seen him on campus.)
The funny thing about Samples is that she was hired before Powell, which logically means that he could not have hired her.
Gasp!
My concern beyond basketball is the legitimate problem with diversity at Mount St. Mary’s.
We have two black coaches and one black professor – neither of which was chosen by Powell – and we’re about to give a white, Catholic coach significantly more money and resources than we gave a black, non-Catholic coach?
As a white, Catholic alumni of the Mount, I’m offended. I am embarrassed to be associated with a school that gave me so much opportunity and so many memories, but is run so exclusively.
That which I can do in the meantime is limited; I can wait for Powell’s contract to expire on June 30, 2012 and I can refrain from donating any money to the Mount. When I’m older, less poor and the school is no longer run by Powell I plan on donating.
I’ll donate to the men’s golf program (if it still exists), to the men’s basketball program, which will hopefully still be run by a successful coach Burke, to the communications department and to other aspects of campus that shaped my career.
But to arrogance and selfishness? The only thing I will give to those causes is my vehement disapproval.
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Please be sure to vote in the new poll on the top of the page on whether Powell should resign.
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Multiple attempts were made to contact Powell via telephone (where he was not reached as I later learned he was in New York for business) and via e-mail. He accepted an e-mail request one week ago, May 26, for an interview regarding the contents of this piece but did not subsequently make himself available.
UPDATE:
An excerpt of an e-mail I received from an employee in the Mount's communications department at 2:16 p.m. this afternoon:
"...would you stop by my office so we can talk about a few things?"
I wish I had the time.
At 3:03 p.m., literally seconds before I was about to post this, I received another e-mail from one of Powell's assistants regarding the scheduling of our interview for which he would not soon be available. I politely responded that I no longer needed to speak to Powell since our schedules were not able to align in time.
As far as I can tell, Mount basketball head coach Robert Burke is close to officially naming the rest of his staff. What we already know is that Matt Henry, the former director of basketball operations at Georgetown, is on staff and has already been at work in the office. We also know that Sam Atupem is on staff in some form for the time being. On the camp brochures littered around the ARCC earlier this month, Atupem was listed as the contact person for sign-ups.
That leaves two positions remaining, which may have already been filled. It is possible that Burke already has his men and just has not taken the time to announce them, but allow me to speculate anyway.
There are two important items to consider and both point to June 1 as an important date. June 1, for one, is the date at which all of the staff from the Milan Brown era will no longer be on payroll at the Mount. Despite being formally announced as assistants as Holy Cross, not everyone from Brown's staff - Brion Dunlap, Kevin Robinson Jr. and Dan Engelstad - are off the books in Emmitsburg yet.
The second important tie to June 1, and one that has been mentioned here before, is the fact that it is the date when summer classes begin for undergraduate classes at Mount St. Mary's, and the date that Burke stated in his introductory press conference that he hoped to have named at least some of his staff to begin getting acclimated with the players. With Henry and Atupem already in place, he may have satisfied that goal in his mind and be in no rush to fill the final two positions. But I would still think that Burke is taking a "sooner the better" approach and will name his assistants very soon.
As recently as last week interviews were still being conducted to fill the final two spots. Additionally, some of the candidates, if not all, had been given game film from past Mount St. Mary's games and asked to scout both the Mount and the opponent for that game, then to send the scout back to Burke.
Now comes perhaps the most interesting information regarding the salary of these assistants. I will preface this information by saying that we do not know which two positions the remaining candidates are competing for (i.e. first assistant, second assistant, third assistant) because those positions may no longer exist at the Mount. What I mean is that the assistants may not be tiered - the three assistants under Burke could all be on the same level salary-wise.
There was either a clause in Burke's contract or a bit of finagling in the aftermath that granted him a pool of money - rumored to be a sum of $145,000 - $160,000 - that he will be allowed to split up as he chooses - in this case evenly - among his staff. The benefit I see to this is that he can offer three positions with respectable pay and have a relatively deeper staff as opposed to going strong for a proven first assistant, recruiting an up-and-comer for second and hoping to get lucky with a third (you know, in case a recent Duke point guard applies. Or something like that.)
Last I heard, which was before the holiday weekend, there were at least four candidates still fighting for the final two spots. Greg Paulus, of course, was still in the running. So was Duane Simpkins, an early-1990s player at Maryland and now three years into his head coaching job at St. Alban's High School in Washington D.C. A third nominee is Ahmad Dorsett, who is an assistant at Bowie State. And the final candidate of which I have knowledge is Harold Juluke, an assistant at Tulane.
Obviously I'm rooting for Paulus, but I don't know much about the remaining three candidates other than what I can find on the Internet. The only person who has been personally vouched for to me is Dorsett. I like the thoroughness that the process is undergoing and expect to see an announcement in the near future. If I hear anything I'll be sure to post it here.
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I'm even less confident in our ability to retain Justin Burrell than I was before. In addition to the hear-say that has been passed along, there is this:
Burrell was granted a partial release from the Mount weeks ago. Essentially this means that he can re-open his recruiting under the standard rules for every other school in the nation, except for the Mount. Because of the partial, and not full, release, Burke and his staff can still contact Burrell as much as they want as if he is still signed with the team, but he's not.
Considering the Mount has full access to the one-time top-priority recruit turned prized-signee turned more-urgent-than-ever-top-priority-recruit and he still hasn't re-committed to the Mount is troubling. If he isn't announced to be back with the Mount soon (as in two weeks ago) I would expect a school in a conference that is a level above the NEC's tier (AKA the bottom tier) to scoop him up with a late scholarship opening. And if he does not get any offers he likes in the near future he could just as easily enroll in prep school and potentially boost his stock even higher next year.
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Congrats to two Mount alumni on their recent marriages. Former Mount basketball player and current William & Mary assistant Jamion Christian was recently married in Hawaii while former Mount golfer turned head coach of the same team, Kevin Farrell, was married on campus Saturday and is spending his honeymoon in Puerto Rico this week.
Greg Paulus is in fact interested in coaching at Mount St. Mary's. So much so that he was seen interviewing with coach Robert Burke on campus Thursday.
As Burke has filled his first and second coaching posts and the third vacant with the possibility of adding an additional position, Paulus is likely pursuing the third assistant position as that is the only traditional coaching position still open.
Expect to see Burke use his Georgetown ties to fill one of the top two slots on his staff.
As for Paulus, the former Duke point guard would be a great addition to the Mount staff. Although it is somewhat perplexing that Paulus would pursue a job that carries a salary likely less than $30,000 - and probably closer to $20,000 - instead of making at least three times that much overseas, it would be the Mount's good fortune.
As I mentioned in the post speculating that Paulus may still be interested in coaching at the Mount, he would bring great recognition to the program. It is unlikely that he would stay around for more than two seasons, and possibly one, but Burke and the school should do everything it can to exploit his name if he is hired - and there is no reason to believe that he will not be.
He surely would be a great recruiter with a keen recognition of skilled, intelligent basketball players. Additionally, he would replace former third assistant Dan Engelstad as the youngest assistant who can most easily relate to the players as he is fresh out of his playing days. (Sam Atupem would fill that role as well if he is hired on Burke's staff in some form.)
Rest assured that the Mount would be nothing but a stepping stone for Paulus (as well as for Burke and the rest of his staff at some point), but while he is likely ours, we must make the most of it. Since all but one member of Burke's staff is in place, look for an official announcement within the next week, if not by the end of the month, on just whom he has hired. As a diehard Maryland fan during my childhood it pains me to say this, but I will be more than happy to see Paulus on the sidelines in Knott Arena.
