Before Stan Van Gundy was an NBA coach and broadcaster, he was a point guard for his father's Brockport State Golden Eagle teams.

This is Part 3 of the Quintessential D3 Moment series. While researching their book Pipeline to the Pros: How D3, Small-College Nobodies Rose to Rule the NBA, authors Ben Kaplan and Danny Parkins asked some of the most accomplished former D3 hoopers for their best “love of the game” moment from their college days. The book is available for pre-sale and you can sign up for Ben's newsletter here.

By Ben Kaplan

Neither Stan nor Jeff Van Gundy - two of D3 hoops’ most famous alums - originally planned on attending a Division III school.

The summer before Stan was set to matriculate to UC-Davis (a non-scholarship D2 at the time), he returned home from a basketball camp to find a “For Sale” sign in front of his family’s East Bay home. There were no cell phones in 1977. Stan’s dad, Bill, couldn’t call or text to inform his eldest son that he had accepted the head coaching job at SUNY-Brockport. The Van Gundys planned to break the news to Stan when he returned home from camp. Instead, the realtor spoiled the surprise. Rather than stay behind, Stan decided to relocate with his family. He enrolled at Brockport and played four years for his dad.

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One of the main reasons Stan bailed on UC-Davis was because he couldn’t imagine living across the country from Jeff, his younger brother by three years. Attending Brockport allowed Stan to catch more than a few of Jeff’s high school games and witness his brother’s excellence first-hand. For Jeff, there would be no last-minute college switcheroo - it’s hard to say no to a school like Yale.

But then, as a freshman, Jeff found out he would not even be given the chance to try out for Yale’s varsity team. Rather than settling for a JV college career and effectively shelving his hoop dreams, Jeff transferred. First to Menlo College, then to Brockport State to play for his dad. After one season at Brockport, his dad was fired, so Jeff switched schools once more, this time to Nazareth College (now Nazareth University).

Between our interviews and student newspaper archive deep dives, we heard quite a few stories about “All Out Jeff” from his college days, all of which found a home in Pipeline to the Pros. Jeff ended up as the more accomplished college player, but Stan’s time at Brockport was also full of highlights - the 3.8 GPA and double major in Phys Ed and English, the multiple awards for his excellence as a student-athlete, and the school-record 53 consecutive made free throws.

Stan, a master of self-deprecation, can even spin that free throw record into a recounting of his shortcomings as a player. “Here’s the thing,” Stan says. “I think it was my sophomore year when the streak got going. I didn’t miss a free throw the entire season, but I only shot 33. I was 33 for 33 on the year. Which tells you, if you could play a whole year and go to the free throw line 33 times, you’re not exactly a guy blowing by people and attacking the basket. I was the guy you didn’t foul, but you didn’t need to.”

The elder Van Gundy brother’s quintessential D3 moment came on a road trip against a pair of D2 teams - Hartwick College (now D3) and LIU Post (now D1). The games coincided with a nasty flu epidemic that befell Brockport’s campus. Stan remembers only seven or eight guys making it on to the team’s vans. During their first game of the trip, Stan matched up with Hartwick’s best player, a Division II All-American. It didn’t go well. “He tuned me up,” Stan remembers. “I always say he had 40. If you say he had 50, maybe that’s right. Maybe he only had 36 or 38 but he absolutely destroyed me. I take pride defensively and I was working my ass off and he absolutely destroyed me.”

The next stop on the trip didn’t bring any relief. “The night before that game, I get the flu,” Stan says. The illness hit a few other members of the team as well, leaving Brockport with just five active players, including Stan. “I’m literally throwing up at every timeout,” Stan says. “They’re pressing me the entire game and I’m playing with this other guard who refuses to handle the ball. Every time I throw it to him, he throws it back to me. I’m trying to attack this press. I’m sick as a dog. It’s the only game in my entire life, coaching or playing, where in the second half, all I wanted was the game to be over.

“That’s my greatest college basketball memory - getting absolutely tuned up worse than I ever got tuned up and then playing an entire game with the flu. That pretty well summed up my career right there.”

Both Van Gundy brothers aspired to coach at the high school or small college level. Thanks to their basketball acumen, work ethic, and a series of fortuitous connections, they surpassed their original dreams and ascended into the D1 and NBA ranks. They became household names, admired for their coaching ability and, later, their quick wit on the microphone.

In the early 2000s, when former D3 players were almost entirely boxed out of the NBA’s coaching ranks, Jeff employed as many three former D3 players on his Knicks coaching staff - Tom Thibodeau (Salem St.), Steve Clifford (Maine Farmington), and Andy Greer (SUNY-Brockport). The Van Gundy Tree - a moniker the humble Jeff would surely despise - is one of the major reasons the D3 pipeline to the NBA is so robust today.

Greer, who Bill Van Gundy refers to as his “third son,” knew Jeff from their time together at Brockport. Despite having two future NBA coaches on the roster, the team wasn’t exactly a huge draw. “One time, we went into the layup line before the game and the only person in the gym was the guy filming,” Greer says. “That’s true.”

Greer coached at all college levels - everywhere from Brandeis to USC - before his pal Jeff called him up to the big leagues in 2001. He’s since served as an assistant for seven NBA teams over the past 20-plus years, and is currently with the Knicks. Greer’s only stint as a full-time head coach came at D3 Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, NY in the mid-90s.

“I’ve been coaching 38 years and my four years at Kings Point were still the most enjoyable years that I had coaching,” Greer says.

Spending time at D1 Majors and in the NBA has not dampened how much those games as a D3 head coach meant to Greer. One common refrain we heard during our interviews was, “Basketball is basketball.” NBA players are obviously bigger and more talented than D3 players. But parts of the game are consistent across all levels. After standing in huddles during March Madness and contributing to NBA playoff gameplans, Greer still remembers those D3 games fondly.

In fact, many of the members of the Van Gundy extended universe - Greer, Jeff and Stan, and Charlotte Hornets head coach Steve Clifford - say they would’ve been happy setting down roots in a small college town and running a D2 or D3 program. Life had a funny way of presenting them with opportunities, and they seized them. But, as they said, basketball is basketball. At any level, they would’ve loved the game, loved the competition, loved the team, and loved their experience.

“When I was at Kings Point, our rival was NJIT - now they’re Division I. Those games were the same to me as USC vs. UCLA, and Chicago vs. New York in the NBA. If you’re a competitor and you love the sport, it doesn’t matter where you’re at. It’s the competition. It’s the camaraderie that you have with the other coaches and your players. It just goes back to enjoying what you’re doing.”