City of Basketball Love

Rich Flanagan (@richflanagan33)
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Coaching has always been part of Ryan Ansel’s life. Even as a player, it was in the cards as he felt a calling to the craft at a young age.

He had the innate ability to connect with teammates, which ultimately would lead to connections with fellow coaches then eventually players he would mentor to various levels of the collegiate ranks.

There is something about helping a player reach their potential that gravitates Ansel to the trade and conversely, pulls players to him.

“It’s one of those things where I have an ability to connect with players, and honestly, I would do it even if I didn’t make money,” Ansel said. “I love being in the gym and seeing kids do what they didn’t think was possible and continuing to reach. It’s about more than basketball.”

He originally made coaching basketball a hobby, particularly during his playing days at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy under Bill Dooley then later under the man who molded Stephen Curry into a two-time NBA MVP and four-time champion. He realized he had a true knack for it but even more so, he felt pulled to it.

“I’ve been coaching since I was in high school playing at SCHA,” Ansel said. “I was coaching the Saint Alphonsus (Catholic Church) high school teams. Even when I was in eighth grade, I was helping coach some of the “B” teams that my friends were on. I remember being in German class and not actually taking my German in, but instead drawing up plays and sets. I was lucky to have a lot of coaches who had positive impacts on me.”

Ansel, 32, will get the opportunity to showcase what he has learned on his unique coaching path as he takes over as head coach at La Salle College High School, succeeding Mike McKee who went 68-42 in five seasons. Ansel was helping out with the Explorers program throughout this season, working on individual instruction with players and learning from McKee, but that is not the only connection he has with the program. He began his high school career at La Salle in 2005 but was actually cut from the freshman team. He went to a clinic with Matt Paul, a close friend who now operates Matt Paul Sports – a company founded in 2019 that runs leagues for children – and that is where he first heard about the SCHA program. Paul would become his first high school with the SCHA freshman coach.

He remembers beating La Salle in the Springfield Tournament “and I got to shake the hand of the coach whose team I wasn’t good enough to make.” It became a source of motivation and now he is the coach who will be manning the sideline at the Montgomery County school.

Ansel was breaking into coaching with the Blue Devils, but he was also playing. He broke into the rotation as a junior then helped SCHA to a 21-4 overall record and the program’s first-ever outright Inter-Ac League title in 2010 as a senior alongside Pat Connaghan (University of the Sciences), Todd Cramer (MIT) and Malik Garner (Bloomsburg).

When looking at his plans after high school, playing basketball was something he wanted to explore but his future endeavors would undoubtedly be centered around coaching and he was accepted into Davidson College, where he would learn from legendary coach Bob McKillop. The Wildcats were a few years removed from the illustrious career of Curry that took the program to new heights but playing for a man who won 634 career games was paramount for Ansel in his coaching roadmap.

“With Coach McKillop, we talked a lot about helping someone to help yourself,” Ansel said. “If you watch Davidson, it’s about the way they screen, and the way they sprint to the rim and corner. All of that to get a slight advantage against more athletic teams. If you get athletes chasing you, you make up for not being as quick or athletic.”

Ansel began as a team manager then elevated to “a practice squad player” over his next two years, which included two NCAA Tournament berths, before “putting on 25 pounds and working my butt off” to officially make the Davidson roster as a senior. He appeared in four games for a team that finished 20-13 overall and 15-1 in the Southern Conference. He was a teammate of former Conestoga standout and 2009 Central League MVP Jake Cohen, the 6-10 forward who now plays professionally for Maccabi Tel Aviv in the EuroLeague. Ansel took some time away from La Salle earlier in the season to fly over to Spain and watch Cohen, who became a very close friend during their time at Davidson, scored 1,795 career points and still owns the program record for career blocks (197).

After his time at Davidson, Ansel was selected as a Victory Scholar and attended Ulster University in Belfast. While studying, he also played for the university team for two seasons and even coached a team as part of his curriculum. He “did a lot of work with Protestant and Catholics and brought those communities together.” Upon returning home, he met with former Davidson assistant Landry Kosmalski, who had taken over at Swarthmore College. “I always helped him in the summer with his camps. When I got home, he had me over for dinner and asked if I wanted to join his staff.”

It was the perfect time for Ansel to join the Swarthmore staff as Kosmalski had the program trending upward and it accomplished some impressive feats during his time as an assistant. The Garnett went 70-20 from 2015-18 and reached the 2018 Division III NCAA Tournament Elite Eight. Swarthmore reached the National Championship Game the following season. In 2018, Ansel founded his training company, Ryan Ansel Basketball LLC, where he focuses on both individual and team training for boys and girls.

