Roman Catholic basketball coach Matt Griffin to work for former Temple assistant Dwayne Killings at Albany | Mike Jensen

When the news got out last month — former Temple assistant coach Dwayne Killings was the new head men’s basketball coach at the University of Albany — Killings didn’t immediately announce his staff, but promised “some Philly flavor. … Stand by.”

That promise, it turns out, goes back to Boston University, when Killings was hired as an assistant by Pat Chambers, and there was this ballplayer already there, a guard out of St. Joseph’s Prep.

“It’s funny, the first time I ever saw Dwayne, he was walking around campus with Pat for his interview,” Matt Griffin said this week. “I still remember exactly where I saw him. They were walking around the soccer field.”

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Killings was at BU for one season, 2010-11, before joining Fran Dunphy’s Temple staff, where he had previously been in an operations role. Killings later moved on to Connecticut and Marquette.

Now the boss, putting together his own first staff, Killings reached back to that one season in Boston, to a guy he calls “a rock star … born in the business.”

“People don’t know how good he is,” Killings said of Griffin, who moves into the college ranks after five seasons at Broad and Vine, as head coach at Roman Catholic High.

“It was a PhD in coaching,” Griffin said of his time at Roman, coaching an ultra-talented team which won two Philadelphia Catholic League titles and two state titles. “Coaching that group taught me more about coaching than I probably taught them.”

On the phone, Griffin offered a little tour of his relationship with Killings, how Killings was at BU for one championship season, but moving on, “he never stopped staying in touch.”

Example: Killings got back to Boston the following year, texted Griffin and some teammates. Where were they? Killings was with his wife, but drove to the group, “put on his hazards, runs over, talks to us for ten minutes — that’s who he was.”

When Griffin graduated, he did a two-year Teach for America stint in Boston, then came home, not sure what he was going to do. Killings recommended a workout place he used in Fairmount and Griffin signed on, getting closer to his old coach as Griffin taught at a charter school on Broad Street and helped out Speedy Morris at the Prep. But Griffin still wasn’t sure about full-time coaching. He took a job selling medical devices. Then the Roman job opened up the following year. Coaching an iconic program, where his own father had played for Speedy? That turned the coaching lights fully on.

“I’ll look back and think it was a time where I kind of grew up,” said Griffin, the younger brother of St. Joseph’s University assistant John Griffin, whom he speaks with multiple times a day. “I was always a people pleaser. In the role of head coach, you can’t make everyone happy all the time. You had to have difficult discussions.”

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The Griffin name means something in Philadelphia basketball. But the Roman name probably means even more.

“I felt the pressure every day,” Griffin said, not just from the tradition, but because he had brought in the highest-level players, certain to go on to Division I hoops. “You have pressure to know what you’re talking about, know what you’re doing. You can easily lose your locker room.”

Conversations with Killings were part of his own evolution, Griffin said.

“Dwayne has a very creative mind, always forward thinking, ahead of the curve,” Griffin said. “He really became a mentor. I was at the stage where I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I had zero wins and losses to my name.”

Griffin picked Killings’ brain on presenting his program to college coaches. Killings told him that for open gyms, college coaches might know who they’re coming to watch, but might not have seen that player yet, wouldn’t recognize him, or they might see someone younger who catches their eye. Even for an open gym, Killings suggested, have players wear numbers, give coaches a roster with those numbers when they walk in. “A little thing,” Griffin said.

There was never much doubt in their ongoing talks about where Killings would eventually end up … well, maybe the where.

“I don’t know if he remembers this, but 10 years ago, I remember sitting in the office at Boston University,” Griffin said. “He said, ‘Listen, if I ever got a [head coaching] job, the first thing I would do is change the office.’ He specifically said, ‘I would change the flooring in the office, just to create a different environment.’ ”

Griffin recently reminded Killings of that.

“We’re in the process of that,” Griffin said.

Conversations between the two about the idea of Griffin joining a Killings staff began to get more real as Killings got on the short list for some head-coaching jobs.

“Would you be willing to move wherever I go?” Killings asked.

“I felt like it was real,” Griffin said. “If Coach Killings gets a job, I’m going, wherever it is.”

He understands the job description.

“The No. 1 thing he wants me to do is develop players and monitor their progress,” Griffin said. “I think one of my roles, bring a great positive energy to the gym, to the culture.”

“He’s got limitless energy,” Killings said “Whether it’s running around campus at 6 in the morning, or being around the office, the guy has energy pouring out of him.”

Griffin will also be responsible for recruiting the Philadelphia and South Jersey and Delaware area. One transfer picked up already out of the portal, Paul Newman, is a Roman grad, but graduated just before Griffin took over. According to all-knowing social media, Albany also has extended an offer to Daniel Skillings, who played for Griffin this past season at Roman. (Friday, Temple forward Dre Perry committed to Albany as a grad transfer.)

It’s unlikely — read, impossible — that a five-star guy like Jalen Duren will end up in Albany because of a Griffin connection, but the Roman days won’t leave Griffin anytime soon.

“I felt like I was in Philadelphia basketball heaven,” Griffin said of coaching in that little third-floor band box of a gym, where they’d generally ignore the boundary lines in practice, but during games, “we always got five or six extra possessions because they’d step out of bounds and not know they were out of bounds.”

He probably wouldn’t look at it like this, but, given the trust he has for his new boss, Griffin might have less pressure with this latest move.

“It’s been an easy transition,” Killings said of the new floor under Griffin’s feet.