Beloved coaching figure Bill Courtney remembered as ‘an incredible connector’

Jimmy Polisi lived a few houses away from Bill Courtney, while the two were on the men’s basketball staff at the University of Miami. Some nights, Courtney, then an assistant coach, would call the graduate assistant to hang out.

“Throughout time, we kind of got close,” said Polisi, who spent two years at Miami. “He was just a great guy, to be like a fly on the wall to see how he did everything.”

Temple hired Courtney last summer as an assistant coach. He reunited with Adam Fisher, who he coached with at Miami, and Polisi, the Owls’ director of player operations. The Temple head coach viewed Courtney as a mentor and knew he would be a valuable member for his team.

On Jan. 13, Courtney suddenly died at age 55. He was a beloved figure, who spent 30 years in the college basketball coaching scene and “made people feel special.” From each of his coaching stints — which included 10 schools — he formed genuine relationships with players and staff members. Those relationships went beyond the court as many looked up to him.

» READ MORE: Temple assistant men’s basketball coach Bill Courtney dies

“He did such an amazing job of making everybody feel special, but it was genuine,” Fisher said. “He wanted to know that when he recruited somebody, he would know the aunt, the uncle, the mom, dad. He found every connection and then knew something about each one of them to connect things. He’s just an incredible connector of people. He had this way about him. That’s why so many people are going through such pain right now, because a lot of people consider him a close friend, because he was, that’s the way he made you feel and it was genuine.”

Added Polisi: “He brought such a positive light to both Miami and here that it was so needed. The way he made a difference in this program in a short amount of time is huge. In this day and age of college basketball, people come in and out, but you could really tell how much of a difference he was making this program in just a short amount of time.”

Temple’s players voted to play its game against Memphis the next day. The Owls then got shirts to honor Courtney ahead of their game against Florida Atlantic on Jan. 18.

The team has since worn a patch on its jerseys and warmup shirts with Courtney’s initials. They still announce Courtney as an assistant coach to honor his legacy during each game. With one more game remaining in the regular season, Temple will continue to show the impact he had in the program and college basketball.

“We wanted to make sure we honor him and his legacy,” Fisher said. “We wear the patch here at Temple. It also is for a lot of people. It’s for his family, it’s for all his colleagues that he spent a lot of time with a lot of coaches. We played [head coach] Rob Lanier at Rice. They were very close, so when we got to Rice, I went to his office and gave him one of the shirts because I knew how important their relationship was. It’s just a reminder that he’s with us. It’s a reminder to play the right way and that he’s had a huge impact, even in a short time on this program.”

Most people who met Courtney had a shared a similar phrase about him — he never had a bad day.

That was what former American assistant coach Bruce Kelley told Jim Larrañaga, who was the head coach at Bowling Green at the time and was searching for a new assistant coach in 1996. He reached out to Courtney, and it wasn’t long till he flew out to the midwest to meet with Larrañaga.

Courtney stayed in his future boss’s house.

“I got a feel for Bill, how he interacted with my sons, how he played the game,” Larrañaga said. “I said, ‘We’re going to go back to the house and my wife’s fixing [lunch], there’s going to be a few players over there.’ … I just knew from the way he behaved the whole day. How honest he was and how comfortable he was around people, around me.”

Courtney got the job. His relationship with Larrañaga spanned over five decades. Larrañaga loved going to the movies. When his wife didn’t want to go see a particular film, she said to “ask Bill,” so Larrañaga did. That became a tradition for them as they went from Bowling Green to George Mason, where Larrañaga became the head coach in 1997.

Courtney organized pickup basketball games and often invited his boss. Courtney would put Larrañaga on the better team to give him a quality workout. One day, the team Larrañaga played on lost, which prompted him to wonder if Courtney was upset with him.

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The next day at work, Larrañaga asked Courtney if it was true — getting laughter at the thought of that being a possibility.

“I went into the office the next day. I said, ‘BC, are you mad at me for something?’” Larrañaga said. “He said, ‘No, why would you even suggest that.’ I said, ‘You put me on a terrible team last night. We lost the first game.’ He started laughing ‘You got to be kidding me.’ That’s just our relationship, the way we were.”

Courtney landed his first head coaching position at Cornell in 2011, a team fresh off a Sweet 16 appearance.

During games he cracked jokes to Jeremy Hartigan, Cornell’s senior associate athletic director. Courtney made an effort to get everyone on staff a gift for Christmas during his first season with the Big Red, and he didn’t expect anything in return.

“We were all kind of embarrassed that Bill had gotten us something and that we didn’t get him anything,” Hartigan said. “I just remember he said, ‘I don’t care if you ever get me anything. I just wanted to show how much I appreciate you guys.’”

During his time in upstate New York, he met David Metzendorf, who was then at Ithaca College. Injuries spoiled Metzendorf’s playing career, but Courtney brought him on as a manager. When Metzendorf graduated in 2013, a role on staff opened for him.

He became Courtney’s right hand man.

“The amount of people in my life who reached out about him afterward, not just because they knew how close we were, but because he had touched them was unbelievable, in terms of, my friends from back home who would come visit me in Ithaca, he would make them feel like part of the crew,” Metzendorf said. “My college buddies who he got to know well because they were at Ithaca College and were right there, they’d come around and he made them feel part of the crew and loved and welcomed.”

Eventually both went their separate ways as Metzendorf climbed up the coaching ranks. Cornell fired Courtney in 2016. He went to DePaul before reuniting with a familiar face in 2019; Larrañaga, who was the head coach at Miami.

There, he met Fisher, who had gone from director of player operations in 2013 to assistant coach by the time Courtney joined the staff. They immediately clicked.

Fisher and Courtney became close friends. They often got lunch together, and Fisher went to Courtney for advice. When his wife, Rebecca, gave birth to their daughter, Fisher asked Courtney how to balance being a father and coach. Courtney was one of the people who met Fisher’s daughter during Thanksgiving, a month after she was born.

When Courtney joined the staff this summer all the coaches were at the practice facility. As Fisher and Rebecca watched from the window, their daughter, Alivia, organized all the coaches to play duck-duck-goose.

» READ MORE: Adam Fisher is fulfilling a dream as Temple’s coach. He hopes to be ‘here for a long time.’

“I’m looking through the window thinking, ‘Are they playing duck duck goose?’” Fisher said. “BC came in, he’s exhausted. She chased him down the hallway ‘Get back here, BC.’ He goes, ‘I got to go play.’”

Courtney was at Temple for seven months, but made his presence felt on the team, and it meant a lot for Fisher to work with his friend again.

“Just being able to work alongside him was an honor,” Fisher said. “I loved every second of it.”