Mike Connors named men’s basketball coach at University of Sciences

Mike Connors, former top Bruiser Flint assistant at Drexel, is the new head men’s basketball coach of the University of the Sciences. Connors takes over for Dave Pauley, let go during this past season.

“I knew from talking to Dave, he always would speak highly from the kids he would coach,’’ Connors said Wednesday. “It was one of those schools where I thought I would fit.”

Connors had been with Flint the whole time at Drexel, and before that at Massachusetts, where Connors was first hired by John Calipari. Connors also had been an assistant at Cornell and Army before UMass.

For much of the last year, Connors had been working at the United States Basketball Academy in Oregon. The academy had been training a lot of Chinese basketball players. Interestingly, Connors said he probably was ahead of the curve knowing about the coronavirus pandemic, since Chinese authorities decided not to send more players as scheduled in December since the coronavirus already was a problem in China.

He’s back home in Yardley now, with Zoom meetings scheduled with players, hunkered down looking at recruiting tapes, taking recommendations on possible recruits from friends in the business.

His old boss, Flint, now the top assistant at Indiana, was supportive of him taking this job, Connors said.

“Bruiser Flint is the most supportive head coach,’’ Connors said. “Everybody always says that. But he was always calling, ‘OK, what’s up? What are we doing now?”

The answer: Connors is back in the game locally.