CINCINNATI — Chris LePore was ready to go wherever Wes Miller was headed. No questions asked.
“It was a Wednesday evening,” LePore said, remembering the night in April 2021 when Miller officially was announced as the head coach of Cincinnati’s men’s basketball program. “The first conversation we had about it — and it might have been five minutes, because we wanted to tell our guys (at UNC Greensboro) before it leaked out — but Coach Miller was like, ‘Are you coming with me?’ And I was like, ‘My bags are packed. Let’s roll.’”
Advertisement
LePore recounts the moment at a table inside the Skyline Chili on Ludlow Avenue, just north of UC’s campus. Less than 14 months after he arrived in Cincinnati as the first member of Miller’s coaching staff, the Queen City delicacy already has become a familiar comfort food for LePore, right down to the hot sauce splashed across his oyster crackers. It’s a small but telling signal of how quickly he has embraced his new program and city. LePore admits he didn’t even know what exactly his role would be with the Bearcats when he blindly accepted the job offer, but he wasn’t concerned.
He spent the previous seven seasons on Miller’s staff at UNCG, first as a graduate assistant before climbing to a bench assistant.
“He did such a great job for me as a graduate assistant, he kind of set the standard for what we want a GA to be,” Miller said. “We’ve always had a really good relationship, and I’ve always told him that I didn’t know what the future would hold, but he would always have a place on my staff.”
LePore figured he would have to take a step down and cut his teeth in a support role when making the leap from the Southern Conference to UC, but Miller had been a hot up-and-coming name on the coaching market for a few seasons by that point, and LePore long had decided he was hitching his wagon to wherever Miller’s ascendant star ended up.
“I have a head coach who is a great coach and a great person, which is a rare combination in college athletics,” LePore said. “I knew from the moment I met him that he and I had similar values, similar passion and energy for people. We didn’t have to talk about roles (at Cincinnati). I just knew I trusted him and he was going to take care of me.”
Miller did, creating a position that catered to LePore’s strengths of recruiting, player care and community outreach. It didn’t exactly fit a tidy description, but Miller, a voracious reader, was in the middle of former President Barack Obama’s book on leadership, which kept referencing his chief of staff and right-hand man in the White House.
Advertisement
“Coach was like, ‘The President has a chief of staff, Coach (Luke) Fickell hired a chief of staff — how’s that sound?’” LePore said.
Among the many defined responsibilities is coordinating much of the Bearcats’ on-campus recruiting. LePore can’t go on the road recruiting, but he spearheads any official and unofficial visits, working with Miller and the lead recruiting assistant to put together a schedule that appeals to each individual prospect. What’s important to the player and his family? What can the program highlight as far as academics, player care and student life? It goes beyond the confines of campus, too. LePore and his family — his wife, Jennifer, and three kids Julius (4), Cruz (2) and Peyton (1) — are big fans of the Cincinnati Zoo. So when recent transfer addition Landers Nolley II took a visit with the Bearcats earlier this offseason and brought his young daughter with him, LePore added a trip to the zoo to the agenda for a little glimpse of the fit Cincinnati could offer Nolley off the court.
Chris LePore, right, talks with Jeremiah Davenport before a Cincinnati game this past season. (Courtesy of Cincinnati Bearcats Athletics)“If (assistant coach Chad) Dollar is the lead on a recruit, he and I are going to sit down for a couple hours and plan out what a visit is going to look like for that player,” LePore said. “What’s important to this kid? Do they have a unique academic interest? Do they like baseball, are the Reds in town? We’re trying to think of anything that could give us an edge over what they saw on any other visit they’ve done.”
There’s plenty else to wrangle if and when recruits do pick the Bearcats, whether it’s helping register them for classes, distributing keys to apartments or making sure they can access the basketball facilities. Player care is one of Miller’s top priorities. He wants everyone on the roster to feel that they can bring any issue to the staff, big or small, basketball or otherwise, and LePore is often the go-to contact for much of it.
“You definitely get a couple 11:50 p.m. texts from players asking how they log into some academic site with an assignment that is due in 10 minutes. But we’re glad that they feel comfortable bringing that stuff to us,” LePore said. “We don’t want them going for a week without WiFi just because they don’t feel like they can ask about that kind of stuff.”
Advertisement
LePore is heavily involved in the team’s branding and messaging on social media, working with the athletic department’s creative staff to help build out the public persona of the program. He has taken the reins on the name, image and likeness frontier, ensuring players properly log their NIL responsibilities and contracts, and is the de facto contact for the team’s community outreach or involvement with local businesses and organizations. He and director of player development (and former Bearcats standout) DerMarr Johnson also tag-team former player outreach, another prominent initiative for Miller.
All of this is on top of any scouting and day-to-day basketball responsibilities during the season when everyone else’s focus is predominantly on the court.
“Who in January is thinking about community engagement? The coaching staff is focused on winning the next game, but someone has to reply to that email from an elementary school asking if our players can come read to their class,” LePore said. “Who is making sure we’re keeping our weekly academic updates to see how our guys are doing in their classes? Those are things I have to keep a close eye on during the season because it’s so easy to just focus on the next game.”
