Cassara excited about Hofstra
CANTON — Ever since he was a kid, Canton native Mo Cassara has dreamed of becoming an NCAA Division I men's basketball head coach.
That dream was realized on May 5 when he was hired as the head coach of Hofstra University and it will really hit home in November when he coaches his first game with the Pride and sees North Carolina coach Roy Williams across the way trying to defeat him.
"Our first game is against North Carolina on national TV, so we better figure it out pretty quickly," Cassara said. "Roy Williams is a guy that has won a lot of games and will continue to win a lot of games and I'm just trying to win my first one."
The road to Hofstra was a strange one for Cassara, who twice in the last few months had been out of work.
He had been an assistant coach under Al Skinner at Boston College the last four years, but Skinner was dismissed and Cassara found himself looking for a job.
That search ended when Hofstra hired SUNY Potsdam alum Tim Welsh as its head coach on April 1 and Cassara joined his staff.
But then Welsh was charged with drunken driving in early May and resigned a few days later, again leaving Cassara wondering where his future in the game would be.
It turned out that in the short time he'd been on campus he'd made an impression and he was offered the job. He even had Lisbon native Rick Carlisle, the coach of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, backing him for the position as he made a call to Hofstra's athletic director Jack Hayes on Cassara's behalf.
"It's really an unfortunate opportunity that I'm now the head coach at Hofstra," Cassara said, referring to Welsh's departure. "It's been a really, almost bizarre sequence. Two times in the last couple months I've been out of a job in a business that I've worked real hard to try and advance in.
"I learned at a young age to never quit on something that you really care about. I've dreamed about being a Division I head coach since I was a little guy, and was a player. I'm really looking forward to this opportunity. I just kept pushing ahead. Fortunately, I was in the right place at the right time."
Cassara grew up in a coaching family as his dad, Rick, was St. Lawrence University's men's coach. He also cites former SLU coaches Bob Sheldon, Paul Evans and former Canton High School coach Gerry Hourihan as influences along with Welsh and Carlisle.
"I've been fortunate in my life to grow up around a lot of coaches and pull in things from a lot of different levels and a lot of different people," Cassara said. "I've also been fortunate through my career to work for different people and be a head coach at different times in a couple different places at a couple different levels. I draw form all those things now. I'm going to value all those experiences."
Cassara played for St. Lawrence and then spent one year as an assistant coach at Washington & Lee, followed by a year at The Citadel.
He was a prep school head coach at the Worcester Academy in Mass. from 1999-2003, compiling a 90-21 record. He spent a year as an assistant at Dayton College, then coached NCAA Division III Clark University in Mass., for two years before spending the last four years at BC.
The Pride went 19-15 a year ago and played in the College Basketball Invitational. The squad is led by Colonial Athletic Association Player of the Year Charles Jenkins, who averaged 20.6 points per game.
"I've inherited a very good team with very good kids," Cassara said. "We're going to play an exciting brand of basketball. We have terrific athletes and that's a credit to the coaches who were there before me. They left us with a lot of talent."
