Hamden’s response in the wake of the Texas church shooting

By Jenelle Cadigan

It is the fifth deadliest mass shooting in modern United States history, behind Sandy Hook, where 27 were killed, Virginia Tech, 32 killed, Pulse nightclub, 49 killed, and the Harvest Musical Festival in Las Vegas, just over a month ago, where 58 people were killed.

This time, it happened in a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Twenty-six people are dead and dozens more injured after a shooter opened fire. The victims range in age from 18 months to 77 years old.

“It’s horrific,” the Rev. Douglas House of the Mount Carmel Congregational Church said.


Reverend Douglas J. House - Mount Carmel Congregational Church

Reverend Douglas J. House – Mount Carmel Congregational Church

The Mount Carmel Congregational Church sits on the corner of Whitney Avenue and Dixwell Avenue, and has been a central part of Hamden’s religious life since colonial times.

“People go to places of worship for safety, security … and to focus on how God works in our lives, to ask for forgiveness, to create peace, to create harmony, all the kinds of good things that we value in our society,” House said. “And that an individual goes into a place of worship … and takes advantage of the things that those people are there for, and ends up killing them, it’s beyond words.”

One mile down the road, also on Whitney Avenue, is Our Lady of Mount Carmel, one of seven Catholic churches in Hamden. Father Michael Dolan has been a priest for 20 years and although he has only been with this particular church for five months, he has deep emotional ties to Connecticut.

“I was present for the Sandy Hook (shooting),” Dolan said. “I had to go and do the notification to the families of their child, and that was awful.”

He recalled the last time he saw one of those families.

“They were in the rose garden with President Obama, and you know the legislation hadn’t gone through,” he said. “They were so upset.”

Dolan wanted some sort of legislation.


Father Michael Dolan - Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church

Father Michael Dolan – Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church

“People do an awful lot of damage in a short amount of time because of the fire power. You wish they would have gun control, but it’s very hard to push through,” he said, attributing that to the fact that people don’t want their rights taken away, but also adding that it doesn’t have to be that way. “You can have a gun, but do you really have to have a machine gun? It’s amazing. Armor piercing bullets? Really? Is the deer wearing body armor?”

Nearly five years later, gun control legislation still hasn’t passed, which Dolan says has led to parishioners wanting to take matters into their own hands.

“In my last parish I had two parishioners that would say ‘You know, Father, I’m packing in case there’s a problem, I’ll take them out,’” Dolan said, adding that he knows that would never end well.

He says he doesn’t want to give the impression that the church is a target, but it is one, being a public building and a “symbolically charged space” with a wide-open floor plan. He says he wants the church to be safe, but he admits that it’s difficult to maintain safety when you’re welcoming to anyone. Dolan says parishioners have become hyper-aware during services.

“I noticed after the Las Vegas shooting there was a loud noise in church, and I could tell people were like ‘Is it a shooter?’” Dolan said. “United Illuminating was doing construction, and the backhoe hit the sidewalk and they all jumped. You could tell, but I had to keep my composure.”

But House says hyper-awareness doesn’t equate to fear.

“I think it’s human nature. Maybe we’re more aware of our surroundings today than we used to be, but I don’t think people in my congregation and certainly I’m not any more fearful than I ever have been,” he said.

House and Dolan both want the focus to be on the positives during times like these and after events as horrific as this.

“It can happen anywhere, but you don’t dwell on that,” House said. “If you lived your life constantly thinking about terrorism, the terrorists would’ve won, as so many people have said. So you live your life the way you intend to.”

Dolan’s face lit up with a smile from ear to ear as he talked about all the engagement rings he has blessed, the beautiful babies he has baptized, and the many first communions he has given. And then, he referenced Holy Scripture.

“Where sin is, grace abounds all the more.”


Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church

Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church

In case you missed it: GOP tax cuts

Embed from Getty Images

By Shauna Golden

Following the release of the GOP tax plan on Thursday, Nov. 2, many Americans are wondering how the new plan will personally affect them.

