Hamburg grad helps form Basketball Tournament team to raise awareness for mental health

Jul. 14—When a former and a current manager for the Marist College men's basketball team approached him with their idea to form a team to enter The Basketball Tournament, Kevin Driscoll was willing to listen.

When they told him they were planning to raise awareness for mental health, Driscoll was all in.

A Hamburg High School graduate and former Hawks boys coach, the 39-year-old Driscoll has been afflicted with anxiety for a long time.

"This is near and dear to my heart because I can relate to it," said Driscoll, who's in his fourth year as a Marist assistant coach. "I was going to help these guys either way. But when they mentioned raising awareness for mental health, that was huge.

"I've been suffering from anxiety for the better part of the last 20 years. I was all for the cause."

Mental Toughness, the first team in TBT history to be devoted to mental health awareness, is the No. 13 seed in the Wichita Region and will face the fourth-seeded L.A. Cheaters in its opener at 3 p.m. Saturday (ESPN3).

The Basketball Tournament is an open-application, single-elimination tournament played each summer in the United States since 2014. This year's tournament has 64 teams and a $1 million winner-take-all prize.

The Mental Toughness team is the brainchild of Sean McGee, a 2020 Marist graduate who was a Red Foxes manager and is now an assistant coach at Manhattanville College. McGee reached out to Zach Kelley, a senior manager at Marist, to see if he'd be interested in helping to form a TBT team.

After McGee suggested playing for mental health awareness, Kelley eventually found the JCK Foundation and executive director John Tessitore. The foundation in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., not far from Manhattanville, aims to empower students and their communities and was established in memory of Tessitore's best friend, who committed suicide at the age of 24 after battling depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

After one Zoom call, Tessitore agreed to help McGee and Kelley raise money and awareness for mental health. The next step was finding players, which led them to contact Driscoll.

A college assistant for 12 years and director of The Hoop Group Elite Camp for four years, Driscoll is friendly with many basketball coaches and players. As the general manager of Mental Toughness, he's charged with assembling talent.

"We started with a kid I recruited and coached at Holy Cross, Jehyve Floyd," Driscoll said. "He played in Israel this past year. He just signed to play for a top team in the top league in Greece. He's done really well."

Floyd, in turn, recruited one of his close friends, Marques Townes, who led Loyola (Ill.) to the 2018 NCAA Final Four and who was the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year that season. Townes is playing professionally in Estonia.

Driscoll added three more significant players: Jonah Radebaugh, a three-time Big Sky Defensive Player of the Year who's a pro in Germany; Brandon Randolph, who played collegiately at Arizona and who's now with the Wisconsin Herd, the Milwaukee Bucks' G League team; and Quincy McKnight, who played at Sacred Heart and Seton Hall and who's with the Fort Wayne Mad Ants, the Detroit Pistons' G League team.

"We got a solid five there," Driscoll said.

Jeff Coby (Columbia), Sean Hoehn (Sacred Heart), Kory Holden (South Alabama, South Carolina, Delaware) and D'Angelo Hunter (West Virginia, Navarro, Nicholls State) fill out the roster.

Driscoll asked Josh King, a friend from their Hoop Group days who's coaching in Germany, to be the head coach for Mental Toughness. McGee and Tessitore will serve as assistants, and Kelley as director of basketball operations.

They did all the legwork before they knew they were in the 64-team field. More than 110 teams applied to enter.

"They obviously want good content, so the better the players the better your chances are," Driscoll said. "Thirty-two teams received invitations based on their past history. There's a committee that voted on another 32 teams.

"We made it based on the strength of our roster and that we're also the first team in this tournament to raise awareness for mental health. That played a big part in it."

Several Mental Toughness players have coped with mental health issues. Floyd wrote a book, "Godfidence," that was published in March and details his battle with depression. McKnight lost his mother to mental illness when he was young. Coby has social media accounts addressing depression and anxiety.

"The cause is really important to a big part of our roster," Driscoll said.

Including the team's general manager.

"You can't explain anxiety," Driscoll said. "Your phone could be ringing or vibrating and you don't want to look at it. It just pops up. A simple task can feel like everything's caving in. I like to say it feels like someone has metal hooks in my shoulders."

TBT organizers have allowed Mental Toughness to provide players and coaches on every team with a packet of information on mental health resources.

The team also is seeking to raise $11,000 for the JCK Foundation. More than $6,000 has already been raised through a GoFundMe page and sponsorships. Information on the team can be found on its Twitter account, @ToughnessTBT.

"I think it (mental health) is super important in basketball," Kelley told Marist sports information director Mike Ferraro. "We live in this culture where men and athletes stay silent. We want to use the platform of ESPN to say it's OK not to be OK. We are stronger together."