He took what he learned at Swarthmore and was finally able to turn it into the business that he was born to be in. That is where Next Play Basketball (NPB) came into the fold. After finding time to work with players such as Vinny DeAngelo – the former Sun Valley product and 2022-23 National Association of Basketball Coaches All-America First Team selection with 1,241 points to his name – and recent Drexel commit Erin Doherty, who Ansel would work with at Hilltop Park in Delaware County during the COVID-19 pandemic, he was ready for the next endeavor and reached out to his old friend, Matt Paul.

“I had done training since I was at Swarthmore and built that business of private training,” Ansel said. “A lot of people had been asking me to coach teams and do AAU. Matt had younger kids and I said, ‘I have high school kids I’m doing this for, and you have younger kids. Would you want to work together?’ We started it together as partners and it took off with 10 teams our first year then that grew to 18.”

NPB was established in 2021 and the teams compete in both leagues and on the AAU circuit. It has since grown to 26 teams, and Ansel has a hand in the growth and development of a multitude of local standouts such as Connor Fields (Albright College), Fhenyx Scutt (Penn State Scranton), Nick Hurwitz (Penn State Lehigh Valley), Jonah Heimann (Harvey Mudd College), Sean Mizzoni (Widener University) and new Juniata College commit Seaton Kukla, the Upper Dublin product who avg. 9.4 points and 5.1 rebounds on his way to Honorable Mention All-Suburban One League this season.

He has also mentored Devon Prep’s Greg Perullo, St. Joe’s Prep’s Will Lesovitz and Jack Flannery, who played JV at Roman Catholic as a junior then transferred to Cherry Hill East (N.J.) where he avg, 13.3 ppg as a senior this year. Ansel calls Upper Dublin’s Brady Fogle (10.2 ppg) – another Honorable Mention All-SOL – “the poster child of our program” as “his growth shows that if you keep working, don’t worry about these other things. He could’ve thought he was behind returning guys, but he kept learning and ended up being a starter all season.”

With the success he was finding through both Ryan Ansel Basketball LLC and NPB, his name began circulating more and more within southeastern Pa. basketball circles and he received a call from Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy athletic director Justin Cooper – now the AD at The Shipley School. “I wanted to be a head coach of a high school program, but I can’t coach 10 teams in the spring and summer. I needed time to hire some people and a lot happened very quickly. I ultimately wanted to be a head coach in high school or college, so I needed to expand the infrastructure of Next Play to remove myself.”

He got things in order at NPB and led Jack M. Barrack to an 11-5 record (7-1 Penn-Jersey Athletic Association) and the White Division title in 2021-22. Ansel’s résumé now included success with individual players and AAU and high school teams, and that made him an ideal candidate to replace McKee, the former Roman Catholic and Lehigh University standout who took La Salle to the Philadelphia Catholic League title game and PIAA Class 6A semifinals in his first season in 2018-19.

The Explorers are coming off a 9-13 season that saw them win only two games in the Philadelphia Catholic League, their lowest league win total since winning that same amount in 2005. La Salle was a model of consistency during Joe Dempsey’s tenure, who won 208 career games in 14 seasons and led the program to the 2014 PIAA Class 4A title game, and McKee’s tenure started off with tremendous success, but the pandemic coupled with a disappointing 2022-23 campaign derailed much of that consistency. Ansel was brought in due to his rapport with players, which has translated into the team environment.

He had his first meeting with the team on April 27 and laid out what he hopes each player will do as a new system and culture are installed over the spring and summer.

“In terms of expectations, it’s less about any product for this group but more about the process,” Ansel said. “The process of building the culture is what separated us at Davidson and Swarthmore because we had a culture that was based on our values in trust, commitment, and care. This can’t be about one individual; it has to be about the collective unit.”

“What I learned from Landry Kosmalski is if you build a foundation and do it the right way, each year those older guys are going to teach the younger guys. That will attract guys who want to play and be a part of our program. Ultimately, to compete in the Catholic League, you need guys that have a lot of talent to play within this league because it is one of the best.”

Ansel has his work cut out for him, especially as La Salle looks to replace Drexel signee Horace Simmons, who led the team in scoring (15.8) and rebounding (6.2). Three players have also made plans to play elsewhere next season in 6-2 sophomore guard Kasey Fleming (George School), 6-5 sophomore forward Cameron Smith (Academy of the New Church), and 6-5 sophomore forward Ryan Warren, who also heads to the Academy of the New Church after starting 17 games and avg. 4.8 points and 3.5 rebounds. Ansel has familiarity with a few returnees who play for NPB in 6-3 rising junior guard Hayes Altomare, 6-3 rising junior guard Nick Parisi and 5-11 rising senior guard Luke Huddock.

From Paul to McKillop to Kosmalski, he has garnered a wealth of knowledge and is looking forward to installing that at La Salle.

“It’s about building a culture where you’re putting the team above yourself and sacrificing to get your teammate open, recognizing that if you do that you will also get open,” Ansel said. “The big key is we’re going to hit guys with screens, communicate and help each other get open so we can get good shots.”