The plan, named the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, is what republicans claim to be a “path to job creation and higher wages for workers,” according to CBS. In fact, President Trump said the rich would not be benefiting from this plan.

However, in reality, corporations and the rich are the groups that would receive the most benefit from the plan. If passed, the plan would decrease the tax rate on corporations from 35 percent to 20 percent

According to Fortune, the plan would eliminate tax deductions that would benefit members of the middle class.

The plan remains a proposal at the moment. It has yet to be determined what changes will be made and whether or not the plan will pass into a law. 

In case you missed it: The iPhone X release

Embed from Getty Images

By Shauna Golden

The newest iPhone is finally here. The iPhone X went on sale nationally at 8 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 3. According to the Apple website, the phone’s cheapest version retails at $999, making it the most expensive iPhone model thus far.

Though the newest model officially went on sale Friday, the iPhone X has been available for pre-order since Oct. 27. However, the pre-orders sold out within 10 minutes. According to USA Today, the iPhone X was unavailable for in-store pickup on Friday in major cities such as New York, Boston, Chicago, Denver and Houston, just to name a few.

What is all the hype about?

According to Apple, the newest model contains a super retina display, OLED panels that offer stronger colors, a true depth camera that enables facial recognition, wireless charging and water resistance.

Due to the high demand for the iPhone X, there is currently an expected shipping period of three to four weeks.

In case you missed it: University of Hartford student poisoning case

By Shauna Golden

Over the weekend, a University of Hartford student was arrested for a hate crime she committed against her roommate.

According to the Hartford Courant, freshman Brianna Brochu was arrested by the West Hartford Police Department. She was charged with third-degree criminal mischief and second-degree breach of peace. Brochu confessed to police that she was guilty of licking her former roommate’s eating utensils and smearing body fluids on her backpack.

In a press release sent out by the university, President Gregory S. Woodward said, “Acts of racism, bullying, or other abusive behaviors will not be tolerated on (the campus).” Gregory also added that he would do “everything in his power to work with the community to address related concerns together.”

The victim of the crime, Chennel “Jazzy” Rowe, posted a video to Facebook in which she described her experiences with her former roommate. Throughout the video, Rowe explains how unwelcome she constantly felt in her own room.

Rowe’s story gained a large following on social media. On Twitter, users began adding the hashtag #JusticeforJazzy to their tweets to ensure Rowe’s story would be heard and her former roommate would be punished for her crimes. 

Brochu will appear in Hartford Superior Court on Nov. 15. According to the Boston Globe, she is currently out on $1,000 bail. 

In the mean time, there will be a “March for Justice” on Nov. 8 that will begin at 5 p.m. The march will begin at the University of Hartford and end at the West Hartford Police Department.
 

 

 

What we are watching: NYC steps up security following terror attack

By Karli Regalbuto

Cement barriers, aerial surveillance, snipers and extra officers protected marathon runners days after the terror attack in New York City. The governor emphasized the leap to increase security as just a precaution.

The FBI is looking into suspect Sayfullo Saipov’s past and other people he could have been working with. The investigation has already found connections between Saipov and people who have drawn law enforcement’s attention.  

Last Tuesday, eight people were killed and about a dozen injured when a truck drove down a bicycle path in New York City. Police shot Saipov as he exited his truck. Inside the truck, there were notes referencing the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

 

Embed from Getty Images

Saipov drove this truck into a crowd, killing eight people.

What we are watching: CT Network going off air

By Karli Regalbuto

The Connecticut Network is going off the air. Connecticut’s new budget cuts are directly affecting the future of the network. There is not enough money allocated to the network for it to continue broadcasting.

Employees arrived at work on Friday to terminated email addresses, a partial equipment shutdown and Paul Giguere, CEO of the Connecticut Public Affairs Network, announcing the layoffs to employees.

CT-N is the public affairs channel that has provided information about state government and public policy events since 1999. It is operated by the not-for-profit company Connecticut Public Affairs Network.

 

 

 


Screenshot from the CT-N website homepage. 

Screenshot from the CT-N website homepage. 

