City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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(Ed. Note: This story is part of our 2016-17 college season preview, six weeks of coverage that will span everything from Division I through Division III, junior college and more. To access our entire college of preseason content, check out our Season Preview Hub.)

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Earlier this offseason, CoBL spoke with each of the Division I coaches in the area for a Q&A session, and now we’re expanding it to include the various Division II programs in the CoBL coverage region.

With the first full-time D-II and D-III practices beginning on Oct. 15, we’ll be using the next few weeks to sit down with the area’s D-II head coaches and see where they’re at as they prepare for the 2016-17 season.

Now entering his 50th season as head coach at Philadelphia University, Herb Magee has accomplished just about all that can be done in a career: national championship (1970), Division II Coach of the Year (1976), over 1000 wins. A spot in the Naismith Hall of Fame, capping numerous other area and state Hall of Fames he’s been elected to over the years.

And the former standout guard at the school -- though it was called Philadelphia Textile when he played and first coached, only changing names in 1999 -- is still going strong, making eight of the last 10 NCAA Tournaments, though the Rams have bowed out in the first round each of the last three years and haven’t made a Sweet 16 since 2010.

Last year was an interesting one for the Rams, who lost two key seniors before the season -- Derek Johnson (17.8 ppg in ‘14-15) was kicked off the team, and point guard Andre Gibbs (10.6 ppg in ‘14-15) tore his ACL in the team’s first practice. To compound that depth issue, sophomore guard Jordan DeCicco, who looked primed to enter a big role on the squad, left the school to work on a coffee business he’d founded with his brother.

Despite all though, Magee still had the pieces to win 23 games, making it to the NCAA Tournament as a No. 7 seed in the Northeast region losing to No. 2 seed St. Anselm -- D-II tournament regions each only have eight teams -- in the first round. Senior center Peter Alexis (19.3 ppg, 9.2 rpg) was a double-double threat each time out, giving his teammates a 7-foot target in the paint who could get buckets at will. Sophomore Kaison Randolph (17.7 ppg) emerged as a big-time scoring threat, while senior wing T.J. Huggins capped off his career with a terrific all-around season: 13.9 ppg, 8.6 rpg and 4.0 apg, filling in at point guard after Gibbs’ injury.

Alexis and Huggins are gone, but Magee does return several players absent last year: Gibbs is fully recovered from his ACL injury and ready to play out his final year of eligibility, while DeCicco is back in school, his brother now running the business full-time. They join Randolph, senior Brendan Kilpatrick (13.9 ppg, 4.8 rpg) and junior Eric Long (6.9 ppg, 8.4 rpg) as experienced players for Philly U. Also joining the fray is Academy New Church product Malcolm Gilbert, a 7-foot center who began his college career at Pittsburgh before transferring to Fairfield, plus three freshmen to provide some depth for a head coach who’s notorious for sticking to a six or seven-man rotation at the most.

Here are the (copy-edited) highlights of our conversation with the Hall of Fame coach:

City of Basketball Love: Year 50 for you at Philadelphia University. When you think about that number and reflect on what it means, what comes to mind?

Herb Magee: To be honest with you, not really anything. Fifty (seasons), 49, 10, seven, whichever year it happens to be, it just simply means that I’ve been here a long time and I must still enjoy it. Because I think we’re going to be pretty good, and we’ve done a good job recruiting; that’s what I concern myself about. The rest of that stuff is for public relations. If they want to push something and make an announcement that Coach Magee’s been here for 50 years, just like when we went over 1,000 wins, that wasn’t that big of a deal to me. It was nice, but I’m more worried about the next time and the next practice.

CoBL: So what is a big deal to you at this point?

HM: Winning games. Winning conference championships, getting into the NCAA Tournament and then what you do in the NCAA Tournament, that’s a big deal. Number one, you have to get there, and then you have to do something when you’re in there, and we have not done a good job of that the past few years, we’ve gone out in the first round the past three years.

CoBL: You mention the word ‘enjoyment,’ and every coach -- and reporter -- says that when they stop enjoying it, that’s when it’s time to leave.

HM: Exactly.

