I just knew I trusted him and he was going to take care of me.”
We didn’t have to talk about roles (at Cincinnati). “I knew from the moment I met him that he and I had similar values, similar passion and energy for people. “I have a head coach who is a great coach and a great person, which is a rare combination in college athletics,” LePore said. LePore figured he would have to take a step down and cut his teeth in a support role when making the leap from the Southern Conference to UC, but Miller had been a hot up-and-coming name on the coaching market for a few seasons by that point, and LePore long had decided he was hitching his wagon to wherever Miller’s ascendant star ended up. “We’ve always had a really good relationship, and I’ve always told him that I didn’t know what the future would hold, but he would always have a place on my staff.” “He did such a great job for me as a graduate assistant, he kind of set the standard for what we want a GA to be,” Miller said. He spent the previous seven seasons on Miller’s staff at UNCG, first as a graduate assistant before climbing to a bench assistant. LePore admits he didn’t even know what exactly his role would be with the Bearcats when he blindly accepted the job offer, but he wasn’t concerned. It’s a small but telling signal of how quickly he has embraced his new program and city. Less than 14 months after he arrived in Cincinnati as the first member of Miller’s coaching staff, the Queen City delicacy already has become a familiar comfort food for LePore, right down to the hot sauce splashed across his oyster crackers.
LePore recounts the moment at a table inside the Skyline Chili on Ludlow Avenue, just north of UC’s campus. “The first conversation we had about it - and it might have been five minutes, because we wanted to tell our guys (at UNC Greensboro) before it leaked out - but Coach Miller was like, ‘Are you coming with me?’ And I was like, ‘My bags are packed. “It was a Wednesday evening,” LePore said, remembering the night in April 2021 when Miller officially was announced as the head coach of Cincinnati’s men’s basketball program. CINCINNATI - Chris LePore was ready to go wherever Wes Miller was headed.