How would you describe your college basketball career at UCC (now TRU) from 1997-2001?
I had some really good teams … Played against the UCFV team that back in those days were winning national championships. Langara won back-to-back national championships during my time frame as well. We were playing high-level basketball. It’s funny because a lot of friends that I have are from UCFV, from Langara, from those teams that [I] always played against.
What did you learn from Kevin Hanson early in your coaching career on his staff at UBC?
[I] got to learn the art of scouting from Kev, [he] was big on that. It’s a winning program, it was his second year at UBC … but we made the national tournament. [We] had a great group. Another learning experience under a national team guy. I’ve been pretty fortunate that I’ve coached with five or six coaches that have coached in the national team program.
What was it like returning to your alma mater in Kamloops as an assistant coach with the women’s team?
I was there for the transition from college to U Sports. I’ll always remember Ken Olynyk was the full-time head coach, I was the full-time lead assistant or apprentice and we beat SFU, who had just won the national championship … It was a pretty neat experience again coaching with a national team coach, a guy who was a scout with the Raptors.
How would you describe yourself when you took your first head coaching job at SAIT in 2006?
Brash, foolish, all the above. I think you make a ton of mistakes, and you learn from it, you grow from it. I think ultimately, I’m a way, way, way better coach today than I was back then. And a lot of it was because of that learning experience.
What do you remember most about the following six years you spent with the MRU Cougars?
I was there during their transition phase to U Sports as well … From a college perspective, they were top notch, one of the higher end programs in the country. So, I got to experience a lot of highs, but a lot of lows too. The first year [in] U Sports was tough … but it was such a learning opportunity. I’m glad I went through it.
What brought you back to TRU the second time around as a coach on the men’s team?
It wasn’t working on the women’s side at the time. I was going back to do my master’s as well, so I went back to school [and] I learned from another guy who was a national team coach, Scott Clark. Scott took a chance on me, and I took a chance going back there to go to school, and it worked out really well for both of us. I think their program got better because I was there, and I got better because Scott took me under his wing for a year. I needed [those] two years to relearn the guy’s game.
After that, you had a wildly successful stint at Douglas College from 2016-2020, what made those teams so competitive?
We had some pretty good players, we struck rich. The summer of 2017 we had a run of three really good transfers come into Douglas and that really jump-started [us]. Paul Getz, Noah DeRappard-Yuswack, and Kameron Johnson from JUCO in California. I think those three were all within a week and a half, and we went from being a third, fourth place team in the PACWEST to having a shot at it. And then, success breeds success, and we just continued and skyrocketed from there.
What’s been the biggest challenge since joining UFV?
We want to have sustained excellence and I think that we’re building toward that. It’s taken longer than I expected it to, for sure. Douglas was very much a firecracker. You operate in two-year cycles. You try to win the conference in year one, you try to win a national championship in year two … whereas here it’s a bit more of a slow burn, we’re trying to get it so every single year we’re in a final eight, or we’re in a final four.
Where is this team in their competitive cycle?
I think that we’re on that top end of our cycle. We’ve got pretty good players in our program who are older guys, it’s time to take a run at it. And then, we might have to hit the refresh button and kind of start our process over again.
Interview has been edited for length and clarity
