Interim NIU coach Lamar Chapman on taking over for fired Montgomery: ‘A good friend lost his job’

In an unfamiliar position Tuesday night, Lamar Chapman will be seeing a familiar face.

Chapman was named the interim head coach for the NIU men’s basketball team on Sunday after the school fired 10-year head coach Mark Montgomery. It’s his first head coaching job at the collegiate level as the Huskies head to Ohio on Tuesday.

Across the sideline from him will be Jeff Boals, for whom Chapman worked under in his final year as an assistant Stony Brook in 2016-17.

“Good guy, man. Great guy,” Chapman said. “I enjoyed my year working for him at Stony Brook. I don’t have the scout, coach (Anthony) Beane has the scout, but I told him Boals probably put in five, six new plays today. We’d never get all his plays. He’s probably adding some new ones as we speak.”

After he got the job Sunday morning, Chapman said he and Boals talked that evening for about 10 minutes, including trading injury reports on Tyler Cochran, who tweaked his hamstring Saturday against Bowling Green and Jason Preston, one of the top scorers in the MAC.

“He asked about Cochran, I asked about Preston,” Chapman said. “So we both said at the same time, he’s out, he’s out. ... He said he felt bad for Monty and then wished me all the luck except for Tuesday.”

Chapman said he got the call Saturday night after the team’s 68-42 loss to the Falcons to set a meeting with athletic director Sean Frazier for Sunday morning.

On Sunday morning the school announced Montgomery was out after the team’s 1-7 start and Chapman was the interim head coach.

Chapman had short stints as an assistant coach at Central Michigan and Toledo before spending nine years as an assistant at Stony Brook. He’s spent the last four years on Montgomery’s staff at NIU.

“It’s a tough balance because it’s a bittersweet day,” Chapman said. “I think that’s the term I used all day (Sunday). A good friend lost his job. The other part is you have to balance that’s the profession, and I get the opportunity to lead the program for two months or so. That’s the coaching business. That’s our profession and that’s kind of how it works.”

“I’ll tweak some stuff, some stuff I like, but not a lot. We’re not throwing out a whole lot. Just add some stuff where we can take advantage of some other players’ skill sets. But the bread and butter is going to be offense coach Monty implemented here and guys have been running for two or three years.”

—  Lamar Chapman

Chapman said the team has already had two practices since the news of Montgomery’s firing. He also said he’s met with the team both individually and together.

“They were down,” Chapman said. “I met with everyone individually (Sunday), met with them as a team. They kind of shared their thoughts. Mark came in said goodbye to the guys, he handled it like a professional. We recruited these guys, developed a relationship with them, obviously some guys were a little down. Some guys spent more time with him than others, the new guys. But it kind of hit everybody. But we still had to practice yesterday at 4 and we had to practice today at 9 and tomorrow we have to jump on a plane and go to Athens and try to win a game.”

Chapman said one of the biggest issues for the Huskies (1-7, 0-3 MAC) has been inconsistency. He said that was on display against the Falcons Saturday, allowing 23 first-half points to the second-best offense in the league, but 45 in the second half of the 68-42 loss.

“You play a woulda, coulda, shoulda game or if this, if that,” Chapman said. “We had leads in games, we were in a couple of them. We could easily be 4-4 instead of 1-7.”

He said not much is going to change when it comes to Xs and Os.

“What we do, most of it, is embedded in our guys,” Chapman said. “I’ll tweak some stuff, some stuff I like, but not a lot. We’re not throwing out a whole lot. Just add some stuff where we can take advantage of some other players’ skill sets. But the bread and butter is going to be offense coach Monty implemented here and guys have been running for two or three years.”

Some of those tweaks include getting players like Cochran, Anthony Crump and Darius Beane more involved in the post game.

Chapman said getting movement in the post has been an issue this season.

“We’re going to try and use Tyler Cochran and Crump and DB and those guys athleticism, let them play closer to the basket,” Chapman said. “Try to get Trendon [Hankerson] set off some screens, free himself up off some things. But we’ve got to get more movement out of our posts. ... We’ve got to do something better than standing around with the occasional cut.”

In talking with Frazier on Sunday, Chapman said the long-term prospects of his position came up.

Fraizer has not been made available for comment by the school.

“It’s a 17-game, two-month audition for this spot or somewhere else,” Chapman said. “You’re actually getting head coaching experience at the college level. It has to count for something. You can put it on your resume. And if you do a good job you’d like to think there’s a good shot at getting the interim tag removed from your title.”

But as any coach would say, he’s trying not to look at the big picture and take it just one game at a time.

“Sometimes you do look out, what if, what if, but short term the goal is to just win the next game,” Chapman said. “Then I’ll worry about what happens next in late February, early March.”