In case you missed it: CT budget affecting schools

By Karli Regalbuto

The Connecticut state budget passed two weeks ago and many were concerned with what the education system would look like after the budget passed. It took almost 17 weeks to pass the two-year budget, according to the CT Mirror

Years prior to this budget, a Supreme Court case mandated states implement the Education Cost-Sharing System. This system was supposed to take into consideration more than just the population of a certain area when looking at education budgets, according to the OLR Research Report. It was supposed to account for factors such as students that take public transportation, students who need more tutoring programs and students who need school supplies. The Education Cost-Sharing System was supposed to account for students needs, but it wasn’t enforced or followed.

This budget will allocate the money for education but it will also enforce the Education Cost-Sharing System. Areas that have students with more needs will receive more money.

Embed from Getty Images

Voting guide for Tuesday’s elections in Hamden

By Ryan Chichester

Four different local Hamden positions are up for election on Tuesday, Nov. 7, including mayor. Polls will open bright and early at 6 a.m. and will close at 8 p.m.

Here are the candidates voters will find on the ballot and the positions they are running for:


hamden elections.PNG

Voters can head to any of the following locations within voting hours on Tuesday to submit their ballot:


polling places.PNG

This is the general layout of what the ballot will look like once voters go inside a voting booth (of course, candidate names will be different):


sample ballot.PNG

Results are expected to be available at roughly 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, according to the Elections and Registrars Department. Results can be seen shortly after they are recorded at the office of the Elections and Registrars Department at 2750 Dixwell Ave. People can also try calling 203-553-7534, though results may take longer to be available by phone.

 

Ready… or not?

A look into Connecticut’s hurricane preparedness

By Jenelle Cadigan

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season has already proven to be extremely active and extremely dangerous. So far this year there have been 15 storms, 10 hurricanes and six major hurricanes (category 3 or stronger). These weather systems have resulted in more than 400 deaths, and more than $188 billion in damages. Connecticut has been spared the worst, but there is still a month to go in the season.


Connecticut's coastline (photo via Google Earth)

Connecticut’s coastline (photo via Google Earth)

On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy tested the limits of Connecticut’s emergency preparedness programs. According to the National Weather Service, Sandy was a “worse-case scenario for storm surge for coastal regions.” By the time Sandy got to New Jersey, it was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone, but the storm surge hit Connecticut right at high tide, causing massive amounts of flooding.

The Tropical Cyclone Report created by the National Hurricane Center reports that there was storm surge over nine feet in New Haven, resulting in floodwaters as high as six feet above ground level. Approximately 3,000 homes were damaged, and the state sustained more than $300 million in damages.

Five years later, is the state of Connecticut ready for another hurricane… or not?


Rick Fontana, Deputy Director of Emergency Operations - New Haven

Rick Fontana, Deputy Director of Emergency Operations – New Haven

“Our biggest fear in the city of New Haven is a hurricane,” says Rick Fontana, Deputy Director of Emergency Operations in New Haven. “It’s number one. It really is. We’re on the coast, and I think we’re pretty resilient, but when storm surge hits … that becomes a very significant issue.”

In the event of a hurricane, Fontana would work to develop strategies that will lessen the impact of a storm, plan and prepare for different types of storms, and help with the response to and recovery from a storm.

Fontana also serves as one of five regional coordinators in the state for emergency management. His job there is to communicate with the 30 towns in Connecticut’s Region 2 throughout an emergency, and relay information up to the state coordinators.


Quinnipiac’s Plan for Emergencies

Quinnipiac University, located in Hamden, Connecticut, falls under Region 2. Edgar Rodriguez is the chief of Public Safety and is also co-captain of the emergency management team at Quinnipiac. The team is made up of about a dozen members from various university departments, including public safety, facilities, health services, and academics. Rodriguez says the team has extensive plans when it comes to storms.

“We’ve come up with an emergency evacuation plan and we talk about if there’s a hurricane or a storm coming, what are we doing, how are we preparing for it,” Rodriguez says, adding that although the plans haven’t been approved by the state, they are still important to have.

