Lynch adds championship flavor to Jaspers hardcourt

The best year of his life keeps getting better. In the span of two months, J.R. Lynch won a national championship and then became an assistant coach. He knows what it takes to win, which is why Lynch could be a real asset for the Manhattan College men’s basketball program.

Lynch spent last season as a graduate assistant for the University of Connecticut men’s basketball program. Part of his plan was enrolling in a two-year master’s program at the school. However, plans tend to change when big life events happen.

After the Huskies won the national championship over San Diego State, 76-59, on April 3, Lynch celebrated on the court in Houston with the players, coaches, and the two other graduate assistants.

A day later, he was sitting in the coaches office on campus when he received a call from John Gallagher, his college head coach at the University of Hartford.

First there was the congratulatory salute, then a message that was straight to the point: Gallagher wanted Lynch to join his staff at Manhattan.

“I’m still in awe because we just won a national championship and now I have a job offer,” Lynch recalled. “It was a weight off my shoulder.”

Lynch happened to be in the presence of UConn assistant Luke Murray when the call came in.

Although he didn’t accept it on the spot, the decision came easier for Lynch after speaking with Murray, a well-respected name in the industry and the first person to reach out to Lynch after he agreed to become a graduate assistant.

Murray knows the grind and how precious coaching opportunities are. He was once a graduate assistant at the University of Arizona before working his way up to the assistant coaching ranks at the high-major level.

“He was like ‘listen, this is an opportunity that may not even come next year,’” Lynch said of the words of advice from Murray. “His door was open.”

In fact, there was clear consensus among all the UConn coaches about what Lynch should do, all while the “thought of trying to repeat” as champions was firmly in his head.

“They gave me an understanding of how it works and why this is right,” Lynch said.

At UConn, Lynch got a firsthand look at how head coach Danny Hurley runs a practice —  a sight to behold. Lynch, a Jersey native like Hurley, had never seen anything like it in his life.

“Hurley has mastered the art of chaos,” Lynch said. “It is structured chaos. We have a plan but everything is so intense. What I mean is he puts you in uncomfortable situations in practice so that you are super prepared for every game.”

Lynch, a former point guard, started 118 games at Hartford from 2015 to 2019.

There he amassed 1,412 points and 374 assists after being lightly recruited out of Hudson Catholic in Jersey City and then out of St. Andrew’s in Barrington, R.I. where he played his fifth year.

Playing point guard allowed Lynch to attack the ins and outs of the game. Just as he described the players at UConn, he too was a “sponge” on the court.

“Being a point guard is like being a coach on the floor,” Lynch said. “I was a guy who would sit with my coaches during my college career and pick their brain.”

Before coaching, Lynch played professionally in Argentina and Puerto Rico.

He toiled with a couple of different jobs, but nothing stuck. However, he did establish a foundation in coaching at Hudson Catholic under former coach Nick Mariniello.

Lynch coached basketball and did substitute teaching on the side. From there, the itch grew stronger to get more serious about the coaching part. During the pandemic, Lynch wondered if he was doing enough to find fulfillment and to leave behind a legacy.

“It made me question what I wanted to be remembered as,” Lynch said about life during the pandemic. “And I think being impactful to someone is way more worth living for than being a great basketball player.”

Lynch vididly remembers calling Mariniello after he returned from Argentina and telling him he was considering the coaching route. Marieniello replied, “What are you willing to give up?”

For Lynch, the answer was his career playing professional basketball. Then, two weeks before his season in Puerto Rico, his phone rang.

It was Gallagher.

“He said he had a director of operations position open and asked if I wanted to take it,” Lynch said, recounting his return to Hartford in October 2021. “It was a no-brainer because I wanted to get into coaching.”

Gallagher believed in Lynch and saw something in him as a player and now as a coach.

“He becomes indispensable to you and he does all the little things,” Gallagher said. “You can live off his energy.”

Gallagher reminisces about and almost laughs at how hard it was to take Lynch off the court when he played for him. Lynch was his iron man, finishing third in the nation at 38 minutes per game his senior season. When Hartford played at Duke in December 2018, Coach K declared Lynch the best player on the court that night.

“There are so many stories,” Gallagher said about Lynch. “There is no player I trusted more than J.R. Lynch.”

Then there is Lynch, the person, who is a maven at forging relationships. During the tournament run and all the way through the night of the winning the national championship, Lynch chose to fast alongside three UConn players who observed Ramadan. When the team visited the White House on May 26, Lynch soaked up what was their last team bonding experience.

“The most exciting part was being back with the guys,” Lynch said. “I was asked if I was driving to the airport or taking the bus. I said I wanted to be on the bus to experience everything one last time.”

But truthfully, not a single moment from the White House gets lost on Lynch. He never dreamed of it being part of his journey.

“I’m excited we won the national championship but being back at the White House meant everything to me as a kid from Hoboken,” Lynch said. “That will live in me for the rest of my life.”

These days Lynch is preparing help bring a winning culture to Manhattan under Gallagher’s leadership. There is unfinished business for the duo, with Lynch having graduated two years before Gallagher led Hartford to the America East Conference Championship and an NCAA berth in 2021. But things took an unfortunate turn at Hartford, with the school announcing a switch to Division III shortly thereafter,  prompting Gallagher to resign before last season.

Still, Lynch believes Gallagher “was on the rise” at Hartford once and can do it again in Riverdale.

“Manhattan has a foundation already,” Lynch said. “They already made it to the tournament (2014 and 2015) so now it’s literally bringing that back.”

Lynch is here for a reason. It’s the same reason why Mariniello added Lynch to his staff and later recommended him to Murray at UConn. It’s the same reason why Gallagher sought him out for a third time.

“The ultimate goal for me is to make an impact,” Lynch said. “Everyday I wake up I have the ability to make an impact on others and that is something that drives me.”