Q&A with Purdue women's basketball assistant/recruiting coordinator Mark Stephens
Why Stephens joined coach Katie Gearlds coaching staff and his role in helping re-shape the program from a recruiting standpoint
Mark Stephens played in two semi-professional indoor football leagues.
He had a chance to play in the Canadian Football League.
Stephens also coached football, along with basketball and baseball, and picking which one to pursue became an easy choice.
“It’s 72 and sunny,” Stephens said. “That's the worst it gets. I'm standing outside in the cold weather and it's 72 and sunny in the gym every day.”
In the middle of his first season on Katie Gearlds’ Purdue women’s basketball staff, Stephens serves as one of three assistant coaches but also holds the title of recruiting coordinator.
That’s an important position as Gearlds re-tools the program and Stephens’ efforts have already injected some much-needed recruiting juice into the future classes. Along with the three-player 2024 class, which is already signed, the Boilermakers have two commitments from the 2025 class - South Bend Washington’s Kira Reynolds and Brownsburg’s Avery Gordon - and scholarship offers to the top players in 2026 and 2027, including Lillie Graves, who’s a freshman at nearby McCutcheon.
His basketball coaching career has included overseeing in-state AAU programs, the foundation for developing players, cultivating talent, and establishing connections that still resonate today. He was the head coach for three years at Crispus Attacks in Indianapolis before moving to Xavier and Toledo as an assistant coach.
At Toledo, he spent four seasons working for former Purdue women’s basketball player Tricia Cullop, upgrading the Rockets’ talent pool and maintaining the program as one of the best in the Mid-American Conference.
“Him and I get along really well,” Gearlds said. “We’ve got the same laid-back attitude about a lot of things but we’re going to get into you and push you. He knows everybody in the recruiting world. His continual grind and work ethic, and I’ve known him for a long time, and I thought he would be a really good piece for us.”
While football satisfied a level of passion, basketball eventually won out.
“In basketball, you get three or four games in a week, and in football, you load up all week to play one game on Friday in high school, or if it’s college, it's Saturday,” said Stephens, who was a two-sport athlete (football, basketball) at Morehead State, earning a combined six letters. “Basketball is just a constant chess match and I think that's what I enjoy.
“I enjoy the Xs and Os and the weekly process. I like the grind. I think that's what you get more with basketball. In football, you're doing all that and you get one shot.”
Stephens sat down for a Q&A about why he came to Purdue, the challenge of restoring the program back to its championship ways from a recruiting standpoint and dealing with the NCAA transfer portal and NIL in today’s landscape.
Purdue assistant coach/recruiting coordinator Mark Stephens (Dave Wegiel Photography)
Question: Why did you decide to join Katie’s staff?
Answer: I think the biggest thing is Purdue is Purdue. I spent, gosh, 12-15 years in Indianapolis and over that time just being to coach, not only high school girls basketball players that came here like Ae’Rianna (Harris) - she actually committed to Purdue in my gym when I was coaching at Crispus Attacks.
It’s one of those universities that just breaths basketball. I think that's been really cool and it’s not just women's basketball, but I coached men's basketball before I got into women's basketball. The (Terone and Ronnie) Johnsons have come through here. I used to run ISSA, which is a basketball facility on the south side (Indianapolis). I saw JaJuan Johnson from Franklin Central two or three times a week, and I coached baseball players who came here and football players when I coached at Southport.
Just knowing what Purdue is, I think is the biggest draw. Actually, before I took the job, I went to coach Trish’s office, and she said Mark, ‘You gotta go. You've done almost everything I could ask for here. As a competitor, you need to go. It's a good place.’ Obviously, she graduated from here.
It’s been good. I didn't want to be just the best mid-major recruiting coordinator or the defensive coordinator, I want to see if I can compete for the best players and get those best players. At Toledo, we could get a really good mid-major kid and then they'll be like, ‘Oh, well sorry, I'm going to Nebraska, or I'm going to Purdue, I'm going to Wisconsin’ at the last minute where you work your tail off and you lose those kids at the end.
Now, it's those same phone calls I'm enjoying getting to make, and like I told you the other day - my job is to recruit the best players in the country. They gotta tell me no. That’s just my mindset. I try to stay in my lane, and I try to dominate. I want to be the best recruiting coordinator in the country. I think that's my job.”
Q: You were in Indiana when this program was in its heyday. How much does it drive you to get back to that point?
