We are still about 2 weeks away from the tip-off of the college basketball season, which means that we have plenty of time to prepare for the action ahead. We will do so via a series of season previews featuring the best players/coaches in the country. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel continues our coverage with Temple assistant coach Bobby Jordan, who talked about getting hired last April and his expectations for this season.
You played basketball at Drexel: how good a player were you back in the day, and how did you 1st get into coaching? I am a lot better coach than I was a player based on my 2 career points! I went to Drexel so that I could get into coaching and learn the ropes from Bruiser Flint.
You were head coach at IMG Academy: how are they able to keep producing 5-star recruits year after year? I was just down there recruiting last week: it is like Disneyland for student-athletes. Recovery, development, weight room, classroom: it is a real school and they offer anything you want and everything you need. Kids talk about wanting to be challenged every day: when I was there we had 22 future D-1 players in our program.
As an assistant at Wagner in 2022 you won 16 games in a row: did it reach a point where your team just expected to win every time that it stepped onto the court? We had a special team that year and were rolling. Elijah Ford tore his ACL during win #14 vs. LIU and then the streak ended a couple of games later against Merrimack. We had a few guys come back that season for an extra year after COVID despite only winning 8 games during their 1st year in 2020 so it was really special.
You were hired by new head coach Adam Fisher as an assistant last April: why did you take the job, and how is it going so far? I am a Philly guy and have lived here for most of my life. Even when I was at Wagner I would make the daily commute from Philly, where my wife is from (she played at Penn). Temple has a great tradition and it is a special opportunity.
The AAC has featured more conference realignment this year than any other with 6 teams joining the league from C-USA and 3 teams departing the league to join the Big 12: I know you were not in the league last year but what impact has all of this change had on you (if any)? When you see 3 teams leave for the Big 12 you might fear that our level of competition is going down, but we bring in a Final 4 team in FAU and a pair of teams in North Texas/UAB who faced each other in the NIT title game. It hurts to lose traditional powers like Cincinnati/Houston but I think the conference got deeper. It puts a chip on our shoulder to have a pair of top-25 teams in the league like Memphis/FAU.
You are playing in the Diamond Head Classic in December: how excited are you to spend Christmas in Honolulu?! I think that my kids are more excited than me because they have been talking about it a LOT! I got to experience it before as a player and my wife got to coach there while at Penn so hopefully we will get a couple of wins while we are out west.
You only have 2 seniors on the roster: have you figured out who will be your team’s leader yet? As we get closer to game action we are looking at our leaders more. We brought in 5 transfers and they have done an unbelievable job of jelling together. It has been really cool to see the guys working hard both on and off the court.
1 of your new additions is Steve Settle III, who transferred from Howard after scoring 13 PTS vs. Kansas in the NCAA tourney last March: what kind of role do you expect him to play this year? He has been mature in his approach to everything he does since stepping onto campus. He has re-transformed his body in the weight room and we expect him to have a big impact on our program: hopefully he can score more than 13 PTS while leading us back to the NCAA tourney.
The Eagles have the best record in the NFC and the Phillies are 1 game away from making the World Series: what is it like to be a Philly sports fan this month?! It seems like at least 1 of our teams are playing on a daily basis. My family and I were not in Philly last year for the Eagles/Phillies and were crushed while watching them lose the Super Bowl/World Series. It is a tough city…but when you play a certain way and win they love you. They play hard and have great camaraderie, which is what we are hoping to do here at Temple.
What are your goals for this season, and what are your expectations for this season? The 1st thing we talk about is the tradition/legacy of this program. We have the 6th-most wins in D-1 history and we want to rise to the level that came before us and make our fans/students/alumni proud.