NEW YORK — In the span of four years, Todd Simon went from being the head coach at Findlay Prep to serving as the head coach at UNLV.
Also in a four-year span, Danny Hurley went from coaching St. Benedict’s Prep to Wagner to Rhode Island, where he has an emerging Atlantic 10 power that lost its best player to injury in the first game of the season.
Now here comes Kevin Boyle as the next high-level high school coach who should make the jump to college.
All he needs is the right situation, the right administration and the right athletic director to make it happen.
“Kevin’s a winner,” Simon, whose team is 4-4 since he replaced Dave Rice, recently said on The 4 Quarters Podcast. “Having gone against him, I think we played him three times, had some great battles with him. Kevin’s a winner and I tend to believe he’ll be a winner wherever he goes….He holds the kids accountable. I certainly have a tremendous amount of respect for him and think he’d be great.”
I wrote a similar column a year ago, suggesting that colleges should think outside the box and hire Boyle to run their program.
I bring it up again now as Boyle is about to bring his loaded Montverde (FL) Academy team back to his home state of New Jersey for three games in a four-day span, including contests Thursday and Friday in the Metro Classic at Kean University and on Sunday in the PrimeTime Shootout at Roselle Catholic.
Boyle has proven more than capable of running a high-level high school program — two, including St. Patrick’s — and he is an able candidate for college head-coaching jobs, particularly in his home region.
Consider this: Assuming Ben Simmons becomes the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft in June, Boyle will have coached more No. 1 draft picks since 2011 than any coach in America not named John Calipari.
If you include players drafted at Nos. 2 and 3, Boyle will have actually coached more top-3 picks since 2011 than any coach anywhere, including Calipari and Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski.
During that span, Boyle will have coached two No. 1s (Simmons and Kyrie Irving), two No. 2s (Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and D’Angelo Russell) and a No. 3 pick (Joel Embiid).
During that same span, Calipari has produced two No. 1s (Anthony Davis and Karl-Anthony Towns), one No. 2 (Kidd-Gilchrist) and one No. 3 (Enes Kanter).
Coach K over that span has coached players chosen No. 1 (Irving), 2 (Jabari Parker) and 3 (Jahlil Okafor). Duke freshman forward Brandon Ingram is currently projected at No. 2 by DraftExpress.com.
And in many cases, Boyle actually coached these guys longer than their college coaches and had more time to develop them. Irving was at St. Patrick’s for two years, and at Duke for one. Kidd-Gilchrist spent four years at St. Pat’s and only one at Kentucky. Simmons played for Boyle for three years at Montverde, leading the program to three straight Dick’s Sporting Goods High School National Tournament championships. He will almost certainly only be at LSU for one season.
In terms of recruiting and developing talent, there’s no question that Boyle can get it done.
He knows how to win, too. Just witness his three straight national championships at Montverde and his five Tournament of Champions titles at St. Pat’s. His current team (22-1) is loaded with young talent and ranked No. 2 nationally by USA Today and No. 1 by MaxPreps.
And at St. Pat’s and, especially, Montverde, Boyle has essentially run an outfit similar to a small college program.
“Having come from that level, I have a tremendous respect for the level of coaching at the high school level and the prep level,” said UNLV’s Simon. “I truly believe in prepping for games at this level and prepping for games at that level, your margin for error at this level is actually bigger. At that level, if you lose one or two games you’re out of the national hunt.
“The games are [also] shorter. A lot of the states [like New Jersey] don’t even have shot clocks. You know you’re going to have X amount of possessions in a college basketball game. In a high school game, you might get eight possessions for the entire game, so your margin for error is less. You really better be good…and so it grew my appreciation for how good those coaches are as basketball purists at that level. I don’t think it’s any surprise the success that [Danny] Hurley and Kevin Keatts have had, the trend is going that way because they can really coach the game at that level.”
Boyle has always maintained that if the right opportunity came along he would consider it.
Make no mistake: He’s got a pretty good gig right now. He makes a low six-figure salary coaching at an elite academic skill on a plush campus outside Orlando. Year in and year out, he’s coaching some of the best young players in American high school basketball. His current team includes potential future pros R.J. Barrett, a freshman guard, and Simi Shittu, a sophomore forward — both of whom are Canadian.
“I’m extremely happy and there’s no question I have the best high school job,” Boyle said a year ago on The Four Quarters Podcast. “If you ever came on our campus, it’s an incredible Southern-style campus. It’s an incredible school…
“Obviously, if somebody walks in with an opportunity for you, you would definitely look at them….Obviously in life you have to look at situations, is it a better situation for you and your family or are you better where you’re currently at? I’m happy where I’m at and we’ll go from there.”
The time is now for some smart, enterprising college AD to think outside the box and hire Kevin Boyle.
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Here are the complete schedules for this weekend’s events:
METRO CLASSIC, Feb. 11-12, Kean University, Union, N.J.
PRIMETIME SHOOTOUT, Feb. 13-14, Roselle Catholic, N.J.
