Youth basketball coaches from around the New York area visited Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains on Wednesday to hear about the sport and supporting young players from six of the college game’s top names.  

At the 2025 Coaches Clinic on September 24, 160 male and female coaches joined Stepinac Coach Patrick Massaroni in listening to John Dunne of Marist, Tom Izzo of Michigan State, Greg Kampe of Oakland University, Will Wade of North Carolina State, Joe Jones of Boston University, and Brad Underwood of Illinois. 

The first four coaches presented live drills and situation coaching, assisted by players from City University of New York. After lunch, BU’s Jones and Illinois’ Underwood zeroed in on culture and strategy, respectively.  

“The way I see the game is that I need to have guys that understand the importance of getting a good shot and doing something for someone else,” Jones said. He pointed out that despite being in the area of Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) deals that allow college players to profit from their playing, and that BU does not offer any money to players, his focus on team culture allowed him to retain all of his athletes from the previous season.  

“When I watch a player, is he someone that I think holds himself to a certain standard? Do I think he’s someone who in tough times, will step up? That’s something I look for,” Jones said.  

In the day’s final presentation, Illinois’ Underwood described his coaching philosophy as “race, pace, and space.” He pointed to the need to collect and analyze data regarding a team’s performance. “The easiest points to score are in the first seven seconds of a shot clock,” he said, emphasizing the need to play a fast game. 

“Shot selection wins championships,” said Underwood, who in March led the Illini to their fifth straight NCAA tournament appearance. “We have a very simple system – gold, silver, bronze. Players can identify with it very easily. Gold shots are money shots – wide-open threes, uncontested shots, layups. Silver shots are contested shots that flow out of our offense. Bronze shots are contested layups, really difficult shots in the paint.” 

Aside from allowing local coaches to learn from top names, the Stepinac event benefits St. Ignatius School, a Jesuit middle school in the Bronx that offers its students tuition-free education.  

“For the last couple of years, St. Ignatius School has been a great partner for us, and we’ve been a great partner for them. We’re able to raise money for their students and their overall school community through this coaches’ clinic, and these coaches give back. It’s a great way for us to support them and for them to be recipients of what this event has become,” Stepinac’s Massaroni told The Good Newsroom at the conclusion of the event.

Now in its seventh year, the annual Coaches’ Clinic has become a marquee event for the local basketball community. “For us, we’ve tried to be different in everything we do – from basketball, to academics, to the school community. For us, we started this seven years ago with three goals: first off, selfishly, how do we not leave New York to go to a clinic? Second was, how do we try to make our program different? And the third aspect was to try to gather everybody together,” Massaroni said.