By Dan Weber NKyTribune sports reporter
It would be easy to call Thomas More’s naming of Brian Neal Thursday a homecoming for the former Saints’ assistant and head coach.
But that wouldn’t exactly be correct. Brian never really left, not even this past year when he coached Orlando’s Southeastern University Fire to Sun Conference regular season and tournament championships and a berth in the NAIA national tournament.
Winning is what Brian does. And has done for 30 years as a college coach at every level there is – the NCAA’s Division I, Division II and Division III and the NAIA.
But leaving home for the Latonia native, Holmes High and NKU graduate, well that is not what he’s been doing. He commuted to Orlando while the Neal family, wife Amy and their four children – Allison, Madison, Emma, and Maxwell — remained here in Northern Kentucky.
“My wife works for Delta,” Neal said, acknowledging her help. And his mom lives in Fort Mitchell and can come to his games now. His uncle was the late Mike Murphy, Holmes High and softball great, star quarterback at the University of Cincinnati, and a Hall of Fame football coach at Highlands, where he won three state titles, and Newport.
But when Neal’s “best friend” Jeff Hans took the NKU job last week, there would be no more commuting for Neal. Not so much a coming home, just staying here.
“Thomas More is a special place,” Neal said. “My daughters practically grew up in this gym,” in the Connor Convocation Center where Neal’s teams compiled a 171-31 record in seven seasons, good for an .846 winning percentage, the sixth-best record of NCAA Div. III coaches. There were six 20-win seasons, six coach-of-the-year awards.
Then his six seasons in the Big East saw the Xavier women improve their win total by 10 in Year 2. He’s also coached at Butler and Eastern Illinois. But a year ago he came back to join Hans at TMU for a 31-4 season and a national NAIA runner-up finish.
“That year was very important,” Neal says, “I got to see the changes . . . “in the university, the campus and the basketball program. When Southeastern gave him “a chance to be a head coach again,” he took it. And then in a year, Thomas More called.
And here he was Thursday morning after the tweet went out, fielding all sorts of congratulatory messages. “Thomas More women’s basketball is respected across the country,” Neal says, “everyone respects the power of this program.”
With TMU heading into Year 2 of the transition to NCAA Div. II basketball, it’s the perfect time for this move, that’s how TMU Pres. Joseph Chillo saw it in “welcoming back one of our own” who “brings an impressive coaching career to the Saints women’s basketball program. His high level of success and commitment to the student-athlete experience made him the obvious choice as we continue the transformation of our athletic program as provisional members of the NCAA DII and the Great Midwest Athletic Conference.”
As much success as TMU had under Hans’ 13 seasons, with three national championships, there will be change despite the fact that “we’re very similar in some ways,” Neal says. “We both like to shoot threes and the pace of the game will be the same.”
The differences? “I probably like to get the ball inside more,” Neal says, and there will be some differences on defense.
“But I think the culture of the program stays the same,” he says. And that sign that’s been in the Thomas More locker room for 20 years says it all: “For those who come before us and those who follow.”
Neal is both of those. He came before Hans and now he follows him. And he got his latest piece of advice from Hans for this day and this press conference after Hans did the same last week at NKU.
“Don’t worry about the press conference,” Hans told him, “it’s like a preseason poll. Just a little buzz.”
But that’s it. It’s the hard work that happens after that that matters.
With two scholarships to fill, it’s time to do just that, Neal says. His recruiting will be focused on the local, the way Hans did, on prospects “from less than an hour-and-a-half away. If you can’t recruit Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana . . .” well then maybe this isn’t your game.
But it is Brian Neal’s, now very much at home — again — in Crestview Hills.
Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.