Things don’t slow down much in the offseason, either. One of LePore’s main responsibilities as a GA at Greensboro was organizing and running Miller’s summer basketball camp for grade schoolers and high schoolers, a task he handled so well that Miller kept him in charge even as LePore was elevated to a full-time role. He’s reprising it at Cincinnati, too, with Miller’s inaugural on-campus camp kicking off next week. It’s a bit of a throwback for longtime Bearcats fans, many of whom remember when Bob Huggins and Mick Cronin hosted camps at the Shoemaker Center.
Cronin later moved his camps to the Friars Club in nearby St. Bernard, so among that, the program’s recent coaching changes and the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been nearly a decade since a UC men’s basketball coach hosted an on-campus summer camp. It was important to Miller to bring it back to Fifth Third Arena and recapture some of the energy it had under Huggins and Cronin as a marquee annual event for Bearcats fans.
“For us, this is the biggest community engagement opportunity we have all year. It’s important for kids to be in Fifth Third Arena and on campus, get the college experience, see how our players work,” LePore said. “There are a million Bearcats fans, but this is a chance for our fan base to connect with our players and Coach Miller in a different way. And hopefully, there are some new fans that come from it.”
The pandemic and frenetic nature of last offseason mean it has been a few summers since LePore has run a camp too — “I’m rusty,” he said. “Do I still have the mojo?” — but the camp already has more than 100 kids registered and is still expected to add a few more late additions and day-one walk-ups. If that momentum continues next summer, the hope is to add a second week.
Advertisement
All of it makes for a lot of juggling, whether the tasks are spelled out in the job description or they are part of the laundry list of random and unexpected needs that emerge on a daily basis in the college basketball offices, many of which land on LePore’s desk.
“If you look at our staff responsibility charts, his chart is 30 lines deeper than anyone else on staff,” Miller said. “And he impacts the program in so many areas that might not be recognized. His role is hard to describe but really diverse and really important.”
Some responsibilities, however, he invites on himself, like the time he caught wind that country music star Garth Brooks might be swinging by the Bearcats’ practice gym to get some shots up while he was in town for a pair of concerts last month.
“I’ll say this — there are definitely a lot of things in this job that fall to me, but I inserted myself into that picture,” LePore said. “I called Coach Miller and nominated myself — I am rebounding for Garth Brooks. That wasn’t even on my bucket list. It was beyond my bucket list. And he can really shoot it.”
Garth can hoop. 🎸🏀 pic.twitter.com/NqNRkkF3Jz
— Chris LePore 🆑 (@CL_Cincy) May 16, 2022
Personality plays a role. The chief of staff is also Miller’s minister of culture, in many respects. LePore is consistently the one reminding players on the bench to stand and applaud their teammates when they exit the game and the one responding to each tweet from the team’s official Twitter account with a Bearcats GIF.
His passion for the job and the program extends to his newly adopted city. LePore has embraced Cincinnati wholeheartedly, unabashed about his affinity for the zoo or Graeter’s ice cream and giddily hopping on the Bengals’ bandwagon before it blazed a path to the Super Bowl. He even has been deemed a Skyline “influencer” by the restaurant’s marketing team due to his consistent and well-documented dining habits.
That level of civic pride can run the risk of seeming calculated for someone in LePore’s position, but all it takes is sitting down over a few coneys to recognize how genuine it is. And to hear him tell it, LePore is merely reciprocating the embrace he and his family experienced after arriving in the Queen City. Cincinnati always has had a rather provincial reputation, but repping the C-Paw helped expedite that process for LePore. He was blown away by the interest and support he felt for the Bearcats, whether it was from someone connected to the program wanting to welcome Miller to town or when LePore would rock his UC gear at a local restaurant and the neighborhood pool.
Advertisement
“The energy of people from Cincinnati just captivated me right off the bat,” LePore said. “There are all these people who went to UC and their family went to UC and there is pride built up over years and generations. And it’s the same for the Bengals and Reds and Skyline Chili and Fiona the Hippo. The pride people have in this city is infectious, and it got me quick.”
Part of LePore’s role with the Bearcats requires educating himself on the university and history of the basketball program as part of the team’s recruiting process. The same goes for the city at large, which when showcased properly can be a major selling point for prospects and their families. It requires a level of first-hand knowledge more personal and personable than a visitor’s brochure or Wikipedia page, but it’s natural for LePore.
“Chris is a guy who when he’s into something, he’s two feet into it. He’ll really plant his feet and embrace the environment around him,” Miller said. “I’m not surprised he’s done that here, because that’s his personality and his nature, but he’s still done a phenomenal job with it.”
As Miller prepares for his second season at the helm for the Bearcats, aiming to establish his style and culture and improve on Year One, LePore is working to help plant that flag in ways big and small, seen and unseen, hoping it ultimately yields results on and off the court.
“You feel the support everywhere here, whether it’s 7 p.m. on game day walking through the tunnel at Fifth Third, or I’m at the pool with my family wearing a Bearcats polo,” LePore said. “We love it here, we see ourselves being here for a long time, and I just hope we can work hard enough to hang banners and cut down nets for the fans and people of this community who have made it so special for us.”
(Top photo: Courtesy of Cincinnati Bearcats Athletics)
ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57kmxsanFoZXxzfJFrZmluX2WEcK%2FIp5qipp6Wwap5wZqqpJ2kl66tuIycn6uho2K5przOq5xo