New basketball Head Coach Mike Jordan has begun building the staff that will shape the next chapter of Lafayette basketball. After being officially named head coach at the end of March, Jordan has set out on the recruiting trail, looking to hire an experienced staff to match the new culture at Lafayette.
The staff will be headlined by Associate Head Coach Mike McGarvey who comes to College Hill after a four-year stint as the head coach of Lycoming College.
“I coached with [McGarvey] for five years before he left to becoming a head coach,” Coach Jordan said. “He was an awesome player who played the game at a high level. He knows the game and knows how to teach the game.”
McGarvey is a 2006 graduate of Ursinus College and began working at Colgate in 2011 with Jordan. Together they rebuilt a downtrodden Raider program into being a consistent winner and championship favorite in the Patriot League.
“I am super happy to be at Lafayette…I have some familiarity with the school and the league through my years at Colgate,” McGarvey said. “The community aspect of Lafayette is really cool.”
After his seven-year run at Colgate, McGarvey was named the head coach at Lycoming College in 2018 and immediately made his mark on the program. He helped the team set the school record for three-pointers made in a season in just his first season as head coach. In the following three seasons, he took his team to the conference championship every year, winning twice.
“The idea of partnering up to build a championship culture is something that I experienced as a head coach, not only the wins and losses but the journey of a handful of years, from not having too much success in my first year to having a bunch of success my last three years,” McGarvey said.
“McGarvey’s head coaching means a lot because this is my first time in this chair and he’s been there, so he can help me to manage some of the administrative side. The fact that he’s done it before means that he can help take some stuff off my plate,” Jordan said.
Along with McGarvey, Jordan has also named Sean O’Brien as an assistant coach. O’Brien, who played under both Jordan and McGarvey at Colgate, comes to Lafayette after finishing a year as a graduate assistant at Temple University in 2020 and then winning the Patriot League as an assistant coach at Colgate in 2021.
“It feels great kind of getting acclimated getting our feet under us, but everyone has been super nice,” O’Brien said. “It has been a really smooth process.”
A three-year starter and two-time captain for the Colgate Raiders basketball team, O’Brien played abroad professionally in Ireland in 2019 and in Mexico in 2020 before coming back to the states to coach. He returned to coach with Jordan in 2021.
“[Jordan] will always be exactly who he is, whether you are a janitor or a player on the other team, what they see is what we see every day. He will always be energetic and passionate–he will always tell the truth,” O’Brien said.
McGarvey echoed that same sentiment when talking about Jordan as a coach.
“The way that we see the game and the way that we interact with each other are similar, and our strengths and weaknesses really balance each other out,” McGarvey said. “I really hope that we can bring a really cool dynamic and a really good friendship and have that really shine through to our student-athletes.”
The Maroon and White’s basketball team will continue to build its staff over the last few days of the spring semester and into the summer. The new generation of the program is taking shape.
“These individual workouts have been times when we can really get to know the player because it is one on one,” Jordan said. “They know what I am expecting from them and now they are starting to figure out how I am going to coach them.”
