Brandon Held makes midseason switch from guard to coach for Towson men’s basketball
Brandon Held, a volunteer assistant for Towson men’s basketball, thinks the first person to refer to him as “Coach” was redshirt freshman power forward Cole Paar.
“I was like, ‘Coach Held? Oh wait, I am Coach Held,’” he said. “It was just a strange time in the season.”
Indeed it was. On Jan. 27 at Delaware, Held participated in his final game with the Tigers as a redshirt junior shooting guard. When the spring semester officially began two days later, the Marriottsville native — who graduated the previous month — joined the coaching staff.
It’s a unique situation for Towson coach Pat Skerry, who said he has not had a player switch to coach midway through a season. But he is happy Held gets to conclude the season still connected to the team.
“He’s like a cult hero for doing it,” Skerry cracked. “He does a great job in practice, he’s a likable guy, a responsible guy. He wanted to finish things out. I’m happy to have Brandon around.”
Held’s road to basketball seemed ordained even before he was born. His father Richard was a point guard at Loyola Maryland from 1991 to 1993, and John Miller, his paternal aunt’s husband, was a shooting guard at Mount St. Mary’s from 1988 to 1991.
At Marriotts Ridge, Held scored 1,026 career points and had preliminary talks with the Greyhounds about joining them as a preferred walk-on. He eventually chose St. Mary’s over Salisbury and Scranton after graduating in 2019.
But in his first semester at the college’s campus in St. Mary’s City, Held realized the school wasn’t the right fit for him, and after contacting the coaches at Towson, he transferred there in January 2020 before the coronavirus pandemic sent everyone home two months later.
After proving himself during a tryout in September 2021, the 6-foot-3, 185-pound Held was invited to join the Tigers as a walk-on. Kevin Clark, who was the associate head coach until his retirement after the 2022-23 season, described Held as raw but dedicated.
“He was a sponge,” Clark said. “He wanted the extra work. On game day, he was in that weight room, and you saw a metamorphosis of his body, and that made him much more competitive to the point where we used to try to put together highlight videos of him making shots over [6-5, 200-pound] Cam Holden or [6-8, 225-pound] Juwan Gray. He made guys have to guard him because he could run off five or six threes in a row.”
In 17 games in three seasons, Held scored seven points, grabbed two rebounds, and made one steal. He said he has no regrets about transferring to Towson.
“I feel great about the way that it unfolded,” he said. “I didn’t think I was going to play Division I coming into college. Having the opportunity to be a walk-on even though I didn’t get a lot of playing time in games, I’ve met a lot of great teammates and made great connections with these coaches. It’s just been a great process.”
Held projected that he would graduate in December with a bachelor’s in business administration. To remain as a player, he would have had to enroll in courses for a master’s degree, but that didn’t tickle his fancy, and he already had a job lined up with a residential real estate agency in the Outer Banks, North Carolina.
Skerry credited Terry Porter, the university’s associate athletic director overseeing compliance, John Auslander, an assistant coach, and Mike Gathagan, a senior associate athletic director in charge of communications, with crafting the plan to have Held serve as a volunteer assistant coach.
“I always say that guys that are breaking in or are walk-ons, it’s not an easy task,” he said. “But he’s just been one of those guys who is happy to be around it. So the volunteer assistant piece is a way to make sure that we keep him around basketball and his teammates and the coaches.”
Held said his new responsibilities include helping to run workouts for the players and pregame drills such as simulating outside shooters for close-outs on the perimeter, brandishing pads to encourage players to finish through contact, and forcing players to their left or right hands. “It’s a change for me definitely,” he acknowledged. “But at the end of the day, I’m helping my teammates get better.”
Clark joked that he thought Held was smarter than agreeing to join the coaching ranks. But he said Held has earned a certain level of respect from his now former teammates.
“Everything is about trust, and I think they will trust him,” he said. “Even when he said things around our team, those guys valued his opinion. So there’s going to be a trust factor.”
Held said he has a greater level of appreciation for what the coaches do on days that don’t involve games such as studying film, monitoring players’ academic progress, and organizing workouts. He said that even though he has moved a few seats over on the bench, he sometimes catches himself thinking like a player.
“I’ll be like, ‘If I get in the game, I have to do this move on this player and do this on this guy and see if I can get anywhere.’ But now, I’m trying to understand personnel for my teammates,” he said. “If they come out and someone drives by them who is left-handed, I might remind them, ‘Hey, that guy is left-handed, so make sure you shade his left hand more.’ So I’m trying to think more as a coach in that aspect, but I don’t think I’ve gotten there necessarily.”
With Towson emerging as a contender in the Coastal Athletic Association for that conference tournament championship and automatic qualifier to the NCAA Tournament, Held said he wants to contribute any way he can. He added that qualifying for the postseason as a coach would be somewhat bittersweet.
“Not having an opportunity to play anymore — even if that’s just at the end of the game for two or three minutes — is another thing I miss,” he said. “It’s fun to be a part of all that. But it hasn’t been a huge change. We have a lot of younger players on the team, and I’ve been a part of this team for three years now. So I’m still there helping them with anything they need help with.”
Elon at Towson
Monday, 9 p.m.
TV: CBS Sports Network