Inspiring coach has put St. Edward's on the map

Back when he was a fresh-faced 35-year-old with newborn son Colin, 6-year-old daughter Emily, wife Stacey and an accent right out of "Seinfeld," native New Yorker Andre Cook suddenly found himself in a foreign land.

Some know it as Texas.

He admits now he didn’t know if the Alamo was a historic mission or a movie theater chain. As he puts it, he wasn’t sure if San Antonio was south or north of Austin. Same for Dallas. And when he was told about a recruit in Abilene, “I didn’t know where in the hell that was,” he said.

That’s why in 2009, one of his very first purchases as the new head basketball coach at St. Edward’s University was a Texas map. The sheer size of the state was the first of many culture shocks that he has weathered.

Cook is putting St. Edward’s on the basketball map with an eye-popping 24-2 record from a team that starts four juniors, has four international players and can score with the best of them, averaging 87 points a game. Prolific scorer Ashton Spears has lit it up from everywhere on the court with 78 treys, and dynamic point guard August Haas gets his teammates in the best possible positions.

Those early days for Cook, however, weren’t the easiest. Even off the court.

He admits today he’s not all that big on Texas barbecue, which is a good way to get deported from these parts. His stomach has acclimated to chips and queso and jalapeños, but he finds pizza in the 512 exceedingly average. When he first arrived 10 years ago, he didn’t know what a breakfast taco was. “Now I can’t live without them,” he said.

So what’s a stereotypical New Yorker with a barrel laugh, a booming voice and a robust spirit doing in a place like Austin?

Cook grew up in upstate New York, in Albany, and was raised by stern grandparents who had 10 kids of their own and adopted him after his pregnant mother decided not to bring up her biracial son with a black father. Cook never met his father, who is no longer alive. Years later he was told that the sister who had always doted on him with extra gifts and whom he knew as Donna was actually his mother.

Hard work was mandatory. So was being in by an 11 o’clock curfew.

“My grandfather was a tough SOB who worked in a factory and put in boilers,” Cook said. “He was tough, tough, tough. He told me later he was trying to protect me because it’d be so hard being biracial.”

Cook turned to sports as his outlet. He was a captain and prolific scorer for both his high school and Skidmore College basketball teams and excelled at golf. His first love was baseball — the last game he played was in a Connie Mack regional against a team with Manny Ramirez — but basketball was his ticket.

He coached a high school team and then a Hudson Valley Community College team to a 62-5 record in his last two years, including a loss in the Division III national semifinals. He applied at St. Edward’s because he was close to former Toppers head coach Ryan Marks.

So on a July morning, a shivering Cook left temperatures of 4 degrees in Albany and almost melted in his jet black pinstripe suit walking around the South Austin campus. The fit was obvious. On his return home two days later, during a layover in Charlotte, N.C., he accepted the job offer from athletic director Debbie Taylor, who loved his core values.

For three years at St. Edward’s, Cook did pretty much everything wrong. His record reflected it — three straight losing seasons.

Luckily for him, the pressure to win at this small, liberal arts private Catholic school on South Congress Avenue was lower than the pizza standards. He was fortunate not to be fired, especially since he, like every other university employee, works year-to-year without a contract. He makes less than $80,000 — less than what Shaka Smart makes in one game — and holds summer camps to help allay recruiting expenses.

Of course, the school never having won a single NCAA Division II Tournament game in its history — it’s 0-3 — defuses much of the pressure.

“It really takes a coach a few years to come in and make the program theirs and get the right players in,” Taylor said. “Winning is not the No. 1 thing for us.”

Say whaaaaat? But don’t get it confused. St. Edward’s wants to win, but more than that, it pushes the positive experience. “You can win a national championship and not have a good experience,” Taylor said.

Cook made corrections. He hired an assistant coach with Texas roots and then another, former St. Edward’s player Taylor Land, who later helped Cook land international players from Australia and New Zealand. He now has former Topper and rising star Trey Lindsey on his staff.

He realized he wasn’t setting the world on fire with junior college recruits and New York players who didn’t always stick. He began scouring that well-used map for high school recruits, such as the eight he has on his current roster, and voilà.

The Hilltoppers began winning.

And winning.

And winning.

In fact, St. Edward’s has won so much, it now is ranked No. 3 in the nation. Keep winning, and the Hilltoppers are likely to host one of eight Division II regionals with a chance to advance to the Elite Eight in Evansville, Ind.

“Coach is fantastic,” Lindsey said. “Nobody in the country at any level runs an offense like we do. I bet our play card for each game has 70 calls on it. It’s unbelievable. But Coach has the ability to command the room and understand the psyche of the player.”

Cook is all about team bonding. At the urging of Elisa Isom, the associate director of residence life, he initiated a couple of mental exercises to help the team grow closer. Every other year, Cook would have Bio Night, when players interview one another as well as the coaches and reveal their findings to the entire club, or do an enneagram study that defines a player’s personality so he could better understand their complexities.

“Like our point guard, August Haas, he’s like me, a 3 and a 2,” Cook said, explaining the merging of a driven achiever and a caring helper. “I can predict when he’s going to get quiet and get in a dark place.”

Of course, there have been very few dark moments this season. This is a team that has beaten two recent opponents by 50 points. It’s a versatile group, one that sank 15 treys to destroy Rogers State and then forced 22 turnovers to crush Arkansas-Fort Smith. It does suffer mental lapses at times, mainly because it’s protecting big leads.

So can St. Edward’s win its first national championship?

Ask his star point guard, Haas, a transfer from Copenhagen by way of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a born leader. He’ll tell you he came to the school for exactly that reason.

“We’ve got a bunch of kind, sweet guys,” Haas said. “Coach looks at me to spice things up and bring a toughness to the team.”

Lindsey calls Haas “a freakin’ competitor who brings it every day,” a tireless workaholic who pushes his teammates and “didn’t come here to finish in second place.”

Such an outlandish notion seemed absurd considering that the Toppers lost their entire backcourt from last season and took on a bunch of wheezing St. Edward’s alums in an exhibition last November. Curiously enough, a water leak forced hundreds of students out of their dorm and sent them pouring into the gym at the Rec and Convocation Center.

“Our alums, a bunch of 25- to 30-year-olds, out of shape, were kicking our butts,” Cook said, slapping his forehead. “We may have 500 students there, and I’m thinking, ‘They’ll never come back.’ We needed to go on a 22-4 run to beat ’em, but the alums just embarrassed us in front of what might be our biggest crowd of the season.”

And why not? St. Edward’s was picked a lowly sixth in the nine-team Heartland Conference, not anything that would cultivate any confidence.

But a few days later, the Toppers downed Division I UT-San Antonio in an exhibition. Then they opened the season with six straight wins. Then they got ranked.

“And then Texas A&M-Kingsville came here and bam, bam, bam,” Cook said, pounding his fist into a palm for emphasis. “They kicked the crap out of us. They came ready for a fight, and we came ready for a lovely lunch.”

Lesson learned.

St. Edward’s won the next 14 games and didn’t lose again for 2½ months.

Now they have a share of the school’s first Heartland championship since a run of three straight titles ending in 2008 — and maybe more.

“First, we go down to Dallas Baptist,” Cook said before Saturday's game, which his team won 94-81.

Uh, that’s up, Coach. Up Interstate 35.

“Right,” he conceded. “See, I’m here 10 years, and I still don’t know which way is up.”

On the contrary. Cook absolutely knows and has his Hilltoppers heading in that same direction.