When a storm comes, those plans get put into action.

The team begins a 24-hour-to-landfall. Members track the storm, gather information from the state and submit that information to Quinnipiac President John Lahey and Provost Mark Thompson, who ultimately decide whether students should stay at school or be sent home.

Once that decision is made, the emergency management team starts prepping all departments for landfall. Quinnipiac’s emergency management team only goes through the regional coordinators for assistance if it’s a minor, isolated emergency – such as power outages on one specific campus. In the case of an event as major as a hurricane, the protocol is to bypass the region and work directly with the state.

“The rule of thumb is every town or city should be able to sustain themselves for 72 hours,” Rodriguez says, explaining that Quinnipiac acts as its own sort of town for those 72 hours after landfall, with the emergency management team in charge. “Then after that, you start getting assistance from the state. But the entire time that’s happening, you’re communicating back and forth with the state.”

All the information goes up to the state emergency operations center in Hartford, is organized and then is sent out to the public.

“Every hour [the state is] sending us an update on the storm and we take that update and send it to everybody,” says Rodriguez. He feels that this system of organizing the information is a good way to keep consistency and keep everybody on the same page at a time when there could be a lot going on at once.


A building-Block Approach

Dan McElhinney, federal preparedness coordinator and national preparedness division director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), explains that everyone takes a building-block approach for providing and receiving assistance after 72 hours.

“At some point [the town] may have to bring in mutual aid from surrounding communities,” McElhinney says. “When the mutual aid has been exhausted, they’ll ask for county level assistance, then they go to the state … then the state will declare a state of emergency. The governor then gets special powers to extend additional dollars to direct other state agencies to assist the local community. When the state no longer has the capacity, the governor will ask the president for an emergency or major disaster declaration. That’s when FEMA gets involved.”


FEMA's regions (photo via FEMA.gov)

FEMA’s regions (photo via FEMA.gov)

FEMA is divided into 10 regions, and McElhinney is in charge of FEMA Region 1, which includes all New England states. He says although FEMA can respond in numbers that would outweigh the state help 100-to-1, they are there to support, not to supplant.

“Basically under the Stafford Act, we pretty much have tasking authority over all the agencies and departments to assist the state in response and recovery,” McElhinney says. “We provide a lot of technical assistance, but we are not there to take over.”


Mandatory training

Not only does FEMA provide assistance in the aftermath, but it also provides training services. According to the Quinnipiac website, those who are on the emergency management team have to complete FEMA’s National Incident Management System training. This training is similar to the statewide Emergency Preparedness and Planning Initiative training exercises.


Map of Hurricane Maria on the monitor in the New Haven EOC

Map of Hurricane Maria on the monitor in the New Haven EOC

“The state of Connecticut has gotten very aggressive on keeping everyone prepared,” Rodriguez says. “Every year in October or November we do a drill. It’s mandatory for every town and every city through the state of Connecticut and the last few years have been some type of a hurricane.”

During the two-day statewide drill, state officials provide updates as if there were a real hurricane approaching. The state sends out maps of the storm and asks participants to respond to ongoing situations.

“You just lost all power in your town, what are you doing? You’ve got multiple trees that are down, what are you doing? Are you opening up a shelter? How are you transporting people? How much help do you have? Is the fire department on standby? And you have to keep reporting back and forth,” Rodriguez says.


Emergency operations center - New Haven

Emergency operations center – New Haven

The exercises are meant to be intense, but they’re also meant to replicate a real-life situation so that if and when a hurricane does hit, everyone is prepared. And apparently, you can never be too prepared.

“When a hurricane strikes, people kind of become complacent and never think it’s going to be as bad as it is. We’ve been fortunate, but … our departments on the preparedness level always scale one level higher than we normally would,” says Fontana. “We’re always prepared but we always prepare above and beyond because it’s easier for us to scale back than it is to scale up in the middle of a crisis.”

