Third-year UMBC men’s basketball coach Jim Ferry seeks stability both on and off the court. His consistently fast and aggressive playing style has led the Retrievers to back-to-back 18-14 seasons, and his mission starts with the recruiting process.
Ferry has brought in 11 new players this season, but his strategy on the players to target shifted heading into this season. Whereas the eight players he brought on last fall were largely graduate transfers, Ferry and his staff honed in on younger players who have a better chance of sticking around.
“Whether we’re bringing in one guy, bringing in 10 guys or 15 guys, it’s always about the character, the person,” Ferry said on Glenn Clark Radio Nov. 2. “We do a really good job of bringing in great people that fit our university and fit our program, and when you do it that way I think it’s a little bit easier to bring in 10 guys.”
Such a strategy is nothing new in college basketball, but the accomplished mid-major head coach looks to embrace the challenge in building a better unit.
This time, Ferry only added one grad transfer to go along with a wave of youth, providing what he sees as an opportunity to play with enhanced lineup versatility and make more noise than ever in the America East Conference.
“We have a great group of guys,” Ferry said. “We are really competitive, we’re really tough, we’re really aggressive, and the fact that we had this summer has really helped us a lot. We were able to blend these guys together in the summer before school started. Things are going pretty well right now.”
The Retrievers opened their season on Nov. 6 at Louisville but were forced to settle for one of the first agonizing losses of the college season with a 94-93 defeat. However, that first outing provided Ferry with evidence of a high-powered offense. UMBC shot 50.7 percent from the field and nailed 11 of 21 threes, but faltered by sending the Cardinals to the free-throw line 39 times.
Dion Brown, a sophomore holdover from last year’s Retrievers squad, led all scorers with 28 points on 11 of 20 shooting. Ferry predicts a serious uptick in the guard’s production after he averaged 7.7 points per game a year ago.
“He did not do anything until late November last year because he was returning from an ACL injury,” Ferry said. “… When he was cleared to go we just kind of threw him in the fire, played him out of position all year. Now we’re playing him in his natural position.”
Brown is back to playing on the ball, and he rewarded the coach’s trust in him with three assists against Louisville. He was just one of the four guards in the starting lineup for Ferry, who praised newcomers Bryce Johnson (Chicago State), Marcus Banks Jr. (Odessa College) and Khydarius Smith (USC Upstate) for their malleability within the Retrievers’ offense and overall maturity. They combined for 36 points against Louisville.
“I think those three guys, plus Max Lorca-Lloyd, are really going to give us game experience,” Ferry said. “We’re trying to get shared experiences right now as a team, and every day is a shared experience for us, but those guys have actually played in high-level games and competition.”
Lorca-Lloyd averaged 1.2 blocks per game at Penn last year. Ferry credited him as his first real rim protector since moving to Baltimore.
Marlon Short joins the big man as another accomplished transfer. He averaged 15.3 points and 5.2 rebounds at Division II Stanislaus State last year, earning second-team All-California Collegiate Athletic Association honors.
Ferry hopes his fleet of upperclassmen can lead the way for six freshmen, including Ace Valentine (Mount Saint Joseph) and Franck Emmou. They will get chances to play just like everyone else, the coach promised, as Ferry envisions a deep rotation to live out his run-and-gun style.
“We’re trying to play real positionless basketball this year and play really, really fast,” he said. “For these young guys, it’s a little bit of an adjustment. … I think it’s going to be a team this year that we’re going to play at least nine guys, maybe 10 guys at a time, just because we’re going to be playing so fast and so aggressive.”
Ferry is more ready for the big games than anyone. It’s his third time as a full-time head coach at the Division I level, and he’s not without success. He made the NCAA Tournament in 2011 and 2012 with LIU before landing with UMBC in 2021.
He still has eyes on returning to March Madness, where the Retrievers haven’t danced since their fabled 16-over-1 first-round upset against Virginia in 2018. To Ferry, making their way back starts with dominating the America East.
“I want to help this program get back, more so for the kids because it’s such a special opportunity,” he said. “… When you look at our schedule compared to some others in our league, ours is really challenging, but I’m doing that to prepare our guys. It might not be 23-win seasons, but it’s going to be seasons where we’re ready to compete in our conference.”
For more from Ferry, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Gail Burton/UMBC Athletics