Last season, Donny Lind led the Mount St. Mary’s men’s basketball team all the way to the MAAC title while teaching his players lessons on and off the court.
The 2024-25 season marked Lind’s first season as the head coach at the Mount. He was proud of how they developed a culture of resilience and mental toughness throughout their time together.
“We were super successful in bringing a group together that had a mindset of togetherness and sacrifice,” Lind said on Glenn Clark Radio Oct. 23, “so that we could have success when it matters the most.”
Lind emphasized that even though some players from last year’s team have moved on from the Mount, all the lessons they learned together through wins and losses would be with everyone for the rest of their lives.
Lind believes that his role as a coach is to give some guidance and direction to his players. And with the team bringing home a conference title, the Mount has a little more brand recognition and respect that gets players with a competitive drive on their radar.
“We’re still trying to help these guys at a formative time of their life, and I feel like we were able to do that last year,” Lind said. “Then, we can head into the spring and we have a little bit more name recognition, we have a little bit more visibility, we have the ability to connect with certain recruits that maybe we wouldn’t be able to connect with otherwise.”
Lind was asked what Xavier Lipscomb, one of the integral leaders of the Mount, provides to the team that statistics don’t show. Lind said that since there are so many new players coming into the roster this year, having a player who has been at the Mount since the 2022-23 season keeps a consistent rock in place for the nine newcomers to learn from.
The 6-foot-2, 195-pound guard averaged 6.8 points, 4.2 rebounds and 4.3 assists per game for the Mount in 2024-25. He dished out 156 total assists, easily a career high.
“[Lipscomb] is a natural-born leader and guys to listen to him. They’re willing to follow him because he sets such a great example with his work ethic and his talk and communication on the court,” Lipscomb said. “Bringing back the leader on a team, whether he’s your leading scorer or not, really helps because if you bring in nine new guys, having your leader back allows there to be a faster smoother transition for those new guys.”
A point that Lind harped on was that stats don’t tell the whole story of players. He noted that transfer forward Trey Deveaux, in particular, is a standout in terms of his mind for the game. Lind and his staff at the Mount could see the impact Deveaux had on the floor beyond his 9.0 points and 4.7 rebounds per game at Western Illinois last season.
“Trey’s got great perspective. He knows that we’re not perfect. There’s no perfect school. There’s no perfect place,” Lind said. “But we have the things that he really values. He’s seen it all — JUCO, Division II, low-major, mid-major, seen a lot of different parts of college basketball. His perspective helps him be a great piece in our program … and he can really play.”
The 2025-26 season is a bit of a question mark for Lind and the Mount, with so many new players in town. He had to come to terms with the fact that no players are truly replaceable, and that these are new players with different skill sets, strengths and weaknesses. But Lind and his players are coming in with confidence after winning the MAAC a season ago. If they’ve done it before, they can do it again.
“There’s just a little more validation and belief in what we’re doing and how we’re doing it, and that trickles down from me and our staff to the players and then when we recruit,” Lind said. “All these guys want to shine on the biggest stage, whether that’s against a high-major team, whether that’s in the NCAA Tournament. … Winning and being a part of good programs help guys develop into the pros that they want to be.”
For more from Lind, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Mount Athletics