Saint Louis University men’s basketball coach Brad Soderberg rounded out his coaching staff by selecting Anthony Beane, Jason Grunkemeyer and Angres Thorpe as full-time assistant coaches.
Each of the three men will fortify the team with outstanding coaching abilities and strong ties to the Midwest, which Soderberg intends to rely heavily on for recruitment.
For the last two seasons, Beane, a native of Bernie, Mo., has served as an assistant coach at Illinois State University in Bloomington-Normal, Ill. Prior to ISU, Beane held an assistant coach position at Southeast Missouri State University for three seasons.
While at SEMO, Beane was a driving force in the recruitment of classes that were ranked No. 1 in the Ohio Valley Conference by Dick Vitale’s Magazine and ranked 30th in the nation by Basketball Times.
“St. Louis was especially appealing to my wife and me, because we both grew up in that region,” Beane said earlier in a press release. “Coach Soderberg is first class, and we will be successful under his leadership. I’ll be comfortable recruiting in St. Louis, because I’ve done it for quite some time and have developed a good rapport with the area high school coaches.”
Grunkemeyer held the role of senior manager last season with the Billikens and is beginning his first season as an assistant basketball coach. Grunkemeyer, from Cincinnati, was a standout at Miami of Ohio and was named an honorable mention All-Mid-American Conference player during his senior season.
Thorpe, a Chicago native, brings six years of coaching experience to the Billiken program. For the last two years, Thorpe was an assistant at Ball State and coached teams that marked the season with upsets over UCLA and Kansas. Four years prior to Ball State, Thorpe served on the coaching staff at Lewis University in Romeoville, Ill.
“Saint Louis is a great opportunity, because it’s in Conference USA, which is a league that’s only getting better,” Thorpe said in a release. “We have the opportunity to get to the NCAA Tournament. We need to bring in the right kids to fit our system, and we will do it well.”
All three men bring assets to the SLU program which Soderberg deems key: all have deep roots in the Midwest and all are not only good coaches, they are good people.
“In general, what I was trying to accomplish by hiring (the assistants) was to be able to recruit the Midwest well. It’s not wise for our program to try to recruit coast to coast, we can’t get intrusive with people we need to know about,” Soderberg said. “Between us, we have blanketed the Midwest states (with previous coaching experience). My philosophy is to do a great job recruiting a smaller area instead of doing an all right job recruiting a larger area.”
In addition to relying on strong ties in the Midwest to recruit, Soderberg views another quality in his coaching staff as imperative: they must not only be good coaches, but they must be men of great character.
“We need solid people more than solid basketball coaches. I have everything figured out in terms of X’s and O’s and strategy, but all of that doesn’t work if you don’t have good people,” Soderberg said.
While Soderberg was conducting recommendations and background checks for his assistant coach prospects, he found one common thread among his selections: they all received great words of praises from their former universities and great respect from players.
“One former boss said to me, `Hey Coach, just hire the guy (Thorpe). He’s that good. You can’t go wrong with hiring him,'” Soderberg said.
In terms of coaching strengths, Soderberg has no doubt that each of the three men bring to the Billikens talents that are sure to enhance the program’s ability to succeed at the national level.
All three have impeccable work ethics and have experience with programs which are known for their fast pace games.
“I was looking for guys who have an understanding that you need to work hard to be good. Others have flashier names and come from higher profile programs, but you’re not going to find guys who work so hard,” Soderberg said. “That’s exciting to me. They have what it takes to be on the national level.”
