BRADFORD, Pa. — It’s the phone call every assistant coach dreams of.
For new University of Pittsburgh at Bradford’s men’s basketball head coach Ryan Shay, it came from UPB athletic director Brett Butler in mid-July. The message was simple: the job is yours if you want it.
After a lengthy interview process and a trying journey through the coaching ranks, Shay was offered his first head coaching opportunity. While he already knew his answer, Shay made sure to follow Butler’s advice.
“You try to play it cool on the phone and tell yourself not to freak out or jump right in and take it,” Shay said in his new office at UPB on Thursday. “Brett was fantastic; he said by all means to take a few days because this is a big investment on both of our parts.”
“The good thing was that I feel like I didn’t have to do anything other than be myself during that process because everything just fit well and the more I talked to people around the school the better it sounded,” he added.
After spending the weekend thinking it over with family and friends, Shay stuck to his gut and accepted the job.
And after just a few weeks in his new role, Shay is already beginning to put his mark on the program.
The Panthers went 4-21 overall and 3-15 in the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference (AMCC) last season, but Shay is much more interested in making an impact with his players off the court in the near future rather than on the X’s and O’s.
“Early on it’s establishing the right culture,” Shay said. “It’s establishing really good work ethic. In D-III basketball, you have to improve each year. You don’t get one-and-dones or a lot of highly touted freshmen coming in. You win in these types of conferences with upperclassmen.”
In the same breath, Shay also said he will be holding his group of players to a high standard — with the hopes after a few weeks his players know exactly what to expect from him.
“I’ll be telling them about brotherhood and accountability,” he said. “You need to use the team as a resource. If you’re not going to class or working hard or focusing on getting better, then your teammates should be talking to you or calling you out. There are going to be some hard conversations with that and it’s a bit of a learning curve too.”
Shay’s first day he can officially be on the court with his players won’t be until Oct. 15, which gives him time to learn plenty about his new school while also leaning on lessons from his past stomping grounds.
The 29-year-old spent the past four seasons as an assistant at the University of Rochester and two years at Alfred University before that. Despite his age, Shay has certainly taken an interesting path to Pitt-Bradford.
While he was coaching at part time at Alfred, Shay went back to school and got his master’s degree in business administration. That helped him land a job in analytics while he was volunteering at U of R.
At one point in his coaching career, he was working two full-time jobs to make ends meet.
“Being an assistant coach at the non-D-1 level isn’t the most glamorous job,” Shay said with a laugh. “But I just loved coaching; I thought it was awesome. Obviously I am competitive and there was also a lesson there. My first year was a rough year and I said there has to be more to this than just the winning and losing. It’s about developing guys and investing in their lives. That has to be the focus too.”
The Andover, N.Y. native played his college ball at Houghton College where he scored over 1,000 points. He was also selected to the NAIA Division II All-America Mideast Conference team in all three years that he was a starter.
Shay said that after four years in Rochester, the job in Bradford is essentially a return to his roots.
In Rochester, Shay and the coaching staff were afforded the opportunity to go on nationwide recruiting trips and reach for guys from all over the country. If you ask Shay, however, he’d much rather focus his attention on guys from Western New York and Northern Pennsylvania.
“I’m pumped to be recruiting in the Twin Tiers again,” he said. “My older brother coaches (high school) in Pembroke and he was telling me about a guy I should look at. I know the coach in Wellsville who said he had a kid for me. There was a big part of me that missed the local stuff while I was in Rochester.
Shay will be plenty busy for the remainder of the summer. Next up on the to-do list is to watch film on every one of UPB’s games last season and to learn the skill sets of his returning players.
“(X’s and O’s) I have some stuff I want to do, but if our guys don’t have the strengths to fit that or the game style to fit that, we aren’t going to do it,” he said. “We have some work to do but I don’t think there’s any reason to say that we can’t get back into the (AMCC) hunt within a few years.”
Shay is also looking to fill out his coaching staff. UPB’s assistant coaching position is just part time, but Shay said he will be leaning heavily on an assistant in games, practices and on the recruiting trail.
Once the assistant is put in place in the next couple of weeks, the athletes will quickly file back onto campus.
“The nice part about getting hired when I did is that I don’t have to wait as long to get going,” he said. I’ve spoken to each of the returning guys over the phone and luckily I only have to wait three or four weeks for them to get here.”
In the more immediate future, Shay is going to focus on making himself at home in Bradford.
“I sent some pictures to my family and girlfriend of my office,” he said. “They all told me I need to do some work but I’ll get there. I’m just so excited to get going.”
