The men’s assistant basketball coach is still finding himself acclimating to life at Ball State after being hired about a month ago.
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| DANNY PETERS |
On Danny Peters’ desk sits a parking ticket, a common object found wedged under windshield wipers across campus.
Peters recognizes the Village by name only.
There is, however, one facet of the university he is familiar with — its men’s basketball head coach.
The friendship between second-year head coach James Whitford and Peters is one that formed during their time in Tucson, Ariz.
Peters, a former walk-on and student manager of Ohio State’s basketball team, graduated in 2010. Less than a month later, he took the advice of one of his former coaches, Archie Miller, and joined the Arizona Wildcats as the program’s graduate manager.
There, Peters was introduced to Whitford, who was beginning his second season as an assistant on Arizona head coach Sean Miller’s staff.
“I took immediate liking to coach Whitford,” Peters said. “You can tell that he is genuinely a good person and has people’s best interests at heart.”
The two of them became close during their three years at Arizona. When Whitford became the 19th head coach in the history of Ball State basketball, he attempted to bring Peters to Muncie with him.
After consulting with Sean Miller, however, Peters chose to remain at Arizona to help fill the void created from Whitford’s departure.
Determined, Whitford continued in his pursuit of Peters. A year later, the two were reunited at Ball State.
Though Peters, 27, is young, the amount of trust that coaches have shown in him can be summed up in one word.
“Competence,” Whitford said. “One of the things you really recognize as a coach is who you can trust and who you can’t. Danny stood out right away based on his level of competence.”
To demonstrate what he meant, Whitford pulled out a thick binder in his office.
Inside, every play ran after a timeout by every team during the 2013 NBA playoffs is neatly categorized and labeled.
Its this sort of “competence” that Whitford said will make Peters very successful at all aspects of coaching, and one of the main reasons he wanted him on staff.
“I needed someone that knew the way I liked to do things,” Whitford said. “When the [assistant coaching job] opened up again, I obviously had a strong interest again because at the end of the day, [Peters] is a great basketball coach.”
For Peters, basketball has always played a part of his life.
His father, Dan Peters, is the men’s basketball operations director at the University of Akron.
Prior to his role as Akron, his father served as the head coach at Youngstown State and at Division II St. Joseph’s in Rensselaer, Ind. His father knew Whitford prior to when Peters went to Arizona, but his father and Whitford’s friendship grew when Peters was a graduate assistant.
That, in turn, made Peters and Whitford’s relationship stronger. When Peters’ father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in December 2013, their bond grew tighter.
“Whitford talks to my dad a lot,” Peters said. “If I want to talk [about my dad], I’ll talk to [Whitford]. ... [My dad’s cancer] impacts both of us.”
Taking a page from his father’s playbook, Peters remains optimistic as he readies himself for his first season as an assistant coach.
There is a positive vibe that has not been felt around the program in recent memory with the additions to the coaching staff in Peters and Brian Thornton, a former Xavier Academic All-American, and to the roster with Cincinnati transfer Jeremiah Davis III.
Peters said he thinks the program can build up to something special.
“Ball State has a phenomenal passion and following from its fanbase,” Peters said. “Is it the money that comes from Arizona? No, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t be successful. ... I’m not going to see [Ball State] across the ticker of ESPN as often, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get to that point.”
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