Atlantic 10 Basketball: Reinvigorated Fordham Rams look to stay as a contender

Despite losing its head coach, Fordham remained a top-half Atlantic 10 Basketball team and under Keith Urgo, a genuine threat in the league.

On Saturday, in front of a raucous crowd that appeared to possibly be over capacity in the Rose Hill Gymnasium, Fordham blew out Duquesne 87-60. It was a critical victory in the immediate term, as it gave the Rams a coveted double-bye directly in the quarterfinals of the Atlantic 10 Basketball Tournament, and was historic as well.  Win number twenty-four on the season made this year’s Fordham team the third winningest in school history (the record is twenty-six in 1970-71) and clinched the school’s first top-four finish in its twenty-eight years in the A-10.

They’ve accomplished all of this with a rookie head coach and a roster that doesn’t feature a single player who had made even an All-Conference team before the season.  Instead, Fordham has won thanks to a terrific culture, a driven head coach, a few selfless role players, a massive transfer portal success, a super-talented freshman and a bold lineup change.

On April 20, 2022, Villanova head coach Jay Wright stunningly retired at sixty years old, still a young man by coaching legend standards. His replacement was his longtime assistant Kyle Neptune, who had left for one year to become a head coach himself, leading Fordham to just their second non-losing (they finished 16-16) season in fifteen years.

That night, while the college basketball world sat in shock, Neptune’s now former players took to social media en masse.  They all had one goal, to earn the team’s top assistant coach, Keith Urgo, a promotion.  One of the loudest voices was Chuba Ohams, who had just become the first Fordham player to make Second Team All-Conference in over a decade.  Ohams had exhausted his playing eligibility a few weeks earlier but he and his teammates knew who should be leading the program moving forward, “Urgo last year acted as a secondary head coach to Kyle Neptune which is why we pushed for him and it’s no surprise to all of us how he was able to step right in to being the full-time head coach at Fordham easily.”

Even those around the program but outside the locker room could already see the value Urgo brought in his lone season as an assistant, like Thomas Aiello, the play-by-play broadcaster for the student radio station, WFUV Sports, “I thought Urgo was pulling a lot of the strings last year, he was extremely active on the bench and was a key component with bringing the Penn State guys (Abdou Tsimbila and Patrick Kelly), along with culture building and recruiting.”

Urgo’s first year

It’s hard to argue with the first-year results, with Urgo delivering a historically great season and winning A-10 Coach of the Year in the process.  But for all of the concrete accomplishments, all anyone wants to talk about with Urgo is how he’s constructed a great culture. Assistant Coach Dave Paulsen, who spent twenty-seven years as a head coach at various level of college basketball (most recently at conference rival George Mason), summed up the central focus of Urgo’s message, “It doesn’t matter who we’re playing or where we’re playing. If we play as hard as we possibly can and with a defensive focus, then we’re gonna have a chance. And the guys really bought into that.”

Now, this isn’t the first Fordham team of this era to lock in on the defense end, as former coach Jeff Neubauer consistently put out above-average defensive units, but they were often anchored by one-dimensional players and led to extremely slow paces, along with some of the nation’s worst offenses.  Even last season’s team paired an elite defense with putrid shooting (worst in the A-10 in two-point percentage and only above an awful Duquesne team in three-point percentage).

Early in his career, guard Kyle Rose epitomized this type of one-way player. He was very good, but not quite elite on defense, while struggling to shoot the ball mightily in his first two seasons (26% from the field, 47% from the line).  This year, Rose made the A-10 All-Defense team, while also being a more consistent shooter (35% field goal, 67% free throw) and providing a huge spark off the bench during the stretch run.

His teammate, freshman Will Richardson didn’t hesitate in the slightest to declare Rose the team’s best defender, a stance the conference’s opposing coaches agreed with in the awards.  But Rose makes his presence felt in a different way than most top-notch defenders, who try to disrupt opposing stars right from the tip.  In the second half of the season, Rose has essentially served as a bizarro Jamal Crawford (or whoever your favorite heat check sixth man is), providing a massive spark off the bench against slightly tired opposition but doing so by continuing to attack and wear them down from the defensive end.  This bold role change has yielded great results, as Fordham closed out the season 11-3 after placing Richardson in the starting lineup in Rose’s place.

