For Princeton basketball, assistant coach Brett MacConnell's skills are paying off

Nearly two decades ago, Brett MacConnell was a standout soccer player at Montgomery High School with a bold idea. The night before a big game, he decided replace his home field’s beat-up old goalposts with something modern and befitting the moment.

He rounded up the material and recruited a handful of teammates to help him. As their project extended deep into the night, the others threw in the towel, leaving MacConnell holding the bag, so to speak. The maintenance crew found him early the next morning, frantically trying to finish the job. The site of the game had to be moved – and the school forced MacConnell to sit it out, as punishment.

His father, longtime Rutgers Athletics administrator Kevin MacConnell, fought the urge to smile at the kid’s moxie as he delivered his verdict.

“Come on Brett,” he said. “You know that MacConnell men are not handy.”

Brett MacConnell is 36 now, and his outside-the-box thinking, dedication to the job and willingness to take a chance are big reasons why Princeton University’s basketball team is playing in the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 against Creighton Friday (9 p.m., TBS). As Mitch Henderson’s associate head coach he’s recruited almost the entire roster, finding gems in places no one else would look.

Also a sharp tactical mind, he’s the lead scout for the Tigers’ games against Penn, which they’ve beaten a whopping nine straight times, including in this year’s Ivy League Tournament semis. And he wrote the scouting report for Princeton’s Round of 32 romp of Missouri, a dissection so complete that many observers abandoned the “Cinderella” moniker for the No. 15 seed.

“Brett’s a head coach,” Henderson said. “I’m hopeful he gets named a head coach soon. Some AD is going to get really lucky.”

The 'great identifier'

The crown jewel MacConnell recruiting story, you may know already: After receiving a mass email about an obscure prospect in England, MacConnell was the lone responder, flying across the pond, struggling so hard to drive his rental car on the left side of the road that he sheared off the side-view mirror, and staying interested even though the prospect’s team got slaughtered in the game he witnessed.

That prospect is Tosan Evbuomwan, now Princeton’s star senior who became the talk of the country last week as his unique point-forward game tore Arizona and Missouri to shreds.

There are 10 stories like that with this roster, albeit a bit less dramatic. MacConnell found Caden Pierce, the Ivy League Rookie of the Year, who bullied Missouri for 16 rebounds. He found Xaivian Lee, a lightly recruited Canadian who as a freshman has become a key contributor off the bench. He opened a pipeline of New Jersey recruits – one that never really existed before – bringing in now-graduated standouts Spencer Weisz (Seton Hall Prep), Amir Bell (East Brunswick), Myles Stephens (Lawrenceville) and Richmond Aririguzoh (Trenton Catholic), all of whom helped the Tigers win the 2017 Ivy League title.

The current Jersey guy in Princeton’s rotation, sharpshooter Zach Martini out of Gill St. Bernard’s, got his first Division 1 offer from MacConnell.

“Whenever I’m in a slump or not feeling too great about hoops, he the first person I go to," Martini said. "He’s someone we all look up to, brings a lot of energy, a lot of joy to practice. Selfishly, I would love for him to stay, but I think he’s proven that he’s ready to run his own ship.”

Recruiting the right people is more important at Princeton than at most other schools. The Tigers don’t take transfers and they don’t run players off; just about no undergraduate in the program opts to leave, given the life advantage of having a Princeton degree. Once a player accepts the staff’s offer to join the team, they have that player for four years.

And that player has to be able to cut it academically, too. There is no special treatment, no shortcut in the classroom for student-athletes.

“He’s a great identifier – he has a knack for projecting down the line,” said Chris Mongilia, Princeton’s director of basketball operations. “He knows what the heartbeat is here.”

He’s mentored Mongilia, too.

“There is really no one who does authentic relationships better than Brett does,” Mongilia said. “He believes that everyone is capable of greatness, he takes chances on people, gives them an opportunity and does his best to invest in them to help them flourish.”

A dream come true

The apple stayed close to the tree. Hanging around his father growing up, Brett quickly came to understand that a job in college sports is not really a job – it's a lifestyle. There is no clock to punch. The calls are always coming in. You have to love it, to breathe it.

“I didn’t even know, at the time, how much I was learning from being around him,” Brett said.

He kept learning as a student at Rutgers, where he became a manager for the men’s basketball team before graduating in 2008.

“I think of myself as blue-collar, and I think I developed that as a manager at Rutgers,” he said. “Breaking down chairs in a banquet room at 1 a.m., and having to be back there at 6 a.m., we’d always say, ‘Nothing will faze us after this. We’ll be ready for anything that comes from a work-ethic standpoint.'”

He hasn’t forgotten where he came from, joining forces with former Rutgers Court Club president Brian Kelley and current Scarlet Knights head coach Steve Pikiell to establish a scholarship fund for the program’s managers.

That same esprit de corps impressed Henderson, who MacConnell credits for his development.

“He has given me incredible responsibility,” MacConnell said.

His responsibility doubled this season after he became a father in August. Son Cooper is 7 months old now and will be at the game in Louisville this weekend with his mom, Brett’s wife Sarah, whom Brett calls “a superstar” for carrying the parenting load during this whirlwind time.

“Not in my wildest dreams did I imagine I’d be the associate head coach on a Princeton team going the Sweet 16,” MacConnell said. “This is really, really special for me.”

It may get even more special in the coming weeks. MacConnell is a strong candidate for multiple mid-major head-coaching vacancies. All those relationships he’s built over the years are paying off.

There’s a downside to that, too. After Princeton’s NCAA Tournament wins, more than 800 text message accrued on his phone. He vowed to respond to each, but when he got down to the final 170, they disappeared. Enlisting the help of a tech specialist, MacConnell got Siri to read the lost messages back to him. It was a time-consuming work-around, but that guy who stuck out the ill-fated goalpost project when everyone else bailed?

He returned every message.

Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996 and the college basketball beat since 2003. He is an Associated Press Top 25 voter. Contact him at jcarino@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Princeton vs. Creighton basketball: Brett MacConnell a rising star