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Conference tournaments are about basketball but also so much more: the parents, fans, bands, cheerleaders, etc. The CAA Tournament will be taking place next week in Washington, DC, and we could not be more excited to be there in person! HoopsHD is covering all the angles so you can look forward to an abundance of access in the week ahead. Jon Teitel continues our coverage from DC with an interview of Delaware basketball father Mark Jerome about his son Kobe who is trying to make the NCAA tourney (and his son Ty who already won an NCAA tourney a few years ago).
You are president of a youth basketball organization in Manhattan called Global Professional Sports: what makes your program different from other programs? There is a ton of competition in New York City in youth sports, so we are grateful to anyone who wants to play for us. What separates is us is that we try to enhance a player’s IQ. It is amazing to be super-athletic…but 99% of the world does not have that, so the only way to compete at a high level is to work hard/handle pressure/make decisions in a chaotic environment. I do not understand why some people call basketball an easy game: someone is physically trying to stop you on every possession! It takes a long time to improve, so it takes patience on the part of us/the players/their families.
You spent several years as head coach at Beacon High School: what is the key to being a good coach? I took over a team that was 2-15 and during my 1st year we were bad. Beacon has a great academic environment, so there is a lot of competition to get in there. A lot of people cannot afford private schools but a few years ago there were 10,000 applicants for only 300 spots: the line for people waiting to take a tour went around a big city block! We were not getting the best athletes back then so at 1st we were just a disaster. The following summer I let everyone on the team know that if they wanted to play then they would have to commit to working out all summer long. The kids put the work in…and we went 24-0 the following season. In New York City teachers will act as coaches, but they are being pulled in so many directions that they do not have enough time to work on their craft. We would face other schools with more talent, but since I have studied this for years and am passionate about it, we were able to beat them. We were in an athletic league but by Year 3 the teams that had beaten Beacon in the past by 30 PTS were worried about facing us. Our kids worked hard and bought in and changed the culture. You could see the confidence building over the course of the year as we beat more and more teams: it became tangible, and our practices were intense. By the middle of the year the captains were running practice, so I give a lot of credit to our kids.
Your son Ty went to Virginia, and in the 2018 NCAA tourney he scored 15 PTS in a 1st-round loss to UMBC: how stunned were you to see the Cavaliers get upset by a #16-seed? The kids were resilient a few days later, but I was depressed until I got on the phone to talk about it with Coach Tony Bennett. Anything can happen in the NCAA tourney since there are no bad teams, but it was a lot of “what could go wrong did go wrong”. There were a lot of storylines that have never been told that impacted that game, as well as some calls that went against Virginia.
Take me through the magical 2019 NCAA tourney:
UVA had a 4-PT win over Oregon in the Sweet 16, an OT win over Purdue in the Elite 8, and a 1-PT win over Auburn in the Final 4: how was you blood pressure doing by the time they had survived that gauntlet?! I still have not recovered! Occasionally someone will talk to me about it…and I still get heart palpitations as if I am reliving it. I know everyone deserves to win but I think that team remains 1 of the greatest stories in American sports. It was a great group of staff/players who worked very hard: The culture that Tony created is so comforting that as a parent I could relax after dropping Ty off on campus. It was tough emotionally, but the outcomes made it all worth it.
In the title game Ty scored 16 PTS in an 8-PT OT win over Texas Tech: where does that rank among the highlights of the Jerome family? In terms of sports highlights it is at the top…for now. People texted me throughout the Final 4 and I later learned that during OT Jim Nantz mentioned that I used to take Ty to games as a kid. It is like a dream for any athlete to play in a title game and win it at the end. After the buzzer assistant coach Jason Williford told security to let us onto the court, and it was the most amazing feeling that anyone can have.
Ty’s scoring average had been decreasing over the past several years and he only played 15 total minutes last year, but this year he has become 1 of the top scorers off the bench for the team with the best record in the NBA (Cleveland): how was he able to bounce back in a big way this year? He is a solid player and has had success in the past. At 1 point during his 1st year in OKC he was the 5th-leading scorer off the bench in the NBA, but the following year the coaching staff decided to go with someone else. Imagine going to work and having your boss say that he is picking someone else to do your job: it is demoralizing, and I did not know the right things to say to him. He was getting criticized on social media without people understanding the entire situation. He was not in their plans but was eventually able to get a 2-way contract with Golden State. My kids have a tremendous work ethic and know how to win…but it is an acquired taste. I have taught them since age 2 how to communicate/shoot even if they are not soaring through the air. I could see Ty’s confidence level growing that year: it is hard to make an NBA roster and hard to stay on 1. He is a battler and has been that way his whole life.
His 44 3P% is #4 in the league and last January he scored a career-high 33 PTS while becoming the 1st player in Cavaliers history to make at least 8 threes without missing a single attempt: what is his secret to making shots from behind the arc? Practice. There were times when Ty and his brother would just shoot and shoot and shoot. 1 day around 7th/8th grade Ty was unsure if he would go to practice: I told him that I loved him…but that practice was not optional! He got torched in our next game, which I think made him understand that if he wanted to be successful then he had to work hard. He got into the gym after that and never left the gym. If you look at athletes in any sport who had nice long careers (Jerry Rice/Walter Payton/LeBron James), it is because they knew how to eat right/stretch right/work on their body.
Your son Kobe began his college career at UC-Riverside in 2021: why did he decide to transfer after his sophomore year, and what made him choose Delaware? Riverside was not a good fit for him: the culture at some of these programs is amazing to me. We got to experience the paradigm of Virginia that everyone should aspire to, then you look at other schools and see the complete opposite. As a parent you need to step in and ask your kid if they feel that they are in the right place. Delaware coach Martin Ingelsby called Kobe, got a good report from the Riverside coach, and was kind enough to offer him a scholarship.
The Blue Hens won 19 games last year but have lost 19 games so far this season: do you think they can get things turned around this month? I do not know the answer, but when you lose a lot of games it is hard to bounce back. You need to have some strong/healthy conversations, which is a difficult challenge. I do not know if everyone can look in the mirror and figure out what adjustments need to be made. I have been there as a coach: at 1st I did not think it was my fault, but I evolved and realized that you need strong chemistry, which is hard to build in this era of the transfer portal. It is hard to build camaraderie: 1 topic I discuss on my podcast are the pros/cons of NIL. If someone is making more money than you are, how can you foster a brotherhood? You need to speak with every player, hear them out, and understand who you are recruiting. I read an article about Iowa State coach TJ Otzelberger and how he has done a great job of getting all his players to buy in. Rick Pitino has done that as well at St. John’s: some coaches are very good at it, and some are not.
You played basketball at Lafayette and your ex-wife played basketball at Brandeis: who is the best athlete in the family? Unfortunately, my boys got their mother’s athleticism, but they compensate in other ways. My 4-year-old is probably the best athlete of all of us. Sometimes I look at my sons and wonder how they reached the levels they are at. I am most impressed by the way they were able to make it as far as they have, which is due to their hard work/IQ/shooting ability.
