Tavaras Hardy is no longer a Georgia Tech assistant coach, a reality that has been made clear to him in a number of ways.
“I’ve already been kicked off the group chat,” said the new head coach at Loyola-Maryland.
Hardy, who served two years on coach Josh Pastner’s staff, was announced as the Greyhounds’ new coach last Wednesday. He’s taking over a team that has had a winning league record five times in the past 21 seasons and has made the NCAA Tournament twice in school history.
As a first-time head coach, he’ll take lessons he learned from coach Josh Pastner with him, starting with his optimism and belief.
“When we first got the job, coach Pastner was always talking about, ‘How do we get to 20 wins? How do we get to 20?’” Hardy said. “Based off watching film, and the guys didn’t have a lot of experience, knowing how good the ACC was, we were like, That’s unrealistic, coach. He stayed on us. ‘Let’s come up with a way. We’ll figure it out together.’ And obviously it worked with the season we were able to have last year.”
Picked to finish at or near the bottom of the ACC, Tech challenged for an NCAA Tournament berth before making a run to the NIT finals and finishing at 21-16.
“It wasn’t like I was so hungry to be a head coach that I was always thinking about it,” Hardy said. “It was more, I was locked in with Georgia Tech. I really liked what we’re doing this offseason, really liked the guys who they have returning and was excited about the recruits coming in, but this job, particularly as you think about progressing in this business, you want to become a head coach at a place you really believe in. It was hard to turn down once they reached out.”
It does seem a very good fit. Before his arrival at Tech, Hardy coached for three years as an assistant at Georgetown, giving him familiarity with the area.
Besides Tech and Georgetown, Hardy also coached at Northwestern and is a Northwestern grad. The academic side of the job is important to him, as it is at Loyola, which U.S. News & World Report rated the No. 4 (tie) regional university in the North. (Tuition is a cool $47,500.)
A self-described basketball junkie, Hardy even likes the Patriot League, where a mentor, Bill Carmody, coaches at Holy Cross. It is a league where a number of coaches get their first head-coaching opportunity.
“I’ve been a fan of just the Patriot League as a whole,” he said. “There’s a bunch of great coaches in the league. They do a lot of good things, especially offensively, but they’re really creative with their style of play.”
Since the hire was announced, Hardy has been besieged with phone calls and text messages, either from coaches wanting to join the staff or colleagues giving endorsements on behalf of others. Speaking Tuesday morning, just having returned from the Final Four and NABC convention in San Antonio, Hardy said that there were between 50 and 75 people who had expressed interest in his director of operations job, which is often a way coaches get a foot in the door in the industry.
He goes with Pastner’s blessing and encouragement.
“I just thought the job was a good one for him,” Pastner said, citing the location and the academic strength of the school. “I just think he’s going to do really well there.”
Building culture at Loyola will be a priority, just as it was at Tech. Hardy gave thanks to seniors on the 2016-17 team – players such as Quinton Stephens, Josh Heath, Corey Heyward and Rand Rowland – for buying into what Pastner and the staff were teaching.
“That’s what I want to do at Loyola,” Hardy said. “The group of seniors, I don’t want them to lower their shoulders thinking, ‘Coach is bringing in his guys.’ They’re all my guys.”
The values that Hardy helped teach to the Jackets – such as playing with effort and sharing the ball – will be imparted to the Greyhounds.
“I’m going to be in charge with building a successful program,” he said. “We’ll be judged off wins and losses, no doubt about that, but how we get to those wins is going to be based on how we build the program, how we build the culture – are the guys committed? – and we put together a great staff that’s going to execute the same values we preach to the players.”
Hardy was an unusual hire at Tech in that Pastner didn’t know him at all. Often, assistant-coach hires are people whom the head coach knows well, perhaps having coached together previously or having played for the head coach. Normally, there’s at least some level of familiarity.
But two years has given Pastner enough time to get to know Hardy. He sees bright things ahead.
“I just think he’s solid,” Pastner said. “He’s really good in all areas as a coach. He’s good. I think he’s going to be really good at Loyola-Maryland, and I think he’s a future star in the profession.”
He’ll have to start his own group chat.
“I feel I’m prepared and now I’ve just got to go out and do all the things that I think are necessary to build a championship-level program,” Hardy said.
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