The St. John’s men’s basketball program welcomes Greg Youncofski who will serve as the team’s Director of Basketball Operations. A native of Middletown, N.J., Youncofski joins Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame coach Rick Pitino‘s staff with over a decade of Division I experience that includes stops at Loyola Marymount, UCLA, Cincinnati and Kansas.
Youncofski arrived in Queens after spending the past four seasons as an assistant coach at Loyola Marymount under Head Coach Stan Johnson. During his tenure in Los Angeles, Youncofski helped lead the Lions to a pair of winning campaigns, including a 19-win season in 2022-23 that marked the third-most victories for the program in more than three decades. Youncofski also helped mentor 2022-23 All-WCC First Team selection and Lou Henson Award National Player of the Year finalist Cam Shelton, who averaged 21.2 points per game that season.
In 2022-23, Youncofski helped the Lions earn the highest ranked win, 68-67, in program history on Jan. 19, 2023, by defeating sixth-ranked Gonzaga in Spokane, Wash. The win ended the Bulldogs’ 75-game home win streak, 93 straight triumphs over unranked teams and 25 consecutive victories against LMU. Nearly a month later, LMU took down 15th-ranked Saint Mary’s, 78-74, in overtime to become the first Lions team in over a decade to knock off a pair of top-15 teams in the same season.
Prior to his time at LMU, Youncofski spent one season as the Director of Recruiting/Player Personnel for the UCLA men’s basketball program under Head Coach Mick Cronin. The Bruins went 19-12 and earned the No. 2 seed in the Pac-12 Tournament before the COVID-19 global pandemic ended the 2019-20 season.
Youncofski previously spent six seasons with Cronin at Cincinnati. He began his tenure with the Bearcats in 2013, serving three years as a program assistant before being promoted to video coordinator for the 2016-17 campaign and then video, analytics, and recruiting coordinator for the 2017-18 season. Youncofski was elevated to assistant coach at Cincinnati in 2018-19 and helped lead the Bearcats to the American Athletic Conference (AAC) championship with a 69-57 victory over Houston in the title game.
Youncofski was named to the 2023 Silver Wave Media’s 75 Rising Stars: Impactful Men’s Mid-Major Assistants list. Additionally, he was selected to participate in the 2023 Collegiate Coaching Consortium, which is hosted by the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) and AthleticDirectorsU. Youncofski also received recognition as one of Under Armour’s “30-under-30” honorees in 2017-18 by the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC). He serves on the Board of Directors for Rising Coaches Elite, an organization dedicated to facilitate learning, growth and networking within the coaching realm.
Youncofski earned his bachelor’s degree from Kansas in 2013, where he worked three seasons as a men’s basketball student manager while assisting the team’s Director of Basketball Operations. Prior to college, Youncofski was a three-year varsity winner at Middletown High School North from 2007-09.