Rose has played for four different head coaches during his time with the Rams and when explaining what made coach Urgo different, the answer went back to his personality and the culture he has instilled, “He’s passionate. His passion isn’t only dealing with basketball, he’s passionate about life. He understands what he has accomplished but he knows he can get more out of himself and those around him. He likes to better every single person he has in his life.”

Ohams saw the same from Urgo last year, leading to his aforementioned endorsement, “The biggest reason why we pushed for him to get the job when Neptune went to Villanova is his passion and energy for the game. This is not just a job to him, he simply loves the game and loves teaching and pushing his players to new heights on and off the court.”

Urgo’s passion for the game was made clear as he worked his way towards this job, starting as an assistant coach at the prestigious Gonzaga College High School in Washington DC, climbing the program ladder up to assistant coach at Villanova and spending a full decade as an assistant at Penn St, before joining Neptune, who became a Villanova assistant a year after Urgo left, last season.  But his caring for others can be seen by the path he chose after the end of his own college playing career, choosing to spend a year with the charitable organization Play for Peace, traveling to Northern Ireland and South Africa to bring children from different races and religions torn apart by centuries of conflict together through the wonderful game of basketball.

Now Urgo brings that caring to his players at Fordham. Even as an assistant he made a huge impact on Chuba Ohams, “He’s a guy that is not afraid to tell you something you don’t want to hear but at the same time, he is a guy that you can rely on for the rest of your life. He used to tell us no matter what issue or problem we might face that we should feel free to call him no matter what time of the day it is.” And this wasn’t just lip service, Urgo once woke up at 3 am to field a phone call from Ohams and immediately helped him with his problem.

Coach Paulsen puts Urgo in rarified air in that regard and noted he had “never been around a head coach who had better relationships, more authentic, real and genuine relationships with the kids on the team than Keith Urgo.”  This is a good time for a reminder that Dave Paulsen has been a college basketball coach since 1988.

A great locker is critical for success, but if championships were won just by the teams with the best vibes, then we would still be talking about when Monmouth won the national title. A properly constructed and talented roster still needs to execute at its best, with contributions from everyone who steps on the court.

Successful roster construction

The story behind the construction of the roster largely leads back to Neptune and his staff landing a terrific transfer class upon their arrival, led by Darius Quisenberry (First Team All-Conference in the Horizon League), Antrell Charlton, and Abdou Tsimbila. After an injury-riddled first season with the Rams, Quisenberry opted to return this season for his extra year of eligibility and became the team’s vocal leader in the process.  He’s also Fordham’s leading scorer at 17.0 points per game, and matched Ohams high honor of Second Team All-Conference, making him a great story of transfer portal success.

Meanwhile, there is also the class of current freshmen, which is the highest-rated high school class in Fordham history, committing to play for Neptune and honoring that commitment to play for Urgo. The majority of the current roster simply chose to stay after the coaching change, but one late pickup has changed the Rams’ entire season.

Mere days after being named head coach, Urgo secured his first commitment from a Georgia Tech grad transfer, Khalid Moore, who was known for great defense but was a big question mark on offense, thanks to a lack of opportunities with the Yellow Jackets.  It turns that Moore was the perfect addition to replace the massive scoring deficit left by Ohams’ graduation, and as a quick, versatile big man who can easily guard three positions, a great fit next to Tsimbila and Rostislav Novitskyi, the duo that replaced Ohams’ rim protection. For all his contributions, Moore earned Third Team All-Conference honors and more than validated the decision to bring him in as the final piece of the roster.

The other key addition this season, Will Richardson, didn’t have quite the same level of instant impact, but found his footing as his minutes began to increase mid-season.  Following Fordham’s 1-3 start to conference play, Richardson stepped into the starting lineup, taking Kyle Rose’s place, and providing additional shooting for that unit. He responded by immediately leading the Rams with 19 points in his first start, a win at La Salle that kicked off a season-altering five-game win streak.

