INDIANAPOLIS - As an institutional co-host of this year's NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four, IU Indianapolis has its stamp all over this year's event, including by hosting the fourth annual Silver Waves Media "Power Lunch" on Thursday (Apr. 2). The event brings together "rising stars" in college basketball coaching and pairs them with search firms and athletic directors with the aim of producing tomorrow's top-notch head coaches. The event has a history of contributing to the Division I hiring processes for head coaches, and this year is no exception. Fourteen new Division I head coaches have resulted from the year's gathering.

IU Indy Athletic Director Luke Bosso was one of several speakers at the event who emphasized the importance of authentic relationship-building and professionalism for an audience included 75 assistant coaches that made the cut from a 20-person committee's nominations and discussions. The group of assistant coaches hailed from the likes of Texas, Georgia, Villanova, NC State, Alabama, Kentucky, LSU, Kansas, Florida, Wisconsin, Florida, Houston, Gonzaga, and several other high- and mid-major institutions.

"Little things matter," Bosso said. "I tell our staff we can control three things every day: what you wear, how hard you work, and your attitude."

Ryan Silver, the event's organizer, is the author of 40 Year Plan: The Life Playbook for Youth Sports and is the founder of West Coast Elite, one of the top AAU programs in the country, contributing to the development of Chet Holmgren and others. Silver began his own remarks to open the lunch by highlighting his long-term sobriety from alcohol and drugs.
It turns out that that admission was an intentional opening that connects well to the event's purpose. "Just from that speech," Silver said, "I'll probably have three or four coaches in this room who'll call me next week and say 'Thank you so much for sharing that. I have a drug problem,' or 'I have an alcoholic friend,' so it's really about helping young men."

Silver was not the only event speaker who talked about working through adversity. Villanova assistant coach Ashley Howard talked about the swing of learning from Jay Wright's minimal emotional reaction to Kris Jenkins' game-winner in the national championship against North Carolina in 2016 to his first head coaching job at LaSalle, from which he was let go after four years on the job.

"No journey is just a one-way street, right?" Howard said. "Everybody's going to have detours along the way, but you have to learn from them and utilize them to make yourself better.'

Another of the event's speakers (and past participants) was Arkansas State's Ryan Pannone, whose coaching journey demonstrates exactly the kind of non-linear path that Howard pointed to. Pannone coached in six foreign countries before taking his current college head coaching job.

Pannone couldn't make the first Power Lunch that he was invited to because he was on the staff at Alabama at the time, and the Crimson Tide were in the Final Four that year. But he came to the event the next season, and it led to the job offer at Arkansas State.

"(Ryan) didn't know me at all," Pannone said about the first year he was invited. "He didn't owe me this opportunity. I was new to college. He took a chance."

Pannone said that his gratitude to Silver for the organization's role in his being offered his current job is why he choose to speak at this year's event. Pannone used his words on stage to emphasize some of the harder parts of his own path, including prioritizing jobs for the opportunity and learning they would provide rather than the amount of money that might be on the table.

"You guys have got to put yourself in financial position to be able to take a job if it's a great opportunity for you," he said. "I talk with a lob of coaches that could get offered head coaching jobs (that say) 'I can't afford to take the pay cut.' That's insane to me. You've got to be willing to bet on yourself."