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What does a general manager in college basketball do? Butler is about to find out.

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4 months ago

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What does a general manager in college basketball do? Butler is about to find out.

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Coach Thad Matta reached out to Tony Bollier in April about a new position on the Butler basketball staff. It was shortly after the Final Four and the conclusion of Bollier’s season as an assistant coach for the G League.

Butler was adding a general manager position, and after seven years within the Milwaukee Bucks’ organization, Bollier fit the bill.

“We had a great connection when we started talking, and it seemed like we were sort of on the same page,” Bollier told IndyStar about how he and Matta connected for the job.

Bollier is now Butler men’s basketball’s general manager and director of player development, the university announced last week. 

The general manager role is a new one in college basketball. Duke’s men’s program was the first to add one in 2022. Now, several programs of all sizes have added one to their staff.

College athletics are changing rapidly, and college coaches have to handle more than ever before. With the in-and-out nature of the transfer portal and NIL’s influence, college sports are becoming even more like the pros. A general manager like Bollier can help head coaches maneuver these new responsibilities that didn’t exist in past decades of the NCAA.

Bollier comes to Indianapolis after seven years with the Bucks. The Leo, Ind., native joined Milwaukee as the director of basketball operations in 2017. He won the 2021 NBA championship as a front-office member. Bollier worked as the general manager of the G League Wisconsin Herd for two years before becoming a Herd assistant for the 2023-24 season. Now in the college ranks, Bollier said he feels what he did in the NBA will be an advantage.

“I think it’d be a great opportunity to sort of use what I’ve done in the NBA and apply a good bit of that to how we’re working and operating this new landscape.”

It’s been a decade since Bollier worked in college basketball. After graduating from Wheaton College in Illinois, Bollier was Georgia State’s director of basketball operations for the 2011-12 season before returning to be an assistant coach at Wheaton from 2012-14. That was Bollier’s last college job, as he became the manager of player personnel and coach relations for the NBA G League (then D-League) afterward. 

Bollier is still learning what’s needed from him in this role. Before he starts diagramming plans for the program and how he should approach the position. 

“I want to learn as much as I can before formulating really strong opinions or thoughts or views,” Bollier said. “So right now, it’s a lot of learning, a lot of listening. And I think what I’m learning early on, is that just in terms of the way that you’re building — in a lot of ways — a new team every year, year in and year out. Not completely across the board, but I guess sometimes, and some teams do almost turn over completely.”

That roster overturning is something Bollier’s grown accustomed to. NBA teams evolve from year-to-year with free agency, trades and the draft. But G League teams change even more rapidly. Bollier dealt with rosters that had 20 to 30 players on them during seasons with the Herd.

With the Bulldogs, Bollier wants to craft a roster with pieces that complement each other well. He’s now a part of Matta’s staff tasked with getting Butler back to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2018. 

“There’s a lot of moving pieces in putting a roster together,” Bollier said. “And now there’s the monetary side of things where you almost have — for lack of a better term — free agency in college now year-to-year.”

Bollier won’t be traveling to scout high-school recruits, and he’s still unsure how much involvement he’ll have when those recruits visit Butler’s campus. Much of what Bollier will do is still undecided. He’ll have a hand in transfer portal decisions, but he doesn’t know to what extent. Whether he’s responsible for scouting players in the portal, reaching out to portal targets, etc. is something Bollier intends to sort out to prepare for next spring.

“That’ll be something we’ll want to have on our mind and have had a plan leading up into that point, so we’re not just reacting,” Bollier said. “We (will) have a bit of an idea and direction of how we want to head in.”

Bollier’s makeshift position will come with makeshift responsibilities. General managers are still not commonplace in college basketball, so Butler and Bollier will be learning as they go.

Bollier represents a new resource for Matta, 56, to utilize as he heads into his third season back at the helm at Butler. The program’s six-year drought from the NCAA tournament is the longest it’s endured since not making it for 35 years between its first and second appearances in 1962 and 1997, respectively. Butler would’ve made the canceled 2020 tournament, but even a four-year drought is the longest since 1997. 

Having a general manager before it becomes popular in college basketball could give Butler an upper hand to return to the field of 68.

“It’s just another resource for (Matta) to be able to do what he needs to do,” Bollier said. “… So if he has someone like me that he can sort of rely on to navigate around the edges of what we’re doing with NIL, and our All Good Dawgs collective and the transfer portal, then that just frees him up to have more time to both spend with our guys, spend on planning, on what he wants to do with our team from just day-to-day practice. 

“It just gives him another resource that allows him to focus on what matters most, and that’s our team and that’s getting Butler basketball back to where it belongs, in his words.”

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