CoBL: So from the enjoyment side of it, is it the same enjoyment as it was in Year One? Is it different things about it that you enjoy? Winning, obviously, but do you find yourself enjoying different pieces of it as the years have gone on?

HM: That’s a good question, and let me reflect for a second and just say that, not really, coaching is coaching, you know what I mean? I will say that it’s a little bit different, dealing with today’s athlete as opposed to when I first started, and I think when I first started, the (first) ‘x’ number of years, we could actually steal a player here and there, and get a guy that maybe should have gone Division I, and we could get him because there wasn’t such a propensity of AAU events. If you’re a high school kid now, you’re going to get seen. If you go to the smallest, most obscure high school, you’re still going to get seen because of the AAU circuit. That’s what makes it a little bit tougher.

But as far as enjoying something, no, I still enjoy being in the gym. Practice is really the fun part for me, and practicing. Teaching your players how you want them to play, teaching them the game of basketball, and I think that’s where I get my most enjoyment. And it manifests itself when the game starts. And if you do a good job and you’ve got decent players, you should win games.

CoBL: Beyond just working with your team, you also work with younger kids, high school players, everybody in Philadelphia it seems like. Becoming part of Philadelphia basketball, was that something you’d ever thought about, being such a part of the community? At what point did that happen?

HM: I think again, with the idea of longevity and winning a lot of games, making the Hall of Fame -- the Philadelphia Hall of Fame, the Pennsylvania Hall of Fame, the Naismith Hall of Fame, all of that kind of stuff -- and then you become part of the fabric of the city, and you get included on the big banquets, and somebody’s always handing you a trophy of some kind, you know what I mean?

It means a lot, and it’s great for the school, and great for the players, and great for the program. And I think that’s been more like the last 10, 15 years, whereas before we still had good teams, but we weren’t recognized as much as we have been. And what I try to emphasize in our program is, it’s not about me. It’s about our team. It’s not about you as a player or you as a player, it’s about our group and how well we do as a group, and I think that’s the reason we’ve been able to be successful over the years.

CoBL: From a school standpoint, big news breaking recently with the announcement that Philadelphia University and Jefferson will be merging. Are you expecting that to have any impact on the program at some point?

HM: No one knows. Because they’re not sure exactly what -- they have signed an agreement, and will combine the schools, but no one knows if this campus is going to be now having Thomas Jefferson students or if Thomas Jefferson’s campus is going to have the kids that normally go here. I’m not sure they know, they just know that they think it’s a smart move and good for both institutions. They’ve hired a firm to maybe look into a name change, so we’ll see what happens down the road. As far as changing the athletics program, I don’t think there’s going to be any changes.

CoBL: You’ve gone through the whole name change thing before, anyways.

HM: Yeah. I just hope they keep the word “Philadelphia” in whatever name that they do. I’ll be the only coach that ever coached at three different schools at the same place.

CoBL: In terms of on the court this year, Peter Alexis was such a big part of the squad the last four years. How has it been in practice without him around?

HM: Well, we have another 7-footer, another fellow that transferred for his graduate program, he started graduate school here, he played at University of Pittsburgh and then he went to Fairfield, Malcolm Gilbert. Now he’s a different kind of player than Pete, whereas we would get the ball to Pete, if we had it three times, Pete’s going to get it twice, I don’t think that’s going to happen with (Gilbert) but time will tell. In the early practices, and we’ve only had a couple, he’s looked very good so far.

CoBL: You do get Andre Gibbs back from injury --

HM: Andre’s back, Kaison’s back, he got hurt mid-year, he’s back. Jordan DeCicco’s back after he took a year off to work on his coffee drink, his entrepreneur endeavor. And we added three freshman.

Besides losing Peter, we lost a tremendous team basketball player in T.J. Huggins. Everything you needed to get done -- he could rebound, he could handle it, he could score, he could defend, he could do everything. He was really a very valuable member of this team. And Pete’s numbers speak for themselves, every game you’re penciling in 20 and 10 for Pete. So we’ve got to figure out a way to get those points and where they’re going to come from and the rebounds and so on. And so far I like what I’ve seen the first couple of practices.