Richardson finished conference play shooting 42.6% from three, the best on Fordham by a significant margin over that time.  Getting to spend extra time next to the Rams’ most lethal scorers, Quisenberry and Moore, clearly helped Richardson to expand his game with a few extra open looks coming his way.  While he also credits his development throughout the year as a key reason for improvement, Richardson does believe that the lineup was important as well, “My teammates have given me a lot of confidence since I stepped into the lineup to start making plays.”

Despite being in his first year of college basketball, Richardson is already being praised for the hard work that is also responsible for his leap. Rose pointed out his resilience and called his work ethic “off the charts.”  Paulsen notes that he is in the gym for extra shooting every day, really emphasizing that “there’s probably been a day that he’s missed, but probably not more than one.”  He continued on to call Richardson’s work ethic “second to none.”  With such a talented young player (Richardson is Fordham’s first four-star recruit in over a decade, per some recruiting services) who is already putting in the work, it’s easy to see why he was the first freshman on the team to get a crack at big minutes.

Up and down, Fordham is filled with talent that fits together extremely well. There’s Quisenberry, the team’s leader and most lethal scorer. His fellow All-Conference awardee, Moore, brings a two-way skill package that no one else can match. Rose leads the defense, while Tsimbila and Novitskyi bring critical toughness and rebounding.  Richardson is still a young wild card who spaces the floor and provides solid defense himself.  Finally, there’s a multitude of other intriguing and talented youngsters, like Elijah Gray, who has stepped up at center when one of the two veterans are in foul trouble. That all leaves one player whose contributions consistently go unnoticed by those outside the locker room. But let’s be clear, Fordham isn’t where they are without senior wing Antrell Charlton, who epitomizes many of the team’s greatest values.

Charlton, who Coach Paulsen called “the unsung leader of the team,” is one of the A-10’s best perimeter defenders but is stuck in the shadows of Rose and Moore on that end. He’s a 40% shooter, who is very reliable when he gets to the free throw line (79%), but his offensive signature is a majestic, DeRozan-esque midrange pull-up jumper, which was on display with a game-winner at La Salle.

https://twitter.com/FordhamMBB/status/1614648755067707392?s=20

Fordham has had a rough history with bringing in junior college transfers but Charlton immediately became a wonderful exception, thanks to his attitude and versatility. Thomas Aiello of WFUV summed it up best, “He’s become an integral part of the team. He is one of their main point guards and can take any small guard off the bounce with his crafty moves and the mid-range jumper. He’s also a bigger point forward who can give littler guards a lot of problems, while also being able to switch onto bigger players.”

Charlton also shares many of Coach Urgo’s best traits, according to Paulsen, “The guys respect him because they know all he cares about is winning. He doesn’t care about if he shoots it. Ever.”  But despite his unselfish nature, Charlton’s clutch ability extends past burying La Salle, and Paulsen pointed at his innate ability to shoot a high percentage late in close games as a huge asset.

This fantastic combination of coaches and players has reinvigorated Fordham to a level not seen in the 21st century. They sold out every Saturday home game down the stretch, and students often stood in line for up to an hour to secure tickets, with a massive group taking advantage of a student deal on tickets for the Rams quarterfinal game in the A-10 Tournament, a few Burroughs over in Brooklyn.

Paulsen, in his former role as George Mason Head Coach, has seen an empty Rose Hill Gymnasium more often than most of the players. He joked that “to save time, we’d have the fans introduce themselves to the starting five.” But now the school is experiencing what described as, “a complete culture shift across the board for Fordham basketball.”

Aiello, as a student, sees a clear connection between the team and the fanbase, “The fans have a team they can cheer for: they’re easily identifiable around campus and are relatable when people talk about them. They’ve got this blue-collar attitude and make it a priority to interact with the student body. After every game, the players join ‘Rose Thrill’ and do a mosh pit with the students. It makes the students feel like they are apart of the team and the team feels like they are a part of their fellow peers, which motivates them.”

There are so many reasons to be excited about Fordham basketball at the moment, but in the end, they all eventually lead back to the man in charge.  In a moment of completely unprompted candor, Kyle Rose said it best, when he simply chuckled and said “Coach Urgo, he’s a great coach. Like wonderful, honestly.”

That great, wonderful coach has completely transformed a program that was long that laughingstock of the A-10, now they have fired up fanbase and are in position to make their first deep run in a conference tournament in nearly thirty years.