Rocky grad Robinson right at home at ISU
Daniyal Robinson had a busy first week on the job as an Iowa State assistant basketball coach.
He had meetings with head coach Greg McDermott, meetings with players and still more meetings with McDermott and the rest of the Cyclones coaching staff. And he spent a lot of downtime with the players before they bolted campus at the end of the semester.
At the end of the week, though, one thing was abundantly clear to the 1995 Rock Island High School graduate: The move to Ames was a good one, the right one after one season at Arkansas-Little Rock.
“As an assistant coach you want to continue to make progression,” Robinson said Monday night. “Everyone wants to move up in the profession, and this would definitely be considered a move up. It means a lot to be working with a good group, and you’re at a place like Iowa State where they have had success in the past.”
Robinson, who played a year at Indian Hills Community College and two years at Arkansas-Little Rock from 1995 to ’98, was hired last week to fill the vacancy left by Jean Prioleau, who took an assistant job at TCU on April 29.
McDermott said he wanted to move fast with the hiring, and he did. Robinson’s hiring was announced May 5.
“I phone interviewed several candidates, and I brought Daniyal to campus first, and he sold me that he was the guy for the job,” McDermott said, adding that he had kept Robinson on his radar of potential assistants since the two coached against each other when McDermott was the head man at Northern Iowa and Robinson an assistant at Illinois State.
“I really think Daniyal is very complete. Besides his eight years of experience, I have just been impressed with his ability to develop relationships with the people he has worked for and the players he has coached.”
After graduating from Arkansas-Little Rock in 1999, Robinson, 32, was an administrative assistant at his alma mater from 2000 to 2002. He was on Porter Moses’ staff at Illinois State for four seasons after that before returning to Little Rock last year.
He has plenty of experience recruiting the Midwest, which will be an area of focus in his new position. He said one of the things decided last week was his recruiting territory, which will be the Midwest, focusing on Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City, along with Texas, specifically the Dallas area.
Robinson also will continue to recruit his hometown. He was involved in bringing Bettendorf’s Mike Vandello to Illinois State a few year’s back, and he said he and the ISU coaching staff will keep a close eye on the talent in Quad-Cities. They grabbed one area player, Davenport Central all-stater L.A. Pomlee, in their latest recruiting class, and there are others on the radar.
Things only figure to get busier for Robinson, who left his wife, Kim, and two children — daughter Devyn, 5, and son Reece, 2 — back in Little Rock for the time being. He put his house on the market and plans to move his family to Ames once Devyn finishes school in June.
Robinson file
Age: 32
Hometown: Rock Island
High school: Rock Island, 1991-95
College: Indian Hill Community College/Arkansas-Little Rock, 1995-98
Coaching experience: Arkansas-Little Rock, 2000-02 (administrative assistant); Illinois State, 2003-07 (assistant); Arkansas-Little Rock, 2007-08 (assistant); Iowa State, 2008 (assistant)
Eric Page can be contacted at (563) 383-2277 or epage@qctimes.com.