The training drills are mandatory for cities and towns that want to receive grant money in order to build resiliency in places along the shorelines or rebuild after a weather event occurs.


coastal resiliency and innovative thinking


Giovanni Zinn, city engineer - New Haven (photo via Yale.edu)

Giovanni Zinn, city engineer – New Haven (photo via Yale.edu)

Giovanni Zinn, an engineer for the City of New Haven, explains why that grant money is so important.

“There’s a lot more land now and it’s low lying land,” he says. “In the large storms we face two major threats: coastal storm surge, where water is piling up in the harbor and coming up the rivers, and large rain events of six, seven, eight, nine, 10 inches in a short period of time. Where does the water go? When you get both at the same time, you have a particularly bad problem. And there’s no getting around the laws of physics. There are certain situations where you can’t drain the city.”

Zinn says that coastal protection methods — seawalls, living shorelines and storm surge barriers that are employed in some areas of the state — are “extremely expensive” and put financial pressure on local communities. He also said he thinks that those preventative measures are “not really a priority” and the long-term thinking tends to be put on the back burner.

But Guilford town planner George Kral says that hard infrastructure like a seawall is actually discouraged by the state of Connecticut.

“The view is that it doesn’t really solve the problem, it just pushes the problem from one place to another,” Kral says, adding that if anything, the goal is to implement green infrastructure instead.

Towns like Guilford have already completed major projects to raise the lowest-lying roads above flood level, as part of the town’s coastal resiliency plan. According to the plan, “coastal resilience is the ability to resist, absorb, recover from, or adapt to coastal hazards such as sea level rise, increased flooding, and more frequent and intense storm surges.” Kral says the plan has two goals: to educate the public on the the importance of coastal resilience, and to suggest actions local governments could take to make themselves more resilient.

And Guilford isn’t the only place thinking about preventative measures.


David Kooris, Director of the Rebuild by Design and National Disaster Resilience programs (photo via CT.gov)

David Kooris, Director of the Rebuild by Design and National Disaster Resilience programs (photo via CT.gov)

David Kooris, the Director of the Rebuild By Design and National Disaster Resilience programs for the state Department of Housing, says that after Hurricane Sandy, the federal government reserved about a billion dollars in relief funding to be “competitively awarded to places that demonstrated a new way of recovery that better positioned them to be more resilient for future disasters.”

In 2012, the state of Connecticut had already received $160 million in federal disaster relief money, and was looking for more from the department of housing’s two competitions.

“Teams worked over the course of a few months and put together a proposal to the department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and to a jury of architects and urban planners to compete for portions of the discretionary funds,” Kooris says about the international Rebuild by Design program. “Seven out of the 10 were awarded funding – the largest being lower Manhattan at $330 million, and the smallest being Bridgeport and the State of Connecticut with $10 million.”

Based on the success of that first program, Kooris says HUD took another chunk of the Sandy money and created a new competition — this time at the national level — which became the National Disaster Resilience program. There were 68 eligible government entities (states, cities and counties) that could enter the competition, and 13 were awarded funding at the end – Connecticut coming in 9th place with $54 million.

Kooris says the purpose of competitively divvying the money up was to “move beyond the standard recovery funding through HUD and FEMA, which more than anything else is just rebuilding.” The programs forced cities and towns to work on disaster prevention, rather than disaster recovery.

“Rarely you get the type of project that is new infrastructure – not repairing what was damaged – and do so in a way that explicitly addresses social and economic vulnerabilities in addition to environmental vulnerabilities,” Kooris says.

Connecticut’s plan involved combining “grey and green approaches” as Kooris puts it, by using “traditional, hard engineered solutions combined with natural solutions that mimic the functions of the environment.” He says that the state is planning to raise roads, build berms and add other green infrastructure to mitigate flooding in Bridgeport, in addition to pinpointing other coastal locations with the greatest number of critical facilities — power plants, roads, hospitals, wastewater treatment — and putting the majority of the investments into protecting those places.


where connecticut stands now

Since Sandy, officials have had five years to revise and strengthen emergency weather response plans.

