Atholton Grad Hahn Pursues College Hoop Dream Through Coaching

This has been a whirlwind week in the region when it comes to college basketball and coaching turnover. Columbia native Matt Hahn, a former basketball standout at Atholton High who is now a college basketball assistant coach in Pennsylvania, watched these developments with interest.

Mark Turgeon was named the new coach at the University of Maryland on Wednesday, a hiring that followed the resignation of longtime mentor Gary Williams. Two days earlier, Mike Lonergan, a native of Bowie and a former Terp assistant, was introduced as the head man at George Washington University after Karl Hobbs was let go in late April.

That same day, May 9, Billy Lange resigned as the head coach at the U.S. Naval Academy. Williams (22 years), Hobbs (10) and Lange (seven) had been at their schools for a combined 39 years. And if you toss in Jim Larranaga, who left George Mason after 14 years for Miami, that is 53 years of head coaching in the area that has left the region.

Hahn has a unique, personal perspective of these moves.

He was a reserve and senior captain in 1999-2000 for the Terps under Williams at a time that his father, Billy, was an assistant coach on the Maryland staff. Hahn said he was on his BlackBerry last week when news began coming out on the retirement of Williams.

“I saw all of these tweets going out. Then my father called and said he heard it was true,” Hahn said of his father, Billy, a Maryland grad who is now an assistant coach at West Virginia. “I was surprised, but I was not shocked. That is because I know how much he loves to coach. I thought it was something he would do for a long time.”

Matt Hahn also has ties to Lonergan, serving as an assistant coach for five years on his staff at the University of Vermont. Last year Hahn left to take an assistant position at Robert Morris, near Pittsburgh. 

“He has proven to be a winner at whatever level he goes to,” Hahn said of Lonergan. “There is no doubt he will win at GW as well. He was one of the hardest workers I have been around.”

So why did Hahn leave Lonergan’s staff and head to Robert Morris? “It was a hard decision," Hahn told Patch on Wednesday. "With my father being at West Virginia, my mother [Kathi] had a bout with cancer and I wanted to be closer to her. She is doing better.”

Hahn also got a raise by going to Robert Morris, and he welcomed the chance to work under head coach Andrew Toole, who was the youngest coach in the country (29) at the Division I level when he was named head coach in May 2010. Hahn, while an assistant at La Salle, met Toole, who played at Penn.

So would Hahn consider joining Lonergan at GW? “You always have to listen to something like that. I don’t know where that is,” he said of the GW staff.

 Hahn said, however, his goal is be a head coach at the Division I level.

“That is my long-term goal. I think that is why all of us who do this want to do,” Hahn said. “Being an assistant is wonderful but we all one day want to see if we can do the job as a head coach."

"I feel I have prepared for it for a long time as a coaches’s kid. You never know when that opportunity may be. That is the goal," added Hahn, who said he talks nearly every day with his father, and sometimes they don’t even talk about basketball.

For now he is involved in all aspects of the Robert Morris program, which competes in the Northeast Conference. The team lost in the league title game this past season, which denied the team a trip to the NCAA tournament.

“It is a job where there is always something to do. It is a job that never ends. We travel by plane, we bus to and from games. I use a rental car for recuiting,” Hahn said.

So how many miles a year does Hahn drive? “I am a quality customer at Enterprise, I will leave it at that. I don’t know how many miles I drive,” he said.

“The thing I enjoy the most is the relationship with coaches and players,” he adds. “Being a part of a team and united with guys with the same goal. I really enjoy that aspect of it.”

“I'm extremely excited and pleased that Matt has decided to join our program as an assistant coach,” Toole said in a statement upon the hiring of Hahn. “Matt shares a similar vision and values of how the game of basketball is supposed to be played, and that's with passion, intensity and energy.

“He's proved that at Vermont and La Salle, and we're very fortunate to have him as an assistant at Robert Morris. I know Matt will help us capitalize on the success we've had the last three seasons at RMU as well as elevate our program to even greater success."

As an assistant under his father at La Salle, Hahn recruited Steve Smith, the Atlantic 10 player of the year in 2006 who has played several seasons in the NBA. Hahn was teammates at Maryland with future NBA players Juan Dixon, Steve Blake and Steve Francis.

Hahn said Robert Morris was the first school to offer a scholarship to Greg Whittington, a senior standout this past season at Oakland Mills High School. Then his stock "blew up," according to Hahn, and now Whittington is headed to Georgetown of the Big East.

While watching the Oakland Mills star, Hahn would stay in Columbia with his sister, Ashley, who teaches in Prince George's County.  But that did not cut down on his miles on the rental car for Hahn, who hopes years in the trenches as an assistant will one day pay off with a head gig.

"The games are like the reward for all of the scouting and film work," Hahn said.