Former UConn grad assistant reunites with Gallagher as assistant at Manhattan
J.R. Lynch had celebrated a national championship the night before as a graduate assistant coach with the UConn men’s basketball team, so he figured an April 4 phone call from his former college coach, John Gallagher, would be of the hello-and-congratulations variety.
It was more than that, though.
“He was like, ‘Listen, I want you to come with me to Manhattan,’ ” Lynch said.
What a two-day stretch this was for Lynch, who played four years for Gallagher at Hartford, becoming one of the top point guards in the America East before graduating in 2019 and cutting various paths through the professional world.
Lynch played basketball in Argentina and Puerto Rico. He worked at a FedEx facility in the Hartford area. He was a substitute teacher at his high school in Hoboken, N.J., where he also started a basketball skills academy. He worked at a manufacturing company on Long Island, packing trucks. He returned to UHart as Gallagher’s director of operations for the 2021-22 season before joining Dan Hurley’s UConn staff to pursue a coaching career — a second Master’s degree.
And there he was on April 3, a Monday, clipping nets with the Huskies in Houston. And the next day, a Tuesday, taking that call from Gallagher, who was forming his first staff as coach at Manhattan.
Lynch was offered a job as a full-time assistant coach with a recruiting role. He didn’t accept immediately. He accepted quickly, though, choosing to depart UConn at the midway point of a two-year GA program.
“I still can’t believe it,” said
Lynch, 26. “Thinking about it for so long, wanting something so bad and, boom, here it is. I know the head coach, I played for the head coach, and talking to the staff at UConn made the transition easy.”
Hurley, Kimani Young, Luke Murray and Tom Moore all told Lynch the same thing, that such opportunities don’t come around often. So Lynch took it, reuniting with Gallagher, who coached Hartford for 12 seasons in 2010-22.
“He’s like a son to me,” Gallagher said. “His character, there might be people equal, but there’s no one better. I want my son, Jack Gallagher, to be like J.R. Lynch on and off the court. He lives and breathes (basketball). On that end, building a program, you need guys who are fully, two feet in. And he’s lived his whole life, anything he does, two feet in.”
This is the latest landing spot on a basketball expedition that ran through Connecticut as something not fully appreciated until the final stretch.
Lynch sustained a gruesome leg injury while playing football in sixth grade that left him with an unusual gait because his right leg is now two inches shorter than his left. He was overlooked out of Hudson Catholic High in Hoboken, proving himself worthy of a Division I scholarship at Hartford after a prep year at St. Andrew’s in Barrington, R.I.
Gallagher recruited Lynch without thinking he’d ever play significant minutes, and Lynch wound up with 1,412 points and 374 assists in 130 career games. He led the Hawks to 37 victories over his final two seasons, the best two-year stretch in program history, and averaged a teamhigh 16.6 points as a senior.
Lynch earned a business degree in three and a half years and an MBA before departing Hartford. Two years later, Gallagher coached the Hawks into the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history. And two years after that, with the school having announced the program would move from Division I to Division III, Gallagher departed on the eve of the opener.
It was a messy separation, with Gallagher having filed a lawsuit against the university, claiming fraud and negligent misrepresentation. All outstanding legal issues were settled in September, though, and Gallagher was announced as coach at Manhattan on March 29.
That same day, UConn traveled from Connecticut to Texas for the Final Four. Lynch was one of three graduate assistants on Hurley’s staff last season.
“You wear a lot of hats,” Lynch said. “Wherever they need help, you help. The ultimate goal was to win a national championship, and what I did learn as a grad assistant is that every role is important, from the GA’s to the support staff to the head coach. Everyone played vital roles. It’s a dream come true that I was able to be part of something that I’ll cherish for the rest of my life. Every single one of those moments, I just couldn’t believe my eyes. I knew we had a really good team and the closer we got I was like, ‘Oh, yeah,’ we’re going to win this.”
Initially, Lynch wasn’t very interested in the UConn job. He wondered if he really needed a third degree and another couple years of academic exertion. Having been Hartford’s director of operations (a non-coaching staff role) for Gallagher’s final season, he wanted the next role to be basketball-specific.
But two men were influential in his decision to join the Huskies.
His high school coach, Nick Mariniello, a native of Verona, N.J., and a longtime friend of Hurley, reminded Lynch that the UConn opportunity was “not just any” GA job. He’d work in one of the best programs in the nation, with some of the best coaches, and would learn lessons and develop relationships that could impact his coaching career for decades.
UConn assistant coach Luke Murray helped Lynch think it through, as well. Mariniello and Murray know each other well from the recruiting world. And Murray, a 2007 Fairfield graduate, began his career as a grad assistant under Sean Miller at Arizona after serving as director of operations under Moore at Quinnipiac.
“The more I spoke about it, the more it made sense,” Lynch said. “Luke, he gave me his story and it was like, OK, this can work. He made me feel comfortable. And when I went to visit in early June to see campus, I left there knowing that this can be a dream come true, being at that stage and around people who are passionate and inspiring. You look to the left, you look to the right, these are the best coaches in the entire world. I truly believe that.”
Lynch has the unique experience of having worked with and/or played for two of the more colorful coaches in Connecticut history. Hurley is more the twisted mind type, Gallagher the extreme optimist. Both are uniquely entertaining.
“Hurley is, by far, one of the greatest coaches I’ve ever been around,” Lynch said. “The one thing I enjoyed is how he was able to get the best out of each one of the guys, especially his best players. And the way he coaches his players is the same way he coaches his staff. And then Gal is a high energy guy. I’ve been around him, I’ve played for him. It’s definitely a different dynamic because of our relationship, but it’s also no different because he’s going to push you to the limit. And just like Coach Hurley, they both do an amazing job of showing you they care about you on and off the court.”
Gallagher’s staff was announced last week. Lynch is one of three fulltime assistant coaches, with Tim Brooks, who filled various roles under Gallagher at UHart in 2019-2022, and Anthony Doran, who spent the past two seasons as an assistant at Manhattan.
The Jaspers fired Steve Masiello, coach since 2011, just two weeks before last season began. RaShawn Stores, Masiello’s associate head coach, ran the team last season.
Manhattan has a storied mid-major history but hasn’t had a winning record or appeared in the NCAA Tournament since 2015. Lynch, as a player and graduate assistant, has contributed to rebuilding projects before.
“Hurley, when it comes to being a student of the game, and this is why I give him so much credit: he knows what it takes and he proved that,” Lynch said. “And Gal was just in an unfortunate situation where the school goes Division III. But he was on his way to being top of the league and making a name for himself in the next two or three years. I always knew he wanted to go back into coaching. For him to land Manhattan, this is a gold mine. The foundation is here, the history is here. Now it’s just a matter of bringing it back.”
Lynch’s final playing experience was in Puerto Rico with Cangrejeros de Santurce, a team that featured Michael Beasley (the second pick in the 2008 NBA Draft), J.J. Barea (who won an NBA championship with the Mavericks in 2011) and Thomas Robinson (the fifth pick in the 2012 NBA Draft).
Lynch figured, initially, that he would complete his GA stint at UConn after the 2023-24 season and perhaps move into a player development role with the Huskies or another high-major program. He completed seven classes at UConn and has three remaining. He said he will take those classes online and expects to earn a Master’s in sports management by the end of 2024.
But the UConn experience made Lynch an even more attractive candidate to Gallagher, who called April 4 to offer congratulations — and a job.
“It just gives him great perspective,” Gallagher said. “I think sometimes it’s good to get away from what you know. He learned a ton from Danny. Look, they’re the national champions, and I think he learned a ton from the whole staff. He’ll bring some of those traits to our program.”