“We have developed an emergency operation plan that’s worked on on a daily basis,” Fontana says. “Our primary goals … are preparing our residents, making sure that they’re prepared for any type of a disaster and making sure our infrastructure is protected.”

If another hurricane hit tomorrow, there are mixed feelings on whether Connecticut would be ready.

“If it were some kind of extreme storm like a category 5, that is a whole ‘nother ball game. The impact would be severe,” Kral says about the town of Guilford. “Hopefully we’ve done a little better job in terms of planning, but that remains to be seen I guess. If we had 50 inches of rain, we’d have a lot of problems.”

Kooris acknowledges there are still some things that need to be worked on, but for the most part, he says he is “confident that we have implemented targeted infrastructure projects … that reduce risk from future storms.”

As far as Quinnipiac goes, Rodriguez admits “you’re never going to be 100 percent” prepared, but he is confident that the annual mandatory state training has everyone as prepared as they can be to respond.

And in New Haven, Fontana recognizes that a category 3 hurricane “would be devastation to the entire coast” but he is confident in his department, which he says “works every day” and “works hard.”

“We prepare all the time. We plan all the time. We don’t respond all the time, and we don’t recover all the time, but we’re confident that we have the necessary strategies in place to handle a hurricane,” Fontana says.

Adding to his confidence is the fact that FEMA recently awarded the city of New Haven a class 7 rating for flood preparedness and recovery – the highest rating available. Having this rating allows homes in the designated 100-year flood zone to get a 15 percent discount on flood insurance. “So I think that puts it in a nutshell.”

The most important thing through it all? Keeping the lines of communication open, Fontana says, at all times.

“Consistent, timely, good information. I always say, ‘Be first, be right.’”

###

Baker Dunleavy: Quinnipiac’s new prized possession

By Conor Roche

If the reports are true, then Quinnipiac’s men’s basketball’s new head coach is also the school’s highest-paid head coach…and he’s never been a head coach.

Embed from Getty Images

However, Baker Dunleavy, 35, does have the background of a basketball head coach. His father, Mike Sr., played in the NBA for 11 years and was also an NBA head coach for 17 years, spending two of those years as the Los Angeles Lakers head coach. He’s now the head coach at Tulane University.

“I was going to (my dad’s) practices watching the players, watching their footwork, watching them go through drills and trying to play them one-on-one after practice,” Dunleavy said. “But I wasn’t watching the coaching, the teaching, the little things that right now I wish I had access to. But just being around it, I think was a privilege and helped me a ton.”

Dunleavy’s brother, Mike Jr., is a 15-year NBA veteran that’s played for six teams.

Dunleavy was good enough to play basketball at the Division-I level. In fact, he played for Villanova University, one of the premier teams in college basketball from 2003-06. Even though he only played in 28 games in this three-year career, former teammate Mike Nardi realized the importance Dunleavy had to the team.

Embed from Getty Images

“Within his role as one of the guys coming off the bench, (Dunleavy) always knew what we were doing as a team,” Nardi said. He always knew what the coaching staff was looking for. He did a great job at pushing guys at practice…He knew what we were doing. Really good guy off the court. Smart, intelligent and great locker room leadership.”

Dunleavy didn’t have the same talent that his father and brother had to make it into the NBA, so he left basketball after graduation to work at Merrill Lynch. That only lasted until 2010, when he returned to his alma mater to work for his college head coach, Jay Wright, as the program’s director of basketball operations. After working his way up the program’s totem pole for a few years, Dunleavy became Wright’s right-hand man in 2013 when he was named the team’s associate head coach.

“Just the way our staff is and what coach Wright wants us to be is everyone pretty much has their hands on everything,” Nardi, who is now in his third-year on the coaching staff at Villanova, said on Dunleavy’s rise in the program. “Honestly, (Dunleavy’s) pedigree and his basketball-mind, he’s just very intelligent and knows the game very well. He has a calm demeanor about him that I think a lot of time helped coach Wright. You need someone that’s managing the game and helping you and see where the players heads are at.”

