NCAA MEN’S BASKETBALL: Cook has proven recipe in Texas and keeps locals in the mix

Photo of St. Edward’s University (Austin, Texas) men’s basketball coach Andre Cook. (PHOTO BY MARIE JOSE GONZALEZ – SEU ATHLETICS).

AUSTIN, TEXAS — Despite being nearly 2,000 miles away, Andre Cook remains plugged into the ‘518’s’ basketball scene.

For good reason, as it’s where the coach, 52, got his start. While he lives in Austin, Texas, spending his evenings walking the hilly streets of his residential neighborhood, Cook still resides inside the top 10 for career points at both Watervliet High School and Skidmore College.

Cook also keeps the ‘518’ area code attached to his phone number, 15 years since taking the job in the Lone Star State and building a new, winning legacy.

“I love the capital region. People always laugh, but I still call it, ‘I’m going home,’” Cook said in an over-the-phone interview with the Troy Record. “It’s home and it’s always gonna be home. I loved every second about growing up in Watervliet, New York, playing on 23rd Street. I loved going to college at Skidmore College, going to grad school, I loved my time as a high school coach and my time as the head coach at Hudson Valley. I wouldn’t trade any of it.”

“The 518 – I just have nothing but love for it. That’s all I can say, and you can see I still have my (phone) number.”

Cook took the job at St. Edward’s University, a private catholic university in Austin, Texas, with an enrollment of slightly fewer than 3,000 according to the U.S. Department of Education (2021-22), 15 years ago. He wrapped up back-to-back seasons at Hudson Valley Community College, with a 16-0 record in conference play and a combined, five total losses overall.

In his final season with the Vikings, in 2008-09, Cook led the team to the NJCAA Division III National Tournament, advancing to the semifinals. It was his first head coaching job at the collegiate level. It taught him lessons applicable to today’s age of college basketball and provided an outlook not many other coaches share.

At the junior college level, while not having to love it, Cook grew to accept and learned to navigate the transfer portal’s ins and outs.

“It helped me understand this era a little bit more. Obviously, we still recruit freshmen. We want and you hope that this is a four or five-year relationship, but you can’t be pollyannaish about it and think, ‘Oh, the good old days.’ Adapt or die, adapt or die, and that’s what we have to do,” Cook said.

For Cook, it’s still about keeping the ‘main thing,’ the ‘main thing,’ when it comes to the overall transfer portal and recruitment. Earning a bachelor’s degree from Skidmore in ‘94, completing a master’s degree in social studies teaching at Union College two years later, and with a wife who graduated from the College of Saint Rose, Cook believes that ‘main thing,’ is found in classrooms and campuses, not the hardwood and the bank accounts.

“If my athletic director walked in right now and said, ‘Hey, we’re shutting down men’s basketball.’ Well, okay, that’s terrible, I still have degrees from Skidmore and Union College; somebody might hire me. I might have a spot somewhere to go do something because of my education and you can tell me about the money and about professional opportunities, I get it, but still, for the overwhelming majority of them, education is still what carries today,” said Cook.

“Some of the best of the best are gonna go make hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars because of their basketball. But what’s that? 1%? 2%? The rest of us need our college degree,” he continued. “At some point that ball is gonna stop bouncing, you’re gonna be 25, 28, or 30, and you’re going to need to fall back on that St. Edward’s degree.”

So, when Cook hit the transfer portal this past offseason for his NCAA Divison II basketball program, he returned to his roots and guys he thinks will identify with them. He’d recruited locals from the Capital Region to Austin, Texas, bringing in Niskayuna 2021 graduate Nick Benton as a freshman before transferring to Saint Anselm in ‘22.

Two more are slated to join the Hilltoppers from Cook’s old neck of the woods—former Siena College guard Mason Courtney and Saint Rose guard Latiek Briscoe.

“It’s hard, when you’re 18, 19, or 20, to come 1,800 miles away from the Capital Region. So, when we bring kids down here, we say, ‘Hey, there’s that part of- you can come into my office, and you can talk about home and I know what you’re talking about,’” Cook said. “They can come in my office, we can close the door and it’s like we can almost reminisce and talk about the ‘518’ and it feels like we’re home for a minute. Part of that, I think, brings a comfortability with some of the players that we get.”

Cook’s Hilltoppers are coming off tying their best season since 2019-20, going 21-11 across the 2023-24 campaign, with a 14-7 record in Lone Star Conference play. Courtney and Briscoe saw quite the opposite years on their respective teams, as the Golden Knights (D II) and Saints (D I) went a combined 15-46 this past season.

“Latiek and Mason, besides going to school five miles apart, things didn’t go perfectly right. This is a second chance, a breath of fresh air and I’m all for it. I look forward to getting it more,” Cook said.

“‘18-19, ‘19-20, we won 57 games. We just, since COVID, haven’t gotten that back,” he continued. “21 wins last year, 21 wins the year before, 17-12 the year before; I don’t know how many games we played in COVID (20) but we got to the championship that year. In the last few (years), we are good, just not good enough. A lot of teams would be happy with 59 wins in the last three years. We’re not going to give them back, but we need to get back into the NCAA Tournament and I’m hoping that these two guys that we’re talking about can help us do that.”