A: It does and when you look and you see the Big Ten championships and you hear the stories of when Ae’Rianna was talking about how they're winning championships and you obviously get the chance to work with Katie and Z (Kelly Komara) and Alex (Guyton) and they’ve won Big Ten championships and you look around the offices and you see all these things: ‘I want to get one of those, too.’ The facilities, I've been around, and I've come to more than three or four dozen Purdue games and you walk around, and you see this what they're pouring into basketball. We have everything that we need here to win and now it’s about continuing to get 1% better each day and continue to try and up our recruiting and up the product on the floor. I think we've got great kids. We're slowly getting in that direction.
Our ‘25 class has already got two top 50 kids in the country. We talked about stacking days in basketball and what we're trying to do is stack classes and I think the freshmen with Mary Ashley (Stevenson), Rashunda (Jones) and Sophie (Swanson) are slowly coming on and it's still not discounting Mila (Reynolds), Aliana (Harper) and those kids, but Amiyah (Reynolds) hasn't played yet. When you get the 40th-best player in the country on the floor … you can see the direction that we're going to continue.
Q: Amiyah is a little bit of a forgotten piece outside the program but do people truly understand how talented she is? She's like an extra recruit in your 2024 class.
A: If you look at it that way, now you bring in Amiyah in the ‘24 class, who's a six-foot point guard that can dribble, pass, shoot, elevate, and defend. JT (Jeanae Terry) has been phenomenal and taking nothing away from JT, but when you have a kid who is an elite passer and an elite defender and you bring in Jordy (Poole from Fort Wayne Snider), who's maybe just the opposite. Jordy is a pass-first kid but an elite defender and just smaller in stature, but again, the way both of them can pressure the basketball and push the basketball and we bring back Rashunda. Next year, we might be younger on paper but we’re going to be a lot more talented.
Q: You mentioned that you wanted to see what you could do at this level. But at what point in your career did you start pointing toward getting to this level? And how has that path worked out for you?
A: That's what I think I've done a good job of - I just try to own my role and be in the moment. I never thought that I would get to this moment. I always just wanted to work hard every year from where I was. I think it was my second year at Toledo and I was like, ‘Man I'm pretty good at this.’ I think that just being genuine in the recruiting process. But the challenge is when you're able to find kids in the back gym. Everybody can locate the best 20 kids in the country. But what happens when you're trying to find kids 50 through 150 or 50 through 300 and find those kids who can help you win basketball games. I think that's what I can do a pretty good job of. I think just slowly doing that and then doing the defensive work or the guard work or the post work and I think that’s when you see the product that you're putting out on the floor. You're just like, ‘I enjoy this. I enjoyed beating Iowa State in the NCAA Tournament (with Toledo), but I didn’t enjoy losing to Tennessee’ but you're looking at it, and you're like, ‘That's what people don't realize; there's a lot of really good mid-major coaches out there. There's a lot of really good mid-majors.’ That's why those players are getting poached and brought to the Big Ten.
That's where I hopefully will do a good job here is those kids end up in the mid-majors just because Power 5 coaches don't do their homework. They just sit on the best 20 kids in the country, and they try to get one of them. But that's where it's kind of a disadvantage for a mid-major because you do have to do your homework. I think I almost do too much homework where I can kind of speed up my process a little bit, too, and just find that diamond that can help you win basketball games.
Mark Stephens and Katie Gearlds talk strategy (Dave Wegiel Photography)
Q: Recruiting is currently a big part of your job, along with coaching, but what makes a good recruiter, and how is that maybe changed over the years since it's a different landscape than it was five years ago or maybe a year ago?
A: I think it's just at the end of the day, it's who you get. That's what they always are gonna judge you on with your recruiting classes. But for me, I think I'm just trying to be the same. I just try to underpromise and over-deliver. I think that's just the biggest thing. A lot of people tell these kids lies and tell them they're going to be one thing and that's what I love about coach Katie, that's what I loved about Trisha. What you see is what you get with Katie. I think that's where recruits and their families feel wholesome because I can tell you, ‘Hey, you're a six foot two kid and I'm gonna play you as a guard but when you get here, I'm gonna put you at the 4 or I'm gonna make you a post player.’ And that's what happens to a lot of these kids. Through the recruiting process, especially this whole NIL thing and the roster management and COVID was a big thing, too, is just being honest with kids. Sometimes, we would love not to live in the portal, but I think the transfer portal can be good and bad. I think at the end of the day, everybody has their decision, but I think that's the biggest transition for recruiting right now – the portal and NIL. For me, I just try to shoot everybody straight. Like I said, underpromise and over-deliver, and be genuine and honest.
Q: How important is high school recruiting to build a program and understand that the portal is there, and you have to use it, but do you guys still want to use high school as your base?
