He could have played for the New York Yankees, but chose not to. He tried to play in the NBA, but didn’t make the cut.
So now Mitch Henderson spends his time with the Northwestern men’s basketball team. After Bill Carmody accepted the men’s basketball head coaching position at NU in 2000, he asked Henderson to join his staff as an assistant.
While the 28-year-old never planned on being a coach, he’s turned into a vital part of Carmody’s staff. Always in action, challenging players to go a step further during practices, Henderson is a player-coach of sorts. He works primarily with guards, but also runs drills with the entire team. At times he even pulls players aside to help them fine-tune their game.
“He’s a perfectionist,” Carmody said. “If we haven’t done it right, he wants to get it to work against the best guys, the best teams.”
Henderson played for Carmody at Princeton, where he started at point guard from 1994 to ’98 and helped lead the Tigers to an upset over UCLA in the first round of the 1996 NCAA Tournament.
After his college career, he tried to make his way onto an NBA roster, but got cut after auditioning with the Atlanta Hawks and Sacramento Kings in 1999.
Henderson then had a six-month stint with a professional team in Ireland, which turned out to be the end of his playing days.
“I had my time and I was done playing,” he said.
In addition to his basketball feats, Henderson also excelled in baseball. The Yankees drafted him out of high school in 1994, but he opted to pursue an undergraduate education and basketball.
Carmody said Henderson’s athleticism is just one of the impressive qualities he brings to the Wildcats coaching staff.
“He has a good eye for details,” Carmody said. “He’s got a lot of energy and when he instructs, he doesn’t just talk to talk. When he says something it’s almost always right on.”
Henderson said his decision to work on the Cats’ staff presented him with an ideal situation — helping a school other than the Tigers implement the Princeton offense. The possibility of making history at NU, which never has qualified for the NCAA Tournament, also intrigued him.
“Eventually we’re going to start having some successes here,” Henderson said. “We’re going to get rid of that nametag on this program.”
To turn around the program, Henderson said he tries to instill a strong work ethic in the players.
“I mean, get into a habit of doing things as hard as you can all the time,” he said. “And we keep asking our guys, ‘Do you want to get better?’ You skyrocket once you make a commitment to that.”
Senior guard Jitim Young, who has worked under the tutelage of Henderson since his freshman year, said he appreciates the assistant coach’s blunt style.
Young said Henderson once told him he could improve his dribbling by emulating NBA guards Jason Kidd and Stephon Marbury.
The senior also said Henderson serves as a constant reminder of how to thrive at the collegiate level.
“Coach Carmody used to tell me how when coach Mitch was a freshman he used to turn the ball over like crazy and he wasn’t that good of a player,” Young said. “But as he worked on his game, when he was a junior or a senior, he became a special point guard, one of his favorite players.”
And Young added he often sees that player at practices.
“Sometimes coach Mitch, in scrimmages, scores 20 points on us,” Young said. “He’s definitely a competitor and he loves the game. He’s got the little boyish face and everything, but he’s a tough guy.”
