WNY Native Hartman, Enjoying March Madness as member of Gators Coaching Staff

He actually thought he was done with coaching basketball for a time. Carlin Hartman was an assistant for two years — one at Rice and one at McNeese State — after finishing his playing career at Tulane and the CBA back in the late Nineties.

But the Buffalo native and former Grand Island star had a wife, Christine, and two baby girls. Like a lot of aspiring young coaches in a highly competitive business, Hartman decided to seek a more stable, lucrative job. He stepped away from coaching in 1998 to take a position in pharmaceutical sales.

He lasted four years. The problem was, it wasn’t basketball. Pharmaceuticals could pay the bills, but it couldn’t satisfy his life’s passion.

“I got out of coaching, thought I wanted to do something else,” Hartman said Monday. “But I loved it too much. I wanted to get back in and fortunately got right back in where I left off.  I was lucky to get back in and the rest is history.”

Hartman was rehired at Rice as director of basketball operations in 2002, thus beginning a long, winding road, a journey of perseverance that has taken him and his family to a dozen coaching stops in a quarter century of coaching. Three years ago, after five years at Oklahoma, he was hired as associate head coach at Florida.

Until this season, Hartman had been to six NCAA tourneys, either as a player or an assistant coach, and never advanced past the second round. Then Florida went on a magical run that culminated in a remarkable, 84-79, comeback win over Texas Tech in the West Regional final last Saturday. So at age 52, Hartman will finally participate in a Final Four this weekend in San Antonio.

“It’s exciting, getting back to this point,” Hartman said. Florida won back-to-back national championships under Billy Donovan in 2006-07 and went to the Elite Eight five times in seven years from 2011-17. But this was the first time the Gators reached a Sweet 16 in eight years, and they made the most of it.

“The university is used to winning a lot and winning big," said Hartman, who came to Gainesville with head coach Todd Golden in 2022. “Billy Donovan’s name obviously resonates throughout our halls. Todd is similar to Billy in a lot of ways. From where we were when we first got here to where we are now, he has, and we as a staff have solidified ourselves … and got to the Final Four.”

The Gators went 16-17 in 2022-23, their first season under Golden and Hartman. Last year, they won 24 games and reached the SEC title game for the first time in 10 years. This season, they went to another level, winning the SEC tourney championship and a regional title. They’re 34-4 and have won 10 consecutive games, eight of them against teams in the national rankings.

“I would say we’re probably peaking at the right time,” Hartman said. “Now, the tournament is very unforgiving. We noticed that our second-round game was going to be a bear, against UConn. You’re talking about the two-time defending national champ. They didn’t have the same roster, but they’d still won 13 NCAA Tournament games in a row. Once we got through that, we’re OK. Now we’re here, and we believe in what we’ve been doing all year. Our guys have adhered to everything we’ve taught them.”Florida beat UConn by two after trailing for much of the game. For once, Hartman had averted a second-round exit. A much greater crisis came in last Saturday’s regional final in San Francisco. The Gators trailed Texas Tech by nine, 73-64, with 3:52 left. Things appeared grim. Florida, third in the country in scoring at 85.7 points a game, had picked a bad time to go cold.

“Our season flashed before our eyes,” said assistant Jonathan Safir, a Williamsville North graduate. “‘Man, it’s not going our way tonight.’” Safir, the Gators’ director of basketball strategy and analytics, looked at the scoresheet and was dismayed to see how poorly Florida had shot on three-pointers to that point.

Hartman wasn’t worried about the statistics. He knew this Florida team was a tight group of kids who had dealt with adversity along the way. They had trailed South Carolina by five with a minute left early in the season and rallied to win at the buzzer. He went into the huddle during the under-4 timeout and looked into the players’ eyes: “Guys, we have been here before,” he said amid the clamor.

Florida sank four three-pointers in a row down the stretch in the regional final, two by Thomas Haugh and the last two by star Walter Clayton Jr., an all-American who started his college career in the MAAC at Iona. The Gators scored nine points in 63 seconds at one point and 20 after that timeout.

“We just kept battling and battling,” Hartman said. “Every decision we made as a staff was the right one, and every execution offensively happened the way we needed it to go to get that victory.”The challenge only gets bigger at the Final Four, which will feature four No. 1 seeds. But what the heck. Florida plays in the SEC, which placed a record 14 teams in the NCAA tourney, including the Gators’ opponents in Saturday’s national semifinal — Auburn. “Well, why not go best against the best?” Hartman said with a laugh. “We’re all here, battling for the same thing.”