A: I think so for sure. You walk into our locker room where we preach family. It's kind of tough preaching family when you're getting kids for one year or two years, and they're basically just coming in, and it's basketball, and you're out the door. We would love to have high school be our foundation, be our base. But then, obviously, when you're building teams, it's like you're building a car. You gotta have four wheels, a windshield and a steering wheel. And that's kind of the same thing. At the end of the year, we'll sit down and see what we need. And if we need to go try and plug a hole for a year or two, then we will but we love what we've been doing on the high school front.
That's why we're able to get some of these kids and we're hopefully gonna continue to try and get some of these kids because sometimes kids don't like looking over their shoulder. I tell our team now – ‘It’s my job to recruit the best player in the country; it’s your job not to lose your job.’ Yes, we're going to continue to try and get better, but I'm not going to go out and get three point guards when we have two on the roster.
I think that's what our kids love about what we're doing is that we're gonna give you a shot, but in a year or two years from now if you haven’t proven that, ‘Hey, you're not quite getting the job done.’ Then it is our job to care about the other 10-12 kids on our roster to try and get them better teammates.
Q: When you started working for Purdue, did the name still carry the weight even though the program has not been as visible nationally over the last few years?
A: When you look at Purdue as far as what I mean, like you said, we haven't been successful and we're gonna say successful as in winning Big Ten championships. We haven't had a bad losing season. We've always been right at .500 or better, but the Purdue standards – we’ll say that – the Purdue standard. It was what, 2015, 16 was the last time they had like a really big season. But again, that’s one class, if you think about it. That's just one graduation cycle away. And I think everybody's excited about Katie. obviously, having coach Z (Komara) here is awesome. What Tiffani (Grimes, Deputy Athletic Director, Senior Women’s Administrator) does for our program – I had a pretty good SWA at Toledo – but Tiffani is a rockstar. She's trying to give us everything that we possibly need to continue to push it in the right direction.
We’re able to get every recruit to take our telephone calls because they can see the direction that we want to take this program, they see the facilities, they see what we're … I was just talking to the young lady this morning, and it's like when UCLA and Oregon and Washington (join the Big Ten) and you think about it - Purdue is perfect - we're right in the middle of the map. You walk five minutes to get to the airport, and you're on the plane in five minutes. When you land, you're back in your apartment in five minutes. For the landscape of trying to navigate everything, and if you're a high academic kid, obviously we have great academics and if you want to play high basketball, we have the visibility.
When I came back here, everybody still loves Purdue. In the state of Indiana, it’s either Purdue or any Indiana and you don't go back and forth. I don't know many Purdue fans who are now Indiana fans. Well, the biggest thing to us is just to continue to draw back those extreme loyalists and just to continue to bring all of those people back who have been dormant for the last couple of years.
Q: So what does this program need from a recruiting standpoint?
I think just to continue to stack classes. Katie has done a great job with getting the pieces like Abbey (Ellis), the JT’s, and the portals and like (Lasha) Petree last year, and I think the biggest thing right now is just to continue to find kids who fit the Purdue standard. I think the biggest thing is the kids that's gonna play hard. And I think that's where we continue to find kids that just play hard; we can teach them Xs and Os and offense, defense, and continue to find kids who are great academic kids. What's funny is even being on the club side a lot that does scare away some kids because some kids just want to go to school and play basketball. You can't do that here, right? Academics have to be a huge part of what you do. We want kids whose points per game are four or five times higher than their GPA. But at the same time, we also want to get 3.5 kids, and if they average 18 a game that'd be awesome.
It's a little challenging because it also those - and not saying all of them - but then even some of those kids, you take a 17 or 18-year-old kid, ‘Yeah, I'm gonna give you $50, $60 $70,000’ and some schools are just automatically gonna be left out of that realm. But if you want a kid that, ‘Hey, I want to get a good academic diploma, I want to play a high level of basketball,’ and we're going to be in a lot of those conversations.
And like I said, Katie just screams swagger and it’s not just that. She's so bright on both sides of the basketball floor and that's what's really cool. Some coaches just like offense, or some coaches just like defense, but not only is she a hooper, and kids love to be around her, but her Xs and Os are really good. And I think that's why we're going to continue to elevate our next couple of classes
Q: Is in-state still a huge priority?
A: If you look at – and I'm trying to think who does it - whether it's ESPN or Prep Hoop Girls and in ‘24 obviously Jordyn (Poole) is the No. 1 kid and in ‘25, we've got two of the best and the ‘26 class we have offers out to Nos. 1, 2 and 4 (ranked players). In the ‘27 class, obviously, we've got an offer out to somebody who’s in our backyard.
If you look at what a lot of people have done and I even give (Michigan coach) Kim (Arrico) a lot of credit. When you look at her past couple of years, yes, she had Naz (Hillman), but her next best three players were from the state of Indiana. I think that’s our job - to try to keep the best ones here.