At 6:30 p.m. yesterday, Syracuse sophomore Louie McCroskey, assistant coach Mike Hopkins and a few stragglers lounged around the Carrier Dome. Almost an hour after practice, they couldn’t leave until McCroskey made 10 3-pointers in a row.It may have taken a few hundred shots, but McCroskey has come a long way since his freshman year. As Hopkins and a team manager started breaking a sweat chasing rebounds, McCroskey’s shot warmed up, and Hopkins’ encouraging screams grew louder. Finally, McCroskey hit 10, and he started walking away.

Hopkins threw the ball back at him. McCroskey would shoot until he missed.

Now in his 10th season at Syracuse, Hopkins is nationally renowned for his player-development skills. As a result, he is one of the hottest head coaching prospects in the country. Tonight at 7, Hopkins and the Orange will face St. Bonaventure, a team that pursued Hopkins for its head coaching position last year.

Hopkins called the St. Bonaventure interview process one of the two events that changed his coaching career. It made him look at coaching in a completely different light. How would he recruit players at a small upstate school? How would he interact with the university? How would he leave SU coach Jim Boeheim?

St. Bonaventure was mired in scandal after an ineligible athlete competed in the 2002-03 season. As a result, the NCAA placed the Bonnies on academic probation for three years, and Hopkins withdrew his name in the spring of 2003. Anthony Solomon has since taken the St. Bonaventure job.

‘I loved it,’ Hopkins said of the St. Bonaventure job. ‘I just didn’t really have that gut feeling (that it was the right job). The AD was an acting AD, you didn’t know who the president was going to be, they had some problems and you knew they were going on probation. I would’ve loved the opportunity to turn something around, but it was going to be some time before they got their feet on the ground.’

In playing and in coaching, Hopkins has always wanted to turn things around. He calls himself an underdog and he said he wants to coach an underdog team one day, building it to national prominence. It’s the same reason he spends hours after practice each day with McCroskey.

‘I like to work out guys that aren’t playing,’ Hopkins said. ‘I like to make guys that aren’t playing play.

‘I loved the St. Bonaventure job because it was the first school that came after me. It was like the first girl that liked you that was pretty cute. I wanted to love it, but I didn’t.’

From his early days in San Mateo, Calif., and from the first time he fell in love with Syracuse after meeting Pearl Washington in eighth grade, Hopkins was always destined to be a coach. He just didn’t know it.

After finishing his playing career at Syracuse in 1993 and a brief stint playing in Europe, he returned to his home in Southern California, where he hoped to begin working in a family business.Unfortunately, the business, which made hospital products, was going through difficult times. Hopkins expected a job there. But since Hopkins’ father had just laid off two workers, his father felt too guilty to immediately hire Hopkins. So Hopkins, for the first time in his life, needed to find a job.

Marv Marinovich, father of Todd Marinovich, a former NFL quarterback and childhood friend to Hopkins, had trained Hopkins in basketball. He informed Hopkins of some local sixth- and seventh-graders who needed a trainer.

Hopkins taught the basics – shooting, dribbling and layups – for $50 a session. His clientele soon grew to eight, and then 10. Hopkins coached like he played – his protgs would take hundreds of shots at a time and, though they weren’t blessed with Jordanesque athleticism, they improved.

Hopkins began to work with AAU teams and he trained future NBA players Baron Davis and Jason Hart, who would go on to play for the Orange. Soon, Hopkins would follow his coaching mentor, Tim Grugurich, and watch him work out the Seattle Sonics.

Hopkins began to love coaching, but he decided to return to Syracuse, where his girlfriend Alicia lived, in pursuit of a master’s degree. He enrolled in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, and he put in a call to Boeheim.

‘I wasn’t thinking of coaching,’ Hopkins said. ‘I just wanted to be a part of the program. It was one of those right place, right time, right situation deals.’

Then-assistant coach Tim O’Toole was leaving for Duke, and Hopkins joined the staff.

Since returning to Syracuse, Hopkins has married and has seen his coaching responsibilities increase. In 2000, he began recruiting, leaving his master’s degree behind.

Currently, Hopkins has 15 of the necessary 30 credit hours filled for his degree. He hopes to one day finish it.

Hopkins, 35, said he hopes to have a head coaching job by age 40, but he’s flexible.

He has a list of five head coaching positions he would take if they opened. They include some mid-major programs that he can build. Hopkins has a black book that he keeps at home. He writes coaching advice he’s received in it and the names of possible assistants he would want to hire.

‘Hopefully, he is the successor to Coach Boeheim,’ former Syracuse assistant coach Troy Weaver said. ‘Naturally that would be something he would wanna do.’

‘He’d make an excellent head coach,’ Syracuse associate head coach Bernie Fine said. ‘Maybe when Coach Boeheim retires, he will take over here.’

Hopkins said it would be his dream to take the head coaching position at Syracuse, but he knows he can never live up to Boeheim’s legacy.

‘Coach Boeheim has a 75 percent winning percentage,’ Hopkins said. ‘If I have a 62 percent winning percentage, I’d be happy. No one’s ever gonna touch what he’s done.’

So instead of preparing the overmatched Bonnies for a game against Syracuse, Hopkins continues his daily workouts with the younger players at Syracuse. McCroskey and point guard Josh Wright are his two current projects.

He concentrates on this season only, loving every minute of it. But he can’t wait for his big chance to come along.

‘I want to be overprepared,’ Hopkins said. ‘I have a great job because I have stability and because I learn from one of the greatest coaches of all time in college basketball.

‘I know I can’t have the experience of being a head coach before I am one, but I want to feel like I have before I go to that next interview.’

Published on November 30, 2004 at 12:00 pm