What do two huge coaching changes mean for GMC boys’ hoops in 2024-25?

The coaching carousel may just be getting started in the Greater Middlesex Conference.

Two Mondays ago, St. Joseph-Metuchen announced Jan Cocozziello would not be back for the Falcons after five seasons as head coach. And this Thursday, the St. Thomas Aquinas job opened up when the Piscataway Board of Education approved Bob Turco as the Chiefs’ new boys’ basketball coach.

Cocozziello coached many talented players in his short tenure in Metuchen, including Josh Ingram, Jeremy Clayville, Ethan Simmon, and Elijah Barlow, but the Falcons also failed to make the GMC Tournament final in the four seasons the event was held (there was no full tournament in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic).

Ironically, some of that was due to the dominance of Colonia and St. Thomas Aquinas in that time period, fellow GMC Red Division opponents the last two seasons. And those are two interesting schools to look at in the context of coaching changes, and where the next dominoes may fall.

In the combined Middlesex County Tournament (1965-1985) and the GMC (1986 to the present), Aquinas had been to only one county final, in 1993. Turco elevated the program, only missing the GMCT final in his first year – they also made the GMC’s top pod final in the COVID-shortened 2021 season – but now he’s left for the black-and-gold pastures of Piscataway, where he won’t have to spend so much time assembling a team. That was something he had to do almost entirely from scratch this past season, as graduation and transfers left the Trojans with one sparsely-used returning player from 2022-23.

St. Thomas Athletic Director Jerry Smith was the Athletic Director at St. Joseph during its most successful streak ever, with Dave Turco at the helm. One of Turco’s assistants was Jose Rodriguez, who was coached by both Dave and Bob at Carteret, and is the current head coach at Colonia.

Despite all those connections, it would be hard to imagine him leaving the Patriots. He has brought Colonia back to prominence, making the GMC Tournament final each of the last three seasons, even beating St. Thomas in the Towns/Williams pod in 2021. They’ve also won three straight North 2, Group 3 titles. And then there’s the not-so-small matter of the enormous talent of Aiden Derkack, who’s only going to be a junior next season, but is arguably the top returning player in the conference. So, consider J-Rod firmly entrenched in Colonia.

That leaves St. Joe’s and St. Thomas in interesting situations. St. Joe’s wants a new coach, St. Thomas needs one. But it’s a transitional time for high school basketball, with much attention on non-publics, charters, choice, tuition and open enrollment schools, and how they fit in among the publics. The NJSIAA is examining all of that as we speak.

Dave Boff gained attention for his College Achieve Asbury Park charter school dominating Central Jersey Group 1 and winning a state title with kids from all over New Jersey, most notably point guard Deuce Jones, who came down from – you guessed it – Aquinas. Jebron Harris also transferred down from STA.

Last year also was the first season student-athletes could get one free transfer from one school to another without a residency requirement and a 30-day sit-out penalty.

That has shifted the sands under the foundation of high school basketball in New Jersey, and finding the right coach will require some detailed work on the part of school administrators, who may need to also bring along their crystal ball, with the future very much in the air. Will charters be lumped in with non-publics? Will they get their own? Will the flood of transfers continue once a vast number of student-athletes use up their one free transfer? Will they pilfer players from non-publics like many have been doing from public schools over the years?

Turco is out of that game, now. He started at Carteret, then followed his brother Dave to South Brunswick before venturing on his own to Monroe, then to Notre Dame of Lawrenceville and eventually St. Thomas Aquinas. Now he’s back in the public realm at Piscataway, coaching up the kids he has, whoever come his way.

Will a public school coach from the GMC take the leap? Aquinas has seemingly made athletics a higher priority in recent years. (See what Tarig Holman has done with football: the Trojans have the longest active in-conference winning streak of any Big Central Conference team, having won 25 straight games dating back to their last game of 2020, when the late Brian Meeney was head coach.) Does St. Joe’s look somewhere to its past, with connections to the Turco/Karl Towns era?

A young coach with a lot of energy to go after players – recruiting before ninth grade is now allowed by the NJSIAA – could do a lot in North Edison. Then again, they could do a lot at St. Joseph as well, with a slew of history on their side, their best advertisement being a guy like Karl-Anthony Towns of the NBA’s Timberwolves.