June 10, 2008
NEWARK, NJ - Mike Spisto, Ira Bowman and Kevin Tirone have been named assistant men's basketball coaches at New Jersey Institute of Technology on the new staff of head coach Jim Engles.
Engles, who was named NJIT's new head coach in April, has been assembling his staff since then and announced the complete staff of Spisto, Bowman and Tirone.
"The common thread that runs through their backgrounds is that they've all been part of working hard and making the situation they were in better," said Engles, who will join with his staff in an effort to build NJIT from the bottom up as they take over a program that has struggled for most of its first two seasons at the NCAA Division I level.
Mike Spisto comes to NJIT with seven years of college coaching experience--four as the head coach at the State University of New York at Delhi, a two-year program, and three as an assistant coach at the NCAA Division I level. His combined four-year record at SUNY Delhi was 86-31 and he served one year as an assistant coach at Rider and two at Albany (NY). Rider captured the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference regular season title in his season there and at Albany, he helped build back-to-back America East Conference champions. He was Director of Athletics at SUNY Delhi the last two years.
Spisto's teams at SUNY Delhi averaged more than 21 wins per season and his 2000-01 team finished 32-2, including a 28-game winning streak. His last team at Delhi was ranked first in the nation for six weeks in 2006. He was two-time Region 3 Coach of the Year in four seasons.
Spisto is a graduate of SUNY Delhi, where he was a two-time all-region honoree and he later graduated from SUNY College at Oneonta, where he was on the 1996 Eastern College Athletic Conference champions and was team captain in 1996-97 as a senior. He holds an associate's degree from Delhi, a bachelor's degree from Oneonta and a master's degree from the United State Sports Academy.
"Mike has been a winner as a head coach and he was part of building things as an assistant at the Division I level," said Engles. "He was with me (as an assistant) at Rider when we won the MAAC regular season title and then he went to Albany and helped recruit and coach the nucleus of the team that went from five wins when he got there to winning back-to-back America East titles and making the NCAAs."
Ira Bowman, who was born in Newark, NJ, is returning to his hometown for his first college coaching position after a playing career that saw him spend parts of three seasons playing in the National Basketball Association (two with the Philadelphia 76ers and one with the Atlanta Hawks). In college, he was 1995-96 Ivy League Player of the Year playing for the University of Pennsylvania.
He also played overseas and stateside in the Continental Basketball Association, where he was an all-star. One of the greatest players in Seton Hall Prep history, Bowman first attended Providence College, where he played two seasons before transferring to Penn and helping the Quakers to back-to-back undefeated Ivy League crowns. He was Executive Director of Assist by Knight Foundation for four years before joining the staff at NJIT.
"Ira has known great success as a player, but he's also known what it was like to keep working to achieve his goals," said Engles. "He was a top recruit coming out of Seton Hall Prep and he had a great career at Penn, where he is one of the top players in the Ivy League over the last 20 years.
"He was a year-round player as a pro, where he played overseas and in the CBA and he kept at it to win championships and then realize his goal of playing in the NBA. He has played for people like Larry Brown, Rick Barnes, Pat Knight, Fran Dunphy and during his high school career, he was coached by legendary Seton Hall Prep mentor Bob Farrell. The fact that he is from Newark and he succeeded as a player at an academic institution like Penn makes him a great fit for what we're trying to do at NJIT."
Kevin Tirone, who will be in his first full-time college coaching position, comes to NJIT after assisting the staff at Robert Morris in 2007-08, as the Colonials posted a school-record 26 wins (26-8), won the Northeast Conference regular season championship (16-2) and played in the 2008 postseason National Invitation Tournament.
As an undergraduate at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, Tirone worked under 2003-04 national Coach of Year Phil Martelli and was a student assistant coach for Martelli in 2004-05.
The Hawk players he worked with included Jameer Nelson, Delonte West and Dwayne Jones, who went on from Saint Joseph's to play in the NBA. Tirone also worked closely with Atlantic 10 Player of the Year Pat Carroll breaking down game action video.
After graduating from Saint Joe's, Tirone worked for The Hoop Group, the largest basketball instruction organization in the world. Among Tirone's myriad of duties was directing the time-honored Pocono Invitational Basketball Camp, a prestigious overnight camp that has been in operation since 1963. He also directed the individual camps of legendary high school coaches Bob Hurley (St. Anthony's of Jersey City, NJ) and Kevin Boyle (St. Patrick's of Elizabeth, NJ) and worked closely with Hoop Group President Rob Kennedy.
"Kevin is young, but he's already been part of teams that had built up to achieve great success at Saint Joe's and at Robert Morris. He started his coaching career at Robert Morris and they had their best season when he was out there," Engles said. "And his work at the Hoop Group has made him part of a vast network of coaches--some of the top coaches in the country."
