Vonn Read spent the night at his Albany apartment relaxing last March. Some of his belongings were packed up in boxes, others in storage, as he started to figure out which coaching openings to apply for.

He was itching to get back into the game. After a year working in the athletic administration at the University of Albany, he was prepared to move out and transition to a new job, wherever that might be.

In Jamesville, 144 miles west, Quentin Hillsman was restless. Lying awake in his bed that night, the Syracuse head coach couldn’t stop thinking about the void left on his staff following the retirement of his mentor and assistant coach Rick Moody.

Then, Hillsman got up and dialed the phone.

‘I thought he accidentally hit my number,’ Read said, laughing. ‘It was late at night. It was around 10:30 at night, and I was like, ‘Well, I hope that’s him calling me about a job’ because I knew that the Syracuse opportunity would be a good one.’

About three months later, in June, Hillsman officially announced Read would join the Syracuse program as an assistant coach. Hillsman first learned about Read when he bought his book, ‘The Basketball Encyclopedia of Plays,’ online as a high school coach and developed a relationship with him after running into him at the women’s basketball Final Four. The SU head coach knew Read, known as a brilliant mind in basketball circles, would fill in seamlessly for Moody.

The first-year assistant has worked at nearly every level in the last 14 years from the NBA to the WNBA to the United States Basketball League and women’s college basketball. He has made a name for himself at each of his nine previous stops for his unrivaled diligence in scouting and game preparation, breaking down film and taking notes for hours on end. And he brought that eye for detail to Syracuse, the next rung on his coaching ladder as he continues to work toward his ultimate goal of becoming a head coach.

‘He was the guy that I wanted in a position that if we hired someone to come in and strictly do game planning and game prep,’ Hillsman said, ‘I thought he was our best option.’

***

Cheryl Miller gave Read his first big break in the coaching profession. The former Phoenix Mercury head coach was impressed by Read’s extensive basketball knowledge when the two worked together at Turner Sports, and she hired him to the Mercury in 2000.

Miller was an analyst and Read was a senior archivist. They developed a relationship talking basketball and scribbling plays with then-analyst Doc Rivers during production meetings.

‘I got a call from Cheryl and she said, ‘I’m looking for a coach,” Read said. ‘And I said, ‘I’ll call you back, I’ll write down some names and I’ll tell you who’s really good out there.’

‘And she said, ‘No, you dingbat, I’m talking about you.”

Read took a break from his internship with the Orlando Magic and joined Miller’s staff in Phoenix.

Fellow Phoenix assistant Tom Lewis had his reservations about Read, who had never worked in the WNBA. That doubt disappeared the first day he met him when the staff sat down at the team offices.

The conversation turned to other teams around the league and Read took over, naming every coach, player, draft pick and previous year’s record for every team. An amazed Lewis said Read was like a ‘WNBA encyclopedia.’

‘You don’t need to have a laptop in front of you,’ Lewis said. ‘You just need Vonn on everything. Any questions Cheryl and I had on anything, we just asked Vonn.’

Read began building that knowledge and passion for the game when he was 13.

He began taping games and editing them into highlights of well-executed offensive and defensive sets. Read then wrote down the plays in books, serving as the foundation for the two-volume series ‘The Basketball Encyclopedia of Plays,’ which he said features more than 8,000 plays.

The tapes now sit on DVD in his collection of more than 1,000 college basketball games in his spare bedroom, a library he said represents his education in the game.

‘I would probably challenge anybody if they’ve watched more games than I have,’ Read said. ‘I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.’

***

For Read, every opportunity along his journey came with a hint of surprise as he questioned whether he was worthy for the job. In April 2005, the call came from former Kentucky women’s basketball head coach Mickie DeMoss.

DeMoss was one of the most respected assistant coaches in the nation as a member of Pat Summitt’s staff at Tennessee and asked Read to come to Lexington, Ky., for an interview.

‘For her to want some help from me from a basketball standpoint, I was humbled,’ Read said. ‘She won six national championships. I don’t know there’s a lot I can teach her.’

DeMoss knew Read was perfect as a scouting and X’s and O’s guru. Rivers and Miller both gave him glowing recommendations. In simply calling DeMoss back before a big Boston Celtics playoff game, Rivers said it all.

It was Read’s first job in Division-I college basketball, and he was determined to make the most of it. That was clear to DeMoss when Read first arrived at Kentucky.

Read had to take the NCAA recruiting certification test in the spring. Read planned to take the NCAA manual home to prepare, but DeMoss told him to skim over some practice tests and it would be a breeze. Still, he insisted on reading the manual — something DeMoss called ‘torture.’

Soon after, DeMoss learned Read scored a 100 on the test.

She quickly learned that excessive preparation seeped into everything he did, filling folders with thousands of plays Kentucky’s opponents ran after watching countless tapes.

‘Whether it was taking an NCAA test, whether it was scouting an opponent,’ DeMoss said. ‘He just didn’t leave a stone unturned.’

***

After working at Kentucky under DeMoss, Read was inspired to be prepared if a head coaching opportunity ever came knocking. He organized two binders outlining how he would run his own college program.

‘Sometimes people get opportunities and they’re not prepared, and I just want to be as prepared as possible,’ Read said, ‘once I get the opportunity to try to give our kids the ability to be successful.’

One binder dedicated to how Read would run the program — from recruiting to academics — is about 200 pages long. The other, focused strictly on basketball strategy, is ‘a lot bigger.’

And he began filling notebooks under DeMoss just as he did as an NBA scout. With that background and his passion for the game, Lewis said he is surprised Read isn’t already a head coach.

Dee Brown leaned heavily on Read when Brown was the head coach of the Orlando Miracle and San Antonio Silver Stars and Read was an assistant. He said Read’s organizational skills and knowledge of the game make him an ideal candidate to lead a team.

‘He’s head coach material,’ said Brown, who is now an assistant coach with the Detroit Pistons. ‘He’s so entrenched in developing players and offensive stuff, but he knows how to coach a game and knows how to run a system and run a program.’

***

Sixty days before Syracuse’s season started, Read began the grind.

The assistant coach watched 15 to 20 tapes of all 29 of Syracuse’s opponents on the schedule this season. He sat in his office 12 hours a day to break down six games at a time and repeated the process until he completed a scouting packet on every team just before the Orange began play in November.

Read handles all the advanced scouting for SU — a responsibility normally split among three assistants.

‘It really helps me get a leg up, and I’m also able to get their calls and really take my time and learn these teams,’ Read said. ‘And so now it’s just a refresher when I’m doing it.’

His refresher during the year consists of 12 more tapes from this season for each opponent. With the foundation already laid during the fall, he can focus in on the specific calls and prepare a game plan to exploit their tendencies.

‘I’ve never had any regret just as far as not preparing the team in the right way,’ Read said. ‘And that’s kind of why I’ll watch as many games as I watch.’

Two hours after Read detailed his basketball journey from his office overlooking the Carmelo K. Anthony Basketball Center court, Hillsman described Read as a relentless worker whose value to the program has been immeasurable.

As he prepared for practice, the head coach glanced up at Read’s office, knowing his assistant was probably breaking down more film for the team’s matchup with Cincinnati that Saturday.

And as with everything he’s done throughout his career, Hillsman knew Read would be thoroughly prepared to make his job a little easier when the Orange took the court the next day.

‘You really can’t say it’s one certain game because he’s so important for every game,’ Hillsman said. ‘He’s an important part of what we do, and everything that he brings to the table has been a plus.’

rjgery@syr.edu

Published on February 6, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Ryne: rjgery@syr.edu