The door at the end of the hall is locked. Here in the women’s basketball wing of Seton Hall’s Regan Center, the head coach’s office is empty, vacated by Phyllis Mangina and now home to three chairs, four bare walls and a small stack of books next to a bottle of water resting on a desk.
Anne Donovan, who inherited Mangina’s program and South Orange office, has yet to settle here.
She keeps an office at the New York Liberty’s headquarters in Tarrytown, N.Y.
“My Liberty hat is on until our season is over,” Donovan said three weeks ago, sitting along the baseline at Madison Square Garden for her professional team’s Media Day.
The hiring of Donovan — the 6-8 Paramus Catholic graduate with gold medals as an Olympic player and coach, a ring as a WNBA coach and a plaque in the Basketball Hall of Fame — came with a slight catch. Donovan is honoring her one-year contract to coach the Liberty. She won’t arrive on campus until late August, when the pro season ends.
So until then, who is wearing Seton Hall’s coaching hats?
Along that Regan Center hallway, on the way to the locked door, there are three more offices. They house Donovan’s assistants, a mixture of two new faces and one holdover. There is Jenny Palmateer, a New Jersey native who spent 10 years as an assistant at North Carolina State. There is Ty Grace, who joined Mangina’s staff last year. And there is David Kim, the director of basketball operations fresh from Fordham.
Donovan calls them “the key” to managing this transition. With her permission, they are in charge. Their task is part instructional, part clerical and part promotional.
They must begin the process of culture change, the back-to-basics approach that Donovan preaches.
They must sift through academic paperwork, book trips and assemble databases. And they must bridge new connections on the recruiting trail and fortify old ones.
Donovan already did that herself. Soon after taking the job, she called the incoming recruits, which include a pair of players ranked in ESPN Hoop Gurlz’s Top 60.
The day after Donovan was introduced as coach, she sat down with Grace inside the team’s offices.
She explained what she was looking for in her staff. Grace, a former assistant at Army and a head coach at Ramapo College, pitched herself. That next week, Grace’s phone rang.
“She asked me, ‘Would you be interested? I’d love to have you stay,’ ” Grace said. “And I was like, ‘Are you serious?’ ”
Then Donovan left. Grace was alone to run the team through post-season workouts and handle all the other small details. She ensured the returning players secured solid academic footing. She inspected the transcripts of the incoming freshmen. And she waited for re-enforcements.
After about three weeks, Palmateer joined. She helped with some of the workouts, provided the players with a battery of offseason drills. She did not watch film of the team, did not ask Grace for insight into last year’s 9-21 frustration.
“It’s kind of funny,” Palmateer said, “because you might think I want to know that. But I really, I just kind of want to start on a clean slate and just move from there. No judgments. No anything.”
Here, in these offices, there is little talk about the past. In her final 15 years at Seton Hall, Mangina never reached the NCAA Tournament. To recruits, she could sell the prospect of playing in the Big East or the small-campus allure of Seton Hall or the chance to earn playing time as an underclassman.
But she could not sell a history of winning.
For the new staff, a fresh approach comes with the burst of recruiting in July. Grace and Palmateer will split the miles heading to camps and tournaments. Kim helped build their recruiting database.
“We’ve just got to roll up our sleeves,” Grace said, “and get the work in.”
Right now, they are fielding calls from interested recruits (Palmateer mentioned there are a pair of junior-college players who could help the team) and cold-calling coaches to develop relationships.
After she arrived on campus, Palmateer reached out to Vanessa Watson, the coach at Shabazz High in Newark. One of Watson’s players, guard Ka-Deidre Simmons, is a member of the 2010 freshman class.
Palmateer wanted to stay in touch.
“She just let me know,” Watson said, “that they were going to get some things rolling.”
Rolling, but still waiting. With the Liberty season underway, Donovan tries to stay in touch. But her transition to the college game begins once summer ends.
“I touch base with them almost every day just to keep my fingers on the pulse of the players and our recruiting,” Donovan said in New York. “But this is my job right now. And Seton Hall is aware of that.”
Andy McCullough may be reached at amccullough@starledger.com