This list of tasks to accomplish appears endless for Mike Maker.
Just over a week ago he accepted the head coaching job at Marist and on Sunday his five man freshman class, recruited by the previous coaching staff under Jeff Bower, will reach campus.
“I don’t know, it remains to be seen,” Maker said on if he’s confident all 13 scholarship players will be on campus Sunday. “I’m expecting them all to be here.”
The number one task Maker has had to deal with, since coming from Williams, has been to establish relationships with each of his players.
“I’m the third coach in as many years, so can you imagine what they’re going through right at the press conference, ‘I’ve heard this song and dance before’,” Maker said. “Building trust with them and relationships with them moving forward is essential that’s number one.”
Six years ago Maker went from Division I assistant coach to his first head coaching job – though he admits people forget his year coaching at a women’s junior college near his hometown of Salinas, California – at Division III Williams. Having been hired there on July 8, Maker was tasked with establishing new relationships quickly, but he said a planned foreign trip to Italy from the previous staff that summer helped lay the foundation for his program.
“The players and chemistry is everything and that’s the first order of business for us,” Maker said. “Then, of course, to assemble a staff and then create the kind of culture we want and atmosphere we want.”
Considering the long list of tasks he has to accomplish in a short period of time, Maker said he hasn’t had time to even consider the idea of a foreign trip.
“There’s so many other things to do,” Maker said. “Certainly sometime in the near future I would hope that our program would at least be able to discuss the possibility of going over.”
The most difficult part of the process for Maker, at least during the interview phase, has been to escape the label that being a head coach in Division III job gave him.
“I think if Williams was in the Ivy League right now I think they’d be highly competitive,” Maker said. “We ran it like a Division I program. I’m proud of what we were able to accomplish, but I think if my timeline were different I wouldn’t have to answer that question all the time.”
“If I had started out at Wiliams and had that kind of success and then moved up the ladder if you will to Dartmouth, then to Sanford, then to West Virginia and Creighton and then took the Marist job people would be celebrating the hire, but you have to try and sell the hire. That’s not for me to do.”
Maker’s predecessor at Williams, Dave Paulsen, has been to two NCAA tournaments in six seasons since moving on to Bucknell. His mentors, Dana Altman and John Beilein, have enjoyed success at every stop in their career and Maker said his experience at Williams proved he was able to have success on his own.
“I’m coming into a situation where they haven’t been to the NCAA tournament in 27 years,” Maker said. “They haven’t played for MAAC championship, so that kind of challenge actually intrigues me.”
The first challenge is to bring stability to a program that, when they practice for the first time this summer, will have had a third head coach in three seasons.
“There is no stability in this basketball program. None,” Maker said. “We need people to rally behind us, be patient.”
“I’m excited to meet those incoming first years and we’re going to look at the glass as half full and not half empty. I’m excited to be here and I can’t wait to start working with the players.”
Ryan Restivo covers the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, the America East conference and Hofstra for Big Apple Buckets. You can follow Ryan on Twitter @ryanarestivo or contact Ryan at rrestivo[at]nycbuckets.com.
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