It’s on everyone’s minds this time of year. The transfer portal, who’s entering, who’s going where.
Programs are going to lose players in this day and age. Maybe many. Maybe every year. It’s the way of the world in the modern Division I landscape.
That doesn’t mean coaches aren’t looking to minimize the attrition with everything in their tool boxes, and it’s not always just about NIL. It’s one reason Arizona women’s basketball head coach Becky Burke hired new associate head coach Todd Starkey.
“You
see the turnover with some teams in our league right now,” Burke said. “You see the turnover with some teams you didn’t expect, and what you see on social media. There is going to be a huge amount of transition every single year. And another reason why I brought Coach, because he’s incredible with retention and did not have much movement on his teams anywhere that he’s been.”
What’s the key?
“Just dealing with people with truth,” Starkey said. “I’m just from start to finish being consistent with that. That’s part of raising kids, too. It’s kind of the same thing. It’s like, sometimes there’s some hard truths, but it’s something that they need, and they develop a level of trust with you.”
Burke knows that players don’t always hear that truth on the recruiting visit, though. There may be players who believe they can do what she’s asking but then find out the reality is different for reasons beyond honesty.
“When we have a player on a visit, I’m telling you exactly what you’re gonna get,” Burke said. “I’m telling you that you’re not gonna like everything I have to say all the time, and I’m gonna tell it how it is, and I’m not gonna sugar coat it, and I have a very direct approach. And then they’re like, Yeah, I love that, Coach. I love it. Yes, please…You need balance around you and all of those different things, but from the head coach, this is exactly what you’re getting, and if you’re not okay with that, you need to speak up right now.”
She believes someone like Starkey, as well as assistants Julie Hairgrove and James Ewing, can be a buffer.
“When you coach the way that I do, you need a Coach Starkey, you need a Coach Ewing, you need a Julie, you need all the pieces,” Burke said. “And that’s the art of this is knowing and being self aware of who you are, how you coach, and what your approach is with these players, and then giving them everything they need outside of me, given what I’m going to be for them, to make sure that they’re still happy and they’re still having a good experience.”
He also sees himself in that role, which is different from what his role as a head coach at Kent State was.
“As a head coach, you have to make 1000 decisions every day,” Starkey said. “You got to make decisions, and you got to live with those. As an assistant coach or associate head coach or whatever, it’s like, okay, how can I, number one, see her blind spots and make sure I support her, and then put out any kind of things that don’t need to get to her so she can stay focused on the priorities.”
The father of four and grandfather of two began guiding young people long before he landed the head coaching job at Kent State that he held for 10 years. The 54-year-old Starkey has been a dad since his early 20s when his oldest son, actor Drew Starkey, was born. His kids are now 32, 31, 29, and 27.
Those early years were tough. Starkey said he wasn’t making a lot at the beginning of his basketball coaching career. Even more challenging, he was doing things like paying for recruiting out of his own pocket.
“My first coaching job was at Montreat College,” he said. “The gym there seats 400 people. Men’s and women’s basketball shared the same locker room. I was an assistant men’s coach there for five years. I made $3,000 a year and worked a couple other jobs while raising young kids and loved every minute. That’s when I knew that I was meant to be a coach.”
It meant wearing lots of hats.
“From there, I went to Lenoir-Rhyne, Division II, as a men’s volunteer assistant and a full time substitute teacher, also still raising four kids when they’re young,” Starkey said. “Transitioned the next year into the head women’s tennis coach, volunteer men’s assistant coach, and full-time substitute teacher.”
Eventually, the head women’s basketball coach at Lenoir-Rhyne left. Starkey got the job on an interim basis and was hired as the permanent head coach after the search. It let him get rid of some of the extra jobs.
“Never really looked back, and that was just over 20 years ago,” Starkey said. “I still kept the head women’s tennis coaching job, but then I stepped away from the substitute teaching.”
When he left Lenoir-Rhyne, he ended up as an assistant at Indiana for a couple of years before getting the Division I head coaching position with the Golden Flashes.
That experience was the biggest draw for Burke. She and former Arizona general manager Michelle Marciniak started reaching out to potential new hires in February when they knew there would be turnover on the staff. Starkey got the call.
“I had to consider kind of where I am in my career, opportunities to be at a P4 university, at Arizona,” he said. “Weather didn’t hurt, especially since it was February in Northeast Ohio, and it was pretty cold winter. So no, I think all the things put together and you’re just trying to consider where you are in your career and where you’d like to advance, and a new, exciting challenge to be with somebody who you believe in and want to build something together.”
Burke knew Starkey from her time at Buffalo. She coached against him for three years in the MAC.
“He’s brilliant,” she said. “Their team is disciplined. They play extremely hard, like all of these things. When you scout an opponent that has the opposite coach you have so much respect for, it was always him for all three years that I was in the Mac. Only had the luxury of beating him like one time in three years, and so I think that says a lot, because we were a really good team. He was always somebody that I admired, respected, and then all of our interactions were always super positive and respectful and just great banter.”
They have very different styles, though. Burke has said that 3-point shooting isn’t central to her offense. Starkey, on the other hand, ran a team that was always very good at shooting the 3. Those different styles can be melded together to take the program forward.
“If you bring the strengths of what my teams have always done and the strengths of what his teams have always done, and you put them together, you have a Big 12 contender,” Burke said. “So that’s what we’re hoping to do, and it’s been really fun. And recruiting conversations with he and I, I got kind of the type that I always recruit. And I’m scrolling through Twitter. ‘Oh, this kid’s hitting the portal. She’s got Todd Starkey written all over her, but that’s not normally somebody I would go recruit.‘ So if we can blend those two worlds together, I really, really feel like this is going to be something special.“
Maybe they will even get a recruiting kick from having an actor in the Arizona family.
“Maybe some Outer Banks fans out there,” Burke joked.