It’ll be a proud moment for Buffalo hoops, too. Hartman and Safir are both Western New Yorkers, part of the local coaching fraternity. Hartman came up around the same time as Buffalo natives Rob Lanier and Desmond Oliver, who became head coaches. Safir, who was a captain at Williamsville North and played at Vassar College from 2011-15, is part of the younger set that includes Olean native Brian Hodgson, head coach at South Florida, and Adam Cohen, another Will North graduate who is associate head coach at Xavier.

“I’ve been blessed in a lot of ways,” said Hartman, who is in the Grand Island and Tulane halls of fame. “I’ve met a lot of different people. I love my hometown. I love my area. I love Western New York. I love the Bills. I love everything about being from Buffalo. You feel a sense of pride, knowing you’re from an area that’s alway counted out, always talked about in a negative light. If I can shine some positivity to the area, to high school basketball, and whatever comes with it, I’m proud as hell to be able to do that for my town.”

He’s still a Western New Yorker at heart, after serving as an assistant at 10 different colleges, three times at Rice. That’s a lot of moving, and as any male coach would tell you, it’s his wife who is the biggest hero of all. He and Christine have four children — daughters Tess, Sydney and Kailyn, all Oklahoma grads in their late 20’s, and Joseph, who is 17 and a four-star college hoop recruit at The Rock School in Gainesville. They have one grandson.

“Oh, yeah. Oh, god,” he said. “You’ve got to have a strong person as a partner to be able to withstand the emotional roller coaster that comes along with it. You’re not just moving houses, you’re moving people. You’re moving your kids. You’re dealing with, especially as they get older, they’re leaving friends, they’re leaving their sports programs and coaches. All these different things so you — me— can live out the dream. If it wasn’t for my wife, Christine, none of this would be possible. And if not for my kids’ wherewithal and strength, none of this would be possible. Not even close. Couldn’t happen.“I had a great moment with them after our (regional final) in San Francisco where I shared that with them. I told them, ‘Listen, I love you guys tremendously, I thank you for everything, I thank you for going on this journey with me. None of this would have been possible without you guys’.”

Hoop observers feel Hartman has one big move left in him. He’s long been considered one of the best assistants in America, a prime candidate for a head job. Some guys get labeled as recruiters and wait too long for a chance. His time is long overdue. Hartman was seen as a candidate for the vacant UNLV head job, but Josh Pastner got the gig last week while Florida was still playing.

“He’s one of the best in the business, one of the best assistant coaches in the country,” said Safir, who should also be a head man some day. “I think he does an incredible job with our bigs. He’s one of the best I’ve ever seen managing relationships, people, making them feel welcome and loved. I think a huge part of our guys wanting to come back to be Florida Gators is how well-liked and respected Coach Hartman is.”

Hartman is great at building relationships, which is what made him such a fine recruiter and mentor to big men. But he says the college landscape has changed dramatically in the era of NIL money and paying players and the transfer portal. He remembers having relationships with all the Buffalo-area college coaches when he was in high school. Coaches built loyalty. Kids stayed at one school

“It ain’t like that anymore,” he said. “It’s more or less, you have to know these agents of the kids you want. It’s serious. You’ve got to know these agents. I have relationships with a lot of good AAU coaches and a lot of kids, and I have relationships with some agents. I need to get relationships with even more agents. Gone are the days of the relationship coach, where you get a kid because ‘Oh man, I feel good with this guy. He’s like a mentor, a father figure, this and that’. Not many people care about that anymore. That will be a part of why you get a kid, but it’s not going to be the reason why you get the kid.”“It can be rewarding, because you can still have years and relationships with kids, like we had in Florida this year. But come next Monday or Tuesday, when we’re done playing, we’ve got to go find a new group of guys.”

Hartman has no complaints. He’s having the time of his life. He has a great family. Coaches are well-compensated in major college hoops. The contract he signed in 2022 was for $565,000 a year. There are 45 college coaches now, including Golden, who are paid at least $3 million a year. The Florida staff will profit nicely from a Final Four run, which fills a lot of pockets. He’s had opportunities to be a head coach. Some he turned down, others he didn’t get.

“The landscape of college basketball has changed so much, you can’t just take any job for the sake of being a head coach,” Hartman said. “At my age, I’m 52 now, I have to be smart about any job that I take. Right now, I’m associate head coach at the University of Florida. That is a very coveted job in our industry. Very well paid, very well-compensated. It’s even better than some head coaching jobs at the mid-major level. So I’m not just going to take any job. It’s going to take a special opportunity for me to leave here. The way these people have treated me, the administration, my head coach, the fans, I’m going to be very smart about the next opportunity.”

No smarter, of course, than getting back into coaching and leaving pharmaceuticals in the rear-view mirror.

Feature Image Courtesy of the Carlin Family

Pictured (L-R) are daughter Tess, wife Christine, son Joseph, Carlin, daughters Sydney and Kailyn