Plenty of posters in this thread have been saying Xavier had terrible recruiting classes since Ben Johnson went there. . We now know they don't know what the hell the were talking about.
Ben Johnson's basketball addiction helped land him a coaching job at Xavier University
It’s a Thursday morning in late August 2018, and the television hanging on the wall of Ben Johnson’s office inside Xavier University’s Cintas Center is displaying a grainy, unfocused basketball game. It's Game 4 of the 2000 NBA Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Indiana Pacers. When asked about it, Johnson matter-of-factly replies, “You never know when you’re gonna see something.”
Ben Johnson, the second assistant coach that Xavier head coach Travis Steele hired to his staff, is a basketball addict. It’s an addiction without downside. Dave Thorson laughs when he hears that Johnson was watching an 18-year-old basketball game. Thorson, who's now an assistant coach at Colorado State, coached Johnson at DeLaSalle High School in Minneapolis.
"He's always been such a student of the game," Thorson told The Enquirer. "He was a great player but he wasn't a guy that had NBA athletic talent, he was a great player because he understood the game and he understood what needed to be done in certain situations. I think that's made him an even better coach. "Ironically, I told his dad when he was a senior in high school, I said, 'Someday, I'll probably work for Ben.' It wouldn't shock me at all if that happened."
High school was where Johnson realized that someday he wanted to get into coaching. He who played college basketball at the University of Minnesota. "There were a couple other things I explored but then I was given an opportunity with a guy named Brian Gregory, who recruited me out of high school and was the coach at Dayton."
Xavier head coach Travis Steele said putting a coaching staff together is a lot like fitting together the pieces of a puzzle. So, after Steele hired Jonas Hayes, his focus turned to the next piece. "The first conversation I had with Ben was right after I met with Jonas," said Steele. "I was in the airport ... that was the first time I'd talked to Ben.
My brother was the head coach at Illinois so he knew Ben really well and so did his assistant coaches." Steele's brother, John Groce, advised him to take a look at Ben. "I said, 'That's a good one, that's a good name.' In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, 'He's from Minneapolis, played at Minnesota, has been coaching at Minnesota the last five years. Probably not likely, I don't know if I'll be able to get him, but it's worth a shot.'
"I got him on the phone and I thought we really hit it off right away, we kind of think the same way and I could tell his personality was a little different than Jonas' – in a good way – he's a little bit more calculated. "You could tell right away he's got a basketball mind, which I was excited about."
Steele talked to college coaches, high school coaches, AAU coaches, and he even reached out to former Xavier standout JP Macura, who's from Minnesota. "JP said, 'Man, he's really good,' JP's mom and dad both loved him," Steele said. "He's another guy, he's been coaching a long time and I've never heard a bad word about him."
On top of that, Johnson has recruited a lot of the Midwest, which complements Hayes' recruiting foothold in the Southeast. Steele and Johnson connected so well over the phone, Steele said, "I never interviewed him in person. We have a lot of mutual friends and they all said he would be a home run."
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sp...im-coaching-job-xavier-university/1097156002/
www.startribune.com
