Josh Pace scanned the Beer Barrel restaurant and started to chuckle. His Manawatu Jets teammates and their Taranaki opponents filled into tables and chairs around him, a National Basketball League postgame meal setup different from the other leagues and countries Pace had played in before. He liked that about New Zealand.

During Pace’s 2012 season with the Jets, Beer Barrel, a sponsor restaurant, often served lamb during the shared meal — one of the country’s staples. Other times, it was just pasta and salad. But this one was special. It was just hours after Manawatu had notched its first berth in the NBL’s final four in nine years with a 27-point drubbing of Taranaki. Pace turned back toward Ryan Weisenberg, Manawatu’s head coach.

“Coach, this crap would never happen over in the States,” Weisenberg recalled Pace saying, “because they’d just end up in fights all the time.”

It was the last postgame victory meal the Jets had that season — a year in which Pace led the league in scoring and helped turn the Jets, a perennial bottom-feeder, into one of the NBL’s top teams. And through the 12 rounds of games, a job offer had surfaced: If Weisenberg ever received a Division I head coaching position, Pace had an assistant spot reserved for him.

Three years later, that opportunity arose with Pepperdine. Their relationship that had started when Weisenberg worked with the Los Angeles Lakers, scouting the 2003 NCAA National Championship Pace won with Syracuse, blossomed in New Zealand and became an eventual coaching avenue for Pace. Four years with Pepperdine women’s basketball turned into an associate coach job with the Western New Mexico women’s team. And on March 31, the former SU point guard was promoted to head coach — his first chance to lead a program rebuild and construct a culture similar to the one he helped build at Pepperdine.

“His path was set for him because he always made the right choices of who he wanted to play for, where he wanted to play, and then soaking up everything that was taught to him,” Weisenberg said.

When Pace first arrived at Pepperdine, he was immediately tasked with guards and recruiting. He incorporated drills that Weisenberg said resembled the player he coached with Manawatu, the one with strong court vision and at-the-rim finishing. Floaters, in-and-outs, reverse layups and left-hand layups all became tactics Pace focused on with the Waves’ guards, including Barbara Sitanggan and Malia Bambrick, two of their top three scorers in 2018-19 when they won the program’s first postseason games in the modern era.

Those same skills helped Pace carve out a backup guard role on Syracuse’s 2003 National Championship team, scoring 34 points in the last four games of the Orange’s title run. After graduating in 2005, he bounced around the American Basketball Association and the NBL for the next 10 years, some years timing the seasons to play in both. He earned All-Star Five honors during his first season out of college with the NBL’s Nelson Giants, an award he earned twice more throughout his career — including the 2012 season with Manawatu.

In Pace’s first year at Pepperdine, Weisenberg poked his head into Pace’s office from time to time and invited him to train with DeLisha Milton-Jones, a former Los Angeles Sparks player, in the offseason. When he did, Pace became the workout partner for Milton-Jones — then a WNBA free agent who drove up with her husband to use the Waves’ facilities. And when she retired after the 2016 season, Milton-Jones joined Pace on Weisenberg’s Pepperdine bench. She eventually took over as head coach before the 2018 season, serving as the next prepper for Pace to eventually take over his own program.

“I allowed him to really spread his wings and get his feet wet in a lot of things … a few times I let him run practice in my absence or draw up the practice plan,” Milton-Jones, now a women’s basketball assistant coach at SU, said. 

Opportunities away from Pepperdine initially started with high schools and academies. Then, they turned into offers like Western New Mexico right before the 2018-19 season. But Weisenberg urged him to ask for more, even the associate head coach title, before Pace was lured away as an assistant for the Division-II Lone Star Conference program. He knew Pace didn’t want a head coaching position until he was ready yet still wanted him to leverage his West Coast Conference years with the Waves.

And on March 27, almost a year and a half later, Weisenberg’s phone rang. He’d been a reference for Pace after the WNMU head coach resigned, one of the last calls the Mustangs’ athletic director made before offering Pace the vacancy. 

When Weisenberg lured Pace away from the professional leagues, he figured it’d only be for a year or two. High-major programs and head coaching jobs were inevitably going to start arising. Their year in Manawatu, he observed hints Pace gave that suggested future coaching jobs, hints like the way Pace directed younger players on the court and the way he hung out in the coaches locker room after games — cracking open New Zealand beers and talking about the games for so long they often showed up late to those shared team meals.

Pace’s four seasons at Pepperdine — two which overlapped with Weisenberg and three with Milton-Jones — brought out those hints. That’s what Weisenberg told everyone who called him. He and Pace talked through details of the WNMU offer, similar conversations Pace had with Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim and his family, among others.

“I probably jumped out there earlier than I had to,” Pace said, “but I think at the end of the day, it made sense for me.”

At the end of their call three days later, though, their conversation’s topic switched. After leaving Pepperdine, Weisenberg became more involved in the high school basketball sphere, and Pace knew that. He’d just accepted the job, but wanted to get started on recruiting.

“If you want to be a head coach, you gotta start somewhere. And I felt like one day, even if this isn’t the opportunity … why not now,” Pace said. “At the end of the day, why not now.”

Published on April 16, 2020 at 11:13 pm

Contact Andrew: arcrane@syr.edu | @CraneAndrew