Article: by Reed Darcey- The Advocate
The new men's basketball coach at Baton Rouge Community College (BRCC) is setting ambitious goals.
Byron Starks said Thursday that at BRCC, he sees an opportunity to duplicate the success he found at LSU-Eunice, which won 84 games and four straight Louisiana Community College Athletic Conference championships (LCCAC) in his four seasons as coach there.
LSU-Eunice announced June 30 it was shuttering its men's hoops program because of financial challenges, leading Starks to accept the job at BRCC.
"I'm an advocate for basketball in the state of Louisiana," Starks said, "and I'm even more of an advocate for junior college basketball in the state of Louisiana. And I think we have the potential to become not just regionally recognized, but nationally recognized as a program, and it's one of my missions to put BRCC basketball on the national stage."
Starks said he shares a vision for the program with both BRCC chancellor Willie Smith and athletic director Brock Kantrow. That, combined with the college's existing facilities and academic resources, attracted him to the job.
"I think it gives the understanding that we are moving forward," Starks said. "We want to move forward and put together the pieces to propel the program forward. And when I saw that in the process, I thought that it was a great fit."
From 2012-18, Starks coached at Lafayette Christian Academy. There, he won 170 games and two LHSAA Division IV state championships. In 2014, he was named the Louisiana Class 1A coach of the year.
Starks played college ball at UL, leading the Ragin' Cajuns to their only NCAA tournament win over Oklahoma in 1992 while twice earning a spot on the All-Sun Belt Conference first team.
But it was in high school where he first learned how to implement a model for building a program at the junior college level. Starks played under Hall of Fame coach Michael Lyons at Grambling Lab, a small school that has produced nearly 50 Division I athletes despite its low enrollment.
At Grambling Lab, there weren't a ton of resources, Starks said. But the program still found a way to win.
"It's the same approach that I have when I'm coaching a program," he said. "I can forget about the external things, the brick and the mortar, and focus on the people, which are the root. And then from there you can produce a winning product, produce winning people, and the other stuff is a byproduct of those efforts."
Starks said at BRCC, he'll prioritize in-state recruiting. But another part of his plan, he said, is to recruit international players, from places such as Australia, New Zealand, France, Canada and the NBA Academy Africa, located in Saly, Senegal. He hopes to find players from both talent pools, fusing them into one cohesive unit that one day competes for national championships.
"I feel like, with the resources that Baton Rouge has, the demographics," Starks said, "it has a great opportunity to grow."