Before he took his current job at St. John’s, Greg Youncofski had sported just about every possible assistant coach title except for “director of basketball operations.”
Now, having joined Rick Pitino’s staff in that role in June, he’s completed the set — though, he concedes, “I know they keep coming up with all kinds of crazy titles in college basketball.”
Before Youncofski was a program assistant, video coordinator; video, analytics and recruiting coordinator or assistant coach at Cincinnati, before he became director of recruiting at UCLA and before he went to Loyola Marymount or now St. John’s, though, his first-ever title was student manager for the Kansas men’s basketball program. He served in that capacity for three seasons before graduating in 2013.
From — as he put it — bothering then-director of operations Brett Ballard every morning to let him attend practice as a freshman, to bothering then-video coordinator Jeff Forbes for additional tasks during his manager tenure, Youncofski did what he could to take on a slew of responsibilities and lay the groundwork for the next decade of his coaching career.
“I knew what I wanted,” Youncofski told the Journal-World. “I wanted to get better, I’m a very curious person, I want to learn. I think I’m a lifelong learner, not just in basketball but in life in general. I like to think I have an aggressive personality. I’ve had the benefit in my life of a career, a North Star — this is what I want to do for a career. I’m here at this elite program — how can I keep getting a little more involved?”
Youncofski said he always knew he wanted to coach, even when he was on the court as a fairly average high school player, and was “very lucky” as a result.
An early connection with fellow New Jerseyan Joe Dooley, then an assistant coach for KU men’s basketball (now the program’s director of student-athlete development), helped him get his eventual manager opportunity.
As Dooley remembers it, “We met him when we were recruiting Tyshawn Taylor.”
Dooley explained that Youncofski’s father, also named Greg, was there watching practice at powerhouse St. Anthony High School. It was Bob Hurley — the head coach of St. Anthony’s venerable program, and also the father of Bobby and Dan Hurley — who asked if the younger Greg could potentially become a manager, Dooley said.
When Youncofski made it to KU, Dooley said that “the big thing that impressed Coach (Self) and the whole staff” was that early desire to attend practice as a freshman; at the time, freshmen couldn’t serve as managers, but he still found a way to try and get involved.
And Youncofski’s persistence, Dooley explained, was only to a point — for good reason.
“I think he was relentless without being annoying,” he told the Journal-World. “At some points it also gets to the point where enough is enough. And Greg, I think, got a good feel for what we needed.”
In his inaugural year as a manager, 2010-11, Youncofski dealt with basic duties like laundry, equipment and rebounding for players. Over time, doing more video work, he experienced “being in the office, being around the staff a little more, cutting film on our team, getting to understand our playbook a little better, cutting film on opponents and just getting those skills of being able to do some of the things a video coordinator could do.
“And that definitely helped me get my next role at Cincinnati,” he added, “people knowing I was at least efficient or proficient.”
Dooley said of student managers: “I think those guys, the thing that they are is resourceful. They figure out how to get things done so that we don’t have to.” He noted that Youncofski was successful in both avoiding existing problems and preventing the creation of new ones.
Along the way, he was learning everything else that went into a college program — aided in that pursuit by the teams he was working with. Youncofski played a role, however small, in the success of some memorable squads, one of which made it to the national title game.
“Obviously being around such high-level players, you’re going to learn more,” he said. “Obviously a great coaching staff, but that run that we had during that time, that was the Morris twins, Thomas Robinson, Ben McLemore, high, high, high level NBA players.”
He added that the experience of being around such a high-caliber team early on allowed him in successive years to “tap into, OK, this is what we were doing around that time.”
“Just being around winning gets you used to winning,” he said, “which is a good thing because you want to be around winning as much as you can.”
After graduation, Youncofski went right into his program assistant job with Cincinnati and received mentorship from longtime Mick Cronin assistant Darren Savino — who, as Dooley points out, is another Hurley guy who played at Saint Anthony. Youncofski said in his early years he saw “tremendous growth” simply because he no longer had to attend college classes.
Initially, he took care of “random things” for Cronin. Then he and Savino gave him more and more opportunities to help scout opponents, evaluate recruiting video and so on.
Youncofski said he had to learn to be more vocal, because a student manager must be — as he says to this day — “seen, not heard” — which is quite the contrast from a full coaching staff member.
By the 2018-19 season, he became a full-fledged assistant coach for the first time.
In spending six years at Cincinnati, Youncofski got a different perspective from what he had at KU. For one thing, UC wasn’t getting the same kind of top-notch recruits, but Cronin and Savino still managed to mold players into NBA Draft picks — Youncofski observed how they went about that development process. In addition, because of Cronin’s elite scouting ability, the Bearcats took on a bunch of different defensive techniques — “we pressed, we’d switch man to man, we’d play matchup zone defense” — so Youncofski learned “there’s a lot of different ways to skin a cat.”
Later, Youncofski spent one year with Cronin at UCLA. That was in a director of recruiting role, the sort of responsibility that had been far removed from his initial coaching experience but that he got to know much better over the years.
“Any time the staff was together I’d be sitting there,” he said. “As those guys would start talking about recruiting and I’d be exposed to some of the names and some of what was going on, naturally, me being a curious person, I’d watch video on these guys, develop my own opinion.”
Youncofski and Dooley have kept in touch over the years; Dooley remembered reaching out to Youncofski for thoughts on players in LMU’s league that had entered the transfer portal.
He remained in Los Angeles at LMU for four seasons before making the jump to St. John’s, and now Youncofski is back in the Northeast. As it happened, the St. John’s director of basketball operations position was not that long ago occupied by one of Youncofski’s fellow KU student managers in the early 2010s, Chris Huey.
“Obviously it’s just an unbelievable opportunity to work for a Hall of Fame coach at a great program, with a great staff,” Youncofski said. “This is closer to home for me. It’s just been awesome so far. It’s only been a couple months, but (I’m) just extremely grateful to be here at St. John’s.”
Between having worked for Self, Cronin and Pitino, he characterized himself as “the luckiest guy in college basketball.”
Kansas guard Tyshawn Taylor, right, checks the gift on his list and receives some shopping help from student manager Greg Youncofski. The Jayhawks shopped for needy families on Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2010, at Walmart.
Former KU men’s basketball manager Greg Youncofski served in several capacities in the Cincinnati men’s basketball program from 2013-19.
Former KU men’s basketball manager Greg Youncofski was named director of basketball operations at St. John’s in June.
St. John's Athletics
Kevin Anderson
Cincinnati Athletics
St. John’s Athletics