Release courtesy of Cory Francer, columnist for D3Hoops.com
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To have a shot at a serious college basketball career, Lachlan Magee knew he had to leave home. But, for Magee, moving away to college was not so simple as packing up a U-Haul and road tripping to campus. Instead, Magee moved halfway around the world, leaving his native Melbourne, Australia behind, to get the full college basketball experience.
Magee said back home, Australian Rules football and cricket reign supreme. There is a market for basketball, but it is nothing like the immense popularity of the sport in the US, and it shows. He said unlike at American colleges, the regulations around the sport are lacking. Many coaches are volunteers. The training programs are limited. Multiple teams have to share arenas. Most of all, he said, the American approach to the game is what drew him to the U.S.
"The approach to basketball here is that it's serious business whereas in Australia, people play really hard and want to succeed, but the atmosphere here is the real deal," Magee said. "It's not only the resources behind it, but people really want to win and they won't accept losing."
The 6-3 guard struggled to draw attention from American institutions during his high school years, with his only opportunities to get recruited coming through emails and phone calls. So before he enrolled at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass., he joined the basketball team at the Salisbury School, a prep school in western Connecticut.
While playing that season at Salisbury helped him get noticed for his basketball skills, the short time he spent there also gave him a boost academically. In Australia, Magee had already taken some advanced placement courses that gave him enough credits to fulfill certain subjects at the university level. At Salisbury, he took six more AP classes, further reducing the number of credit hours he would have had to satisfy in his freshman year.
The academic dedication helped, and Magee was able to graduate from Endicott's business program in three years. With one year of basketball eligibility left, Magee decided to pursue an MBA at Endicott and return for one final year of basketball.
"I had one more year to play, so I was keen to fill out my senior year after playing three years and be part of the graduate program as well," he said.
After Magee earns his MBA, he said his goal is to find a job in a management role. He said he would like to work in Boston for a year and then would consider returning home to Australia. While it was basketball that brought him to America, Magee's business knowledge and academic prowess have also gained him some recognition. On Monday, a guest blog penned by Magee appeared on Forbes.com, in which he discusses the concept of ethics being taught in an educational setting.
"That was a pretty incredible opportunity to have that exposure as a young person," Magee said.
On the court, for Magee and the rest of the Gulls, this season has had an air of redemption surrounding it from the start. Two years ago, the team went 20-9, winning the Commonwealth Coast Conference championship, before falling to Oswego State in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Magee said last year's 9-16 record was not just disappointing, but embarrassing after such a strong record the year before, and it was not how he wanted his time at Endicott to end.
So far, the Gulls appear to have righted the ship, have jumped out to an 11-2 record and are first in the conference. Magee said much of the team's success this season has come from a dedicated group of young players, who have injected some much needed life into the Gulls.
"Our coaching staff was rebuilding the team looking for new energy, more focus and more hard work ethic," Magee said. "The young guys have really supplied that and brought a new life to the team. There's a confidence we didn't have last year or even in previous years."
Now, as one of the team's most experienced players, Magee has embraced his role as a leader. He said with three seasons under his belt, one of the most important things to stress to his younger teammates is that it's a long season. While the team has looked strong so far, it is essential to maintain that high level of play throughout the duration of the schedule.
"One of the biggest things for the younger guys to understand is that the season is a marathon," he said. "It's a really long, hard season and you can't get too excited when things go well and not get too down when you're losing."
Magee has also served as a leader on the court, becoming the tenth player in Endicott's history to reach the 1,000-point mark. He joined the elite club in a 14-point effort on Dec. 29 against Berkeley, which according to Endicott's website, was just Magee's 77th game played.
Though the team has enjoyed its strong start to the season, Magee said the Gulls are dedicated to seeing the season through to the end. He said there are still some lingering feelings of embarrassment over last year's record, and the team wants to make a point to themselves and the Endicott community that it is a contender.
"For myself, you don't want to go out on a note like that, so it was not only a big team emphasis but personal emphasis on having a much better year," he said.
