Story behind Rider’s Chinese opponent
The Rider University men’s basketball team plays its annual exhibition game on Saturday, but the opponent won’t be familiar to any area hoops fans.
Ningbo University, located in the coastal city by the same name in China’s Zhejiang Province, are the visitors, but just how did a school that far away end up on the schedule?
A former local star had a lot to do with it.
Bryan Caver, a standout at McCorristin in the late 80s who then went on to play at Seton Hall, used connections he made through his grassroots Hoop Skillz Elite program to create International Hoop Exchange and connect staff at Ningbo with New Jersey colleges and universities.
Ningbo’s game at Rider on Saturday is the last of a three-game tour, which began on Wednesday night at Caldwell College and continued Thursday at Bloomfield College.
“I think it’s beneficial internationally for these universities to get involved,” Caver said. “Basketball is international now. It’s a little proving ground for them. We can develop those opportunities for (international) kids in the future. A lot of times those kids want to play over here and this is an opportunity for them to see if they can play at this level. Also, it bridges those gaps and there’s opportunities for student-athletes in the future.”
Caver was introduced to the possibility of working with the Chinese school while running his summer Pro-Am at the Windsor Athletic Club in West Windsor. That’s where he met WAC general manager Martin Whitfield and Yanbo ‘Linda’ Znoska.
Caver said Znoska had a friend on the coaching staff at Ningbo and put the wheels in motion for him to connect the school with R ider.
“I wanted to create an opportunity to kind of train some the players, some of the kids in China,” said Caver, who assisted Greg Grant at Trenton High before landing the head job at Conwell-Egan last year. “At first it started out as trying to bring some kids over and get them to see what the United States was like and how we train our athletes over here. The exchange part is we go over there and train their coaches with some of our techniques.”
Caver, of course, still had to convince Rider coach Kevin Baggett and athletic director Don Harnum to schedule the exhibition at face value. Caver compared Ningbo to a mid-level Division II team, not much different than who Rider would have scheduled for this game anyway.
Baggett said last week at practice that he was on board with the idea, while it also meshed with a university initiative to appeal to more international students.
“What we’re trying to get done, even in terms for our university, is trying to recruit more (international) kids and China is an area we’re focused on. It kind of worked hand-in-hand a little bit,” Baggett said. “We’re excited about it from what we’ve done in the past where we’re playing a Division II or III school, so we’re playing an international team. It will be fun for us to experience.”
Caver called this the pilot program, and he hopes to expand it in the future to include Princeton, Rutgers and his alma mater Seton Hall.
“There are universities over there that play at even higher level,” Caver said. “We want to bring those teams over next year and play. We were just fortunate enough for Rider to believe in the project and give it an opportunity.”