November 4, 2007
Nashua Telegraph:
Eagles Putting Faith In Currier, Now One of the Country’s Youngest Men’s Hoop Coaches

This article is reprinted with permission of the Nashua Telegraph. It ran on November 4, 2007.
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By Tom King, Telegraph Staff
 

(Nashua) - The vibes last winter couldn’t be overlooked. Daniel Webster College Vice President of Student Affairs-Athletics Phil Rowe knew that first-year coach Eddie Quick, a Connecticut transplant, wasn’t long for the job.

Quick was getting married, had too many ties out of the area, and wasn’t going to be able to do the job over the long haul.

Rowed didn’t hesitate. He called assistant coach Jeremy Currier into his office and told him that in a couple of months, after the Eagles completed what was a 6-18 season, the job was his.

There was no hesitation on either side, despite the fact that the 25-year-old Currier, a former Pinkerton Academy and Endicott College standout, had never been a head coach, and would become one of the youngest collegiate men’s hoop coaches in the country.

“I wanted the job,” Currier said. “No hesitation. The opportunity to have my own program at this age, to work under and learn from Phil. They pulled me in when (Quick) started feeling it. They basically said ‘We’re going to start grooming you.’”

Indeed, Currier has no lack of support with two other former head coaches in Rowe and DWC athletic director John Griffith in the building. In fact, Rowe will often observe practice, and told Currier his door is open.

“I stop in every day,” Currier said.

One area where Currier had already proven himself – and perhaps a key reason why he got the job so quickly – was recruiting. He had directly or indirectly pulled in 16 new recruits, including last year’s Class L Player of the Year for the champion Salem High School Blue Devils, Stephen Savage.

That’s not supposed to happen for an Eagles program that has been so far beneath the radar screen, literally ridiculed by many. Savage had initially rebuffed the Eagles advances, but Currier managed got to him eventually.

“He said we were the school that recruited him the hardest, we were always honest with him,” Currier said. “He likes the small school, and he came down to four or five games and he said, ‘I can make a difference here.’ I don’t think he felt that at other places . . . We came close to losing him a couple of times but we just kept chipping away.

“It paid off. He’s here, he’s happy, he’s a leader . . . He’s early to everything, he gets in the weight room, he works on his game. He’s kind of the footprint of what we want in a recruit.”

“A lot of the coaches said, ‘Yeah, I really want you to come here’,” Savage said of other schools’ recruiting approach. “They’d go to a game, maybe two at most. But (Currier) was there basically every game. He even showed up to four or five practices, which was amazing.

“I was very surprised (when he was named head coach). He’s such a young guy. But he’s showed so far he’s very prepared for the job.”

Indeed, what an overhaul, with just two players left from last year’s team.

“Last year our job was probably 90 percent recruiting . . . We had to do it,” Currier said. “You saw a couple of games. We had great fight in our guys last year, but we expressed to our guys that we needed to upgrade at every position. We did and got lucky with the guys we got.”

The program has many new chapters, but this one seems to be the most interesting one two years after the disastrous 0-25 campaign. It’s basically a brand new team, one that is going to play The Citadel in an exhibition next week and Division I Dartmouth in a regular season game. The Citadel was done through a coaching connection; Dartmouth, meanwhile, needed an end-of-semester game and called the Eagles.

Also, the Eagles, a longtime doormat in the Great Northeast Athletic Conference, will say good-bye to the GNAC after this season for what they feel is a more competitive situation as a charter member of the New England Athletic Conference (NEAC).

Suddenly it may be – dare anyone say – an attractive job.

“I think that as we move forward, with the personnel we have here now, we can only kind of build and grow and develop as an entire program,” Currier said.

Currier even saw the success enjoyed by crosstown rival Rivier College last year, winning the GNAC and making the NCAA tournament, as a plus, drawing attention to that level of basketball.

“We can use that as a little motivation,” Currier said. “In four years, hopefully we can replicate what they did last year.”

Currier was set to take a big step in his coaching career in the summer of 2006 by going down to North Carolina and work at a Division II school, but Rowe offered him a better deal to get a graduate degree, plus on-campus housing. And he enjoyed working with Quick.

“Eddie was a great mentor, he was the right guy for the job, a guy who could get the most out of what he had,” Currier said. “We really didn’t have time to bring in a recruiting class . . . I think it wore on him driving back and forth to Connecticut.”

But Currier is single, local and lives on campus. Is there a better fit than that?

“Phil says ‘We’ve committed to you,’” Currier said, “so now get the job done.”


A background all about hoop

A native of Hampstead, Currier never really envisioned himself taking up a coaching career despite his success as a player. He was a “bombs away” record-breaking scorer at Endicott, but shunned chances to play professionally overseas to become the Director of Basketball Operations for a youth basketball organization called “Hoops Specialists” in North Andover, Mass.

He had played two years of high school ball at Central Catholic before transferring to Pinkerton, and called former Astros and current Goffstown High School head coach Tony Carnovale “one of the best defensive coaches I played for. His defensive principles were incredible.”

But even during his playing days in college, coaching never entered Currier’s mind.

“I was just thinking about playing at that time,” he said. “It’s such a different entity going from playing to coaching. You learn so much more . . . It’s good to manage the game and direct the personnel.”

He did that for four games last year during a point where an illness forced Quick to take a brief leave of absence. A few players were on academic suspension, and the team went to play a game at Albertus Magnus with seven players and couldn’t foul at the end. At that point, Currier knew what needed to be done and he was determined that the program wouldn’t be caught in that situation a year from then.

“It was motivation to say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to hit the road harder, make sure we’ve got more guys and get deeper and better,’” he said. “We’re out there on the road all summer, and out there all fall, right through the winter hopefully to have the same type of success in terms of developing relationships.”

They won’t need to fill 16 spots the way they did this year, however, with the number of players they’ll have. But Currier will know once the season starts in a couple of weeks. That’s one of his strengths, or at least what he’s learned as a coach.

“Organization is a big thing,” he said. “Planning, organizing, going from practice planning to effective drills to planning our community service events. So much planning and behind the scenes stuff that nobody can appreciate it until you’re in the driver’s seat.

“Our goal (after) last year was to overhaul. Our goal this year is to improve.”

The youth factor doesn’t bother Currier one bit, and he says he has his finger on the pulse of his players.

“If guys miss study hall, we know,” he said. “If guys show up late, we know. And I think it also comes down having one of the younger coaching staffs in the league, probably in the country, but (the players) see when they come in to shoot at 11:30 at night that we’re still here breaking down film. So they see what we’re putting into it, that we’re really committed, so they say ‘They’ve got our backs, we’re going to work hard for them.’ So far it’s been a great relationship.”

Currier hopes that relationship continues for awhile, and that it’s a winning one as well.

Tom King can be reached at 594-6468 or e-mail at sports@nashuatelegraph.com.