Courtney is set to be a junior at St. Edward’s along his second collegiate stop since graduating from Shenendehowa High School in 2021, where he played under friends of Cook’s – Paul Yattaw and Tony Dzikas.

In his freshman year at Siena, Courtney appeared in five games, logging 14 total minutes and zero points. As a sophomore, this past season, Courtney was thrust into a much larger role for a younger Saints team, which on top of some inexperience was also marred by nagging injuries throughout the season.

The local guard however made good use of his opportunity, finishing as only one of three Siena players to play in all 32 games, finishing fifth on the team in points-per-game (6.1), and second in total assists (63). However, the production came during a program-worst year for Siena, finishing 4-28 overall after another, conference tournament first-round elimination.

Siena head coach and fellow Shenendehowa alum Carmen Maciairiello, who recruited Courtney from his alma mater, was fired at the end of the 2023 season.

“When I’m home from our games, I’d have the (Siena) games on sometimes in the background while I’m getting organized, or I’d sit down and watch some of it. They had a tough year. Obviously, a lot going on with injuries, not winning, a coaching change,” Cook said. “Mason Courtney, every time I watched them play on those Sundays, I noticed the kid was playing hard, he clearly had to play out of position and he was clearly trying to do everything he could, in a tough situation.

“I’m watching him get guys together in the huddle, dive on the floor, try to bring the ball up against pressure, and I just had an appreciation. He, to me, stood out in a tough situation,” Cook added.

After learning the junior’s ‘main thing’ was becoming an orthopedic surgeon, stemming from some in-person meetings and over-the-phone conversations with Courtney and his former coaches. Cook was sold.

In Cook’s eyes, the ending at Siena showed him more about Courtney’s character than the play style.

“He’s hardened. You’re a local kid, whose parents are Siena alums, and you heard a lot of venom all last year. In year one, I don’t know if he made a shot. In year two – and we’re all on some sort of social media and the things that people said about this kid were not nice – and he just played. He just kept trying to figure out if he could just help his team get a win,” Cook said. “I think Mason would tell you himself that two years ago, he wouldn’t be ready to leave his family to come to Texas. I think that experience at Siena was real life and eye-opening.

“Firings, new team, losing, being booed, people on you on social media that hide behind a fake name and say mean stuff, that toughens you up and allows you to say- ‘I’m gonna come 1,800 miles and blaze a new path,’” he said.

Briscoe is no stranger to playing through and around adversity either, as coming into the 2023-24 campaign, he and the rest of the student-athletes at Saint Rose were informed that the school was closing at the end of that academic year.

On top of the initial uncertainty about his future, Briscoe going down to injury seven games into his sophomore season couldn’t have helped alleviate the pressure.

“His situation was tough and he is mature beyond his years,” Cook said, “and he’s a good player that I hope is a guy that can go get us a bucket. I want good guys that can play in a system, score, and shoot, and my hope with Latiek is that he can go get a bucket for us and add all sorts of value to the locker room.”

Briscoe played in 32 total games across his two years at Saint Rose, starting in 26 and averaging 10.3 points per game, on 42% shooting.

Again, Cook put feelers to the ‘518’ for research and recommendations of his new, potential guard, this time, going to Golden Knights’ coach Brian Beaury, who he called an ‘Albany institution,’ in basketball. However, the glowing impression that led Briscoe to St. Edward’s didn’t merely come from his old coach. Briscoe had to do some of the leg work himself.

“(Beaury) described a few of his players that he felt would be good for us. The one I kept coming back to, in terms of toughness, leadership, work ethic, and a wantingness to win, was Latiek,” Cook recalled. “Then I started talking to Latiek. This kid is from New York City, he had to earn everything, got told his school was closing, and he was the real deal of toughness. I talked to him and I looked down at the phone and said, ‘Man, we’ve just been talking for 45 minutes, just about life, his Mom, New York City and Saint Rose, and his injury.’

“His generation is not one to talk on the phone a lot. They don’t have long conversations. It’s just the way it is…Latiek is just kind of old school. His conversing and ringing you up not just to talk about basketball, but about life, family, goals, and what he wants to get out of this, just really struck me as, ‘Wow, I want to be around this kid,’” Cook continued. “Brian’s eyes say he can play. My eyes say he can play. Now, he was coming like this over phone conversations? I think Latiek and I are going to have a long relationship.”

But, as Cook’s coaching career nears the three-decade mark since starting at Hudson Falls High School in ’96, his future isn’t easily forgotten. With more than 400 wins across all levels of coaching and a winning percentage of .641, it’s hard to imagine the Watervliet native not being a hot commodity in major, Divison I programs.

Cook has seen it firsthand, both for himself and other, mid-major and Divison II coaches making the step up. Still, the local wants to keep the ‘main thing’ the ‘main thing.’

“Guys are getting opportunities and that can only help others and with someone A.D. (athletic director) maybe taking a shot. But, as you get older, and you look at your family, everybody is happy,” Cook said. “My wife has a great job, my daughter loves her college, my son is at the high school he wants to be at and everybody’s happy. Do I, at this point in our lives, try to do something and try to take a chance and disrupt everyone else’s happiness? I’m not sure.”

“If we keep winning, hopefully winning at a high level, maybe some things open up. If not, I’m living where it’s 90 degrees outside, I can hear the birds chirping and life is good. I’m on my time,” Cook added.