“We finished 1-30 my first year and
that was the greatest time I ever had as a head coach.” Those are the words of
Jim Engles, the new head coach of the Columbia University Lions men’s
basketball team. Engles’ remarks referred to his first season at New Jersey
Institute of Technology (NJIT). This unwavering optimism to see the good in a
seemingly fatal situation is among the many attributes that have defined
Engles’ remarkable and distinguished career as a college basketball coach.
Engles takes over from Kyle Smith,
who had a highly successful run as head coach of the Lions, including winning a
school-record 25 games last season. Just three days after his NJIT Highlanders’
close loss to Columbia in the CollegeInsider.com Tournament (CIT) semifinals on
March 27, Engles received the call from Columbia that he had been hired to lead
the team. Calling it an unlikely turn of events which he described as “crazy”
but one which he looks forward to, Engles said, “I always knew that if Columbia
became available, then it would be a place I wanted to go back to.”
It was a decision made much easier
for the New York native because his wife works in finance in Manhattan. “She
has a job that makes all the money in the family, so that’s why we stayed in
the area,” Engles said jokingly, in his usual soft yet stern tone.
As he alluded to during the
interview, this is not Jim’s first tenure at Columbia, where he served as
assistant coach from 2003 to 2008. He
recalled that, “the day I walked on campus it just felt like home.” He added:
“I tell people all the time: I was a lowly assistant coach at Columbia…and it
has done so much for me both personally and professionally that it got me the
opportunity to be a Division 1 head coach.”
Basketball runs through his DNA. Growing
up in Staten Island and attending St. Peter’s High School and then Dickinson
College, he could always be found on a court practicing, playing for his school
team or just playing pickup games on the neighborhood courts. “Basketball has
always been important to my family,” he said. His grandfather was a player and
coach at Georgetown University, while his uncle played at the University of
Pennsylvania.
Jim certainly has the requisite
experience to succeed in his new assignment at Columbia. He started his coaching career right out of
college, accepting a job at Wagner College as an assistant in 1991, where he
would spend seven years. Then he moved to Ryder College as an assistant for six
years and five years for his first stint as assistant coach at Columbia University.
His first head-coaching job came in
2008 when he accepted the position at NJIT, where he would be for eight seasons
and where his greatest challenge would confront him. At NJIT, he had the
unenviable task of building a team from the ground up and as he puts it, “I
took over a program that had no standards and I was basically trying to get the
kids to feel good about themselves.” It was such an uphill task but then NJIT
won its first game, ending a 51-game losing streak. “People would email me
saying, ‘you are the worst coach ever. You guys suck! I can’t believe you are a
Division I program,’” he said, animatedly.
A record like that and the resulting
criticisms likely would have demoralized and would have sent any basketball
team and its head coach into a dark place where recovery could have become an
unimaginable prospect. But in his typical
style, Jim was consistently reassuring and positive about the result,
remembering it as the “greatest time I ever had as a coach” and the “most
rewarding year I had.” Some might have accused him of being delusionary, or
deceiving, but for Engles, victory was not measured in the win-loss column or
in the performances of offense or defense. Instead, he took stock in the grit
and effort his players demonstrated.
A lot of his success has come from
focusing and instilling the right culture within the various organizations he
has worked for -- a culture that is grounded in the values of hard work, grit
and determination. It wasn’t always like
that for Engles, as he admitted: “When I got into coaching, I was immature as
to what coaching really was. Now that I’ve coached, the culture aspect of things
is important … and is more prominent in terms of what I do.” For him, the
process matters more than the outcome.
His focus on the culture, process and
his unflappable approach in the face of losses resulted in turning NJIT into a
winning program and he accumulated many awards for his coaching success in the
ensuing seasons. His team’s victory in
the 2014-2015 season over Michigan at Ann Arbor is considered one of the
biggest upsets in recent college basketball history.
To people who know Jim, they are not
surprised with his successes over the years, as they know he always is more
comfortable when facing mighty challenges. This is a contention that is hard to
refute because if one were to examine his career, Engles arrived at programs
that he described as being in a “down cycle.”
The Columbia Lions team in 2016 will
require an adjustment for Jim because he is stepping into an established
program that is coming off a winning season. It is a challenge that he
enthusiastically welcomes because he’s a firm believer in continuous learning
and is ready to adapt his coaching style to suit changing times and changing
programs.
Today, he focuses on using coaching
and leadership methods he gleans from reading books on sports icons such as Joe
Maddon, the manager of the Chicago Cubs team that just won this year’s World
Series, and immersing himself with the latest on management and leadership
counsel and research from the pages of the Harvard Business Review. He also
stays up to date on cultural and social trends of his players by relying on his
two teenaged children as trustworthy guides and by observing their habits and
how they interact with each other and their friends. One approach he uses, and
admits that was unthinkable in his younger days, is to play music before
practice so that the student-athletes are having fun.
It is this adaptable style, optimism
and his focus on culture and process that have defined an outstanding career
and what will ensure this year’s edition of the Lions pick up right where it
left off last season -- on a winning note.