CoBL: I just want to touch individually on several of those players you mentioned. Andre Gibbs, who tore his ACL last year, returns for his senior season. How have you seen him respond to that injury?

HM: He’s gotten stronger, he spent time in the weight room, and once you hit a certain age, you get better at that age. So he’s an older senior now, by a year, and just that and the maturity of it, of his body, has really helped. We missed him a lot last year; he’s a good point guard, but he can score, he’s over 1,000 points already in his career, so I expect big things for him.

CoBL: As for Jordan, have you ever had a player take a year off to run a company?

HM: No. (Laughs). You ever hear of it before? He hit us with that bombshell two days before school started last year. And I could see his reasoning, he needed to work on the thing and it took off. It’s a coffee drink that him and his brother invented, but now his brother has graduated from Georgetown, so his brother is doing that part of it, which enables Jordan to come back and play [...] he’s a terrific kid, a great kid. And he’s a good player, he can handle the ball, he can score, he’s tough as nails and he’s a great leader.

CoBL: Now for the freshmen, you’ve got three coming in?

HM: We’ve got Josh Bradanese, he’s a 6-8 kid from the Boston area. He’s a solid player -- he can score the ball, he can shoot the ball, he’s a tough kid. Once he learns the system and where he fits in in the system, I think he’ll be an effective player for us. Has a great future.

Great name: Prince Hickson. Prince is a kid from up in Connecticut. Six-five, 6-6, solid defender, and when [assistant coach] Jimmy Reilly described him, when he started recruiting him, he said “Coach, this is a right-handed T.J. Huggins.” and as soon as he said that, I went “ding ding ding,” so then I started watching him, and we got him.

The other kid is named Kylan Guerra, who went to school in New York and then went to prep school in Connecticut. Point guard, good player. Quick, can do a lot of different things. Good shooter. It’s a nice group, I think we have, this year, if someone decides to invent something or if someone turns their ankle, or if someone gets into foul trouble, it’s not going to be like last year -- we struggled with that. We took the court sometimes last year with a layup drill with eight guys in it. Now with these guys back -- and a very important cog in all of this is Kaison Randolph, who missed the last 10 games of the year and still had enough votes to make third-team all-league, which I thought was really impressive, because the coaches voted for that and they recognized that he was a solid player.

CoBL: So what’s your challenge for him right now?

HM: Just to stay healthy. Kaison, if we started right now, he’s going to start. He can score. And the last time I checked, you win the game by scoring more points than your opponent. He’s that type of kid, he’ll score points, he can get them different ways; he can drive to the basket, he’s a good 3-point shooter, he’s a tough kid, good defender, so no, he’s going to be in the game.

And then we have Brendan Kilpatrick, who’s back and played an awful lot of minutes last year, so he’s back for his senior year. It’s a nice group, it really is a nice group.

CoBL: Final question -- based off some of these early workouts, early practices, what do you identify as the biggest area of focus for the six weeks or so of preseason?

HM: I need to watch us practice and I need to see exactly who can do what, so I can decide how we’re going to play. Last year, even with all the injuries, I knew before the season started, without even watching them, how we were going to play. This year, how are we going to play? What will we emphasize? How good is the big kid? We have another fellow, Eric Long, who played last year. Solid basketball player, 6-7, can run and defend and so on.

So what will be good about this team is the fact that ,what happens to a lot of guys when you only have five or six guys, they get complacent and they cut corners a little bit sometimes. And now, different story. Not that they’re afraid of what’s going on, but they know that they better go all out at all times. And if they do that then I think we should be pretty good. Who knows? Last year if you had told me -- I removed Derek Johnson from the team, who was preseason all-league, Andre went down first day of practice, Kaison went down a little later, Jordan didn’t come back, and we won 23 games, because we had a way of playing that fit into what our players could do.

I don’t think any coach will ever tell you, ‘this is the system and we’re going to run this system.’ You coach your players according to their talent, and what they can and can’t do. And once we can see what these guys can and can’t do and how they mesh, then I’ll decide how we’re going to play and I think we’ll be pretty good.