It wasn’t as if Dominique Collier was planning for the end of his professional playing career.
Unfortunately for the former Colorado point guard, fate proved otherwise.
Spurred in large part by diminished opportunities overseas caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Collier found himself back in his native Denver no longer playing for a paycheck while pondering the next move in his basketball journey.
Coaching was the answer.
Since his playing days ended abruptly, Collier has been an assistant coach at Accelerated Prep (formerly Denver Prep), the local prep school that helped produce current CU freshman forward Assane Diop.
“I was still trying to play at that time, but with me not playing the previous year and a half, that hurt me getting back overseas. That’s when I got into coaching,” Collier said. “I was still trying to play at the same time. That’s when I got into coaching at Denver Prep, and then over the years I really got into the coaching scene.
“I look at it as both an opportunity and a challenge.”
At Accelerated Prep, Collier helped tutor Diop as well as classmate Baye Fall, currently a freshman at Arkansas. Diop often participated in pickup games around Denver even with Collier before both of them landed at Accelerated Prep.
Given Diop is beginning a journey similar to the one undertaken by Collier as a local prep star (at Denver East) who played collegiately at CU, the former Buffs guard has been a source of wisdom for the freshman forward.
“I’ve been telling him every time I see him, ‘You’re a good player. I don’t know why you’re not playing right now.’ Because he’s really good,” Diop said. “When he got to the prep school, he would keep me there maybe 20 minutes (after practice), giving me stuff to do. He’s been very helpful, for sure.”
At CU, Collier was the starting point guard as a sophomore for the Buffs’ 2015-16 NCAA Tournament team, but he adjusted to a bench role and an off-guard position the following year when Derrick White took over the point, and Collier remained in that sort of role as a senior when McKinley Wright IV assumed the point guard spot.
Collier also played professionally in Germany, and it is that range of experiences he believes has given him a depth of wisdom to share with prep standouts hoping to take the next step.
“I want to take it as far as I could go with it,” Collier said of his coaching goals. “I think I have great knowledge of the game, and then being a player and the kind of player I was. I wasn’t the most athletic or the fastest or none of that. So I had to really think the game. I bring that (to coaching), just my knowledge and playing in different situations.
“I was a starter. I came off the bench. I was a point guard, I was a shooting guard. So I played a lot of different roles in college and I know how it works. And that’s their goal — they come to prep school to go to college and play at the next level. So I’m trying to teach them every day just how that is and what coaches are looking for to be recruited. It’s just a lot of the little things that I’m trying to instill in them right now.”
Notable
The Buffs lost 20 points in this week’s Associated Press Top 25 vote but moved up one spot among the others receiving votes, unofficially landing at No. 27. … The CU women remain at No. 8 this week.