In his four years as associate head coach, Dunleavy’s Wildcats went 129-17 (.883) overall and 63-9 (.875) in Big East play. Dunleavy’s tenure as the Villanova associate head coach can be defined by one play. In 2016, the Wildcats won the national championship as Kris Jenkins made a three-pointer at the buzzer. The play is seen as one of the most iconic in college basketball history, if not sports history.

Dunleavy had a significant impact on the title, according to Nardi.

“I think (Dunleavy) was a great backbone for coach Wright and someone that he could always go to whether it be player relationships, recruiting, X’s and O’s, anything off the court with our guys,” Nardi said. “Baker was involved with everything, That’s why he’s where’s he’s at today. He was very prepared for this opportunity and he’s ready for it.”

On March 7, Quinnipiac relieved its 10-year men’s basketball head coach Tom Moore after the team went 10-21 in the 2016-17 season. Some of the early candidates for the job were coaches that had Quinnipiac ties like Iona assistant coach Jared Grasso, who played and coached for the Bobcats, and Southern Connecticut State head coach Scott Burrell, who was an assistant coach for the Bobcats for eight years.

However, DHR International, the search firm hired by Quinnipiac for the hiring process, keyed in on Dunleavy a couple of weeks after the national search began.

“I’d never seen the school, but I knew it had a really good reputation in terms of facilities. And that’s certainly the case,” Dunleavy said. “I knew it was a really good academic school, an up-and-coming academic school that was exploding in the northeast.”

Over the next week, reports surfaced that Quinnipiac was willing to pay nearly $800,000 per year to its next head coach, which is a rare number for a mid-major program and a near $300,000 increase that Moore reportedly got. Within a few days of that report coming out, it was announced that Dunleavy, who had two interviews with the school, would be the school’s next men’s basketball head coach.

 

“It’s never one thing. Just like a player looking to commit to a school, coaching’s the same way. You want to find the right fit,” Dunleavy said. “The environment that I was used to was a really well-rounded place…I thought that on the surface was a fit. Came to school, saw the place and was blown away but what it looked like…then by far the most important thing meeting the athletic director Greg Amodio and meeting Dr. (John L.) Lahey the president, and then from there on and continuing to meet other coaches and administrators.”

Well-known college basketball analysts Jay Bilas and Bill Raftery as well as two-time NBA Coach of the Year Mike D’Antoni praised the hire.

And if Dunleavy’s as good as advertised, then Quinnipiac is lucky to have him as multiple other schools were looking to hire him, according to Nardi, who is also a close friend of his.

“I think we all knew that day was coming much sooner than later,” Nardi said. “He was just waiting for the right fit and waiting for a job that he thought he could thrive in and be successful…Not to say that those other programs weren’t good positions or spots, but Baker just didn’t feel that at the time that was the right move for him.”

Nardi didn’t specify which schools had interest in Dunleavy, but a February 2017 Sports Illustrated article reported that Dunleavy turned down multiple jobs in 2016 to stay at Villanova.

In his two interviews with the school, Dunleavy discussed how to run the program and how it can take the next step.

“Now that we’re here, the next step is establishing an identity,” Dunleavy said. “My eventual goal for this program is to be a perennial contender in the MAAC. That’s the end-goal. You can’t get there right away. My job right now is to establish a culture, an identity, a style of play, recruit and develop the players I have right now and make them the best they can be.”

In establishing the identity of his team, Dunleavy wants the Bobcats to do the simple things really well.

“We talk about playing really hard first and just being an effort team. I think every team in the country talks about that, but who commits to it? And we want to be a team that plays together,” Dunleavy said.

The men’s basketball team is coming off of its third-straight losing season in conference play. To add to this, the team lost its top-two scorers from last season in Mikey Dixon and Peter Kiss due to transfer after Dunleavy was hired as the head coach. The team also lost five other players due to graduation or transfer.

It’s clear that the school wants Dunleavy to make the NCAA Tournament after Moore failed to do it in his 10-years at Quinnipiac. But both sides aren’t expecting that result to come right away.

Only time will tell if Quinnipiac managed its wealth properly in the former Merrill Lynch employee.