As a head coach at the college level, or any level for that matter, it’s important to be able to polarize a room. Few seem to do a better job at that than Sacramento State men’s basketball interim head coach Michael Czepil.
Czepil, or Zep, as people around the program refer to him, is as cool as they come. Off the court, you’ll always find him with a slick grin, strutting around with his full head of hair in an upbeat mood, greeting everyone he sees with his strong Australian accent.
On the court, he’s all business. Being able to act as a leader on the hardwood and a companion off it is what makes Czepil such a hot commodity for Sac State.
“I was getting recruited to a couple of colleges, and everyone was more so urging and stuff,” junior guard Deonte Williams said. “With Zep, he was very down to earth, he was cool to talk to. I could talk to him forever about basketball in general, and just life.”
Czepil acted as associate head coach for former head coach David Patrick, who resigned in May to take a job as an assistant coach for LSU. Not even two days after the news of Patrick’s departure broke, Czepil was awarded his first ever NCAA Division 1 head coaching position.
“I got wind of it, but the whole thing moved really quick,” Czepil said. “It really was finished within 36 hours.”
Men’s basketball had already planned a 10-day trip to Australia many months before, and it was less than two weeks away when the coaching change occurred. For Czepil, this was his first official trip with the team as head coach, and it was to the country where his love for basketball began to blossom.
Czepil, a native of Melbourne, Australia, first picked up a basketball when he was five. However, it wasn’t until his early teen years that he understood the scale of American sports and just how massive they were in comparison to his home country.
“I remember when I was about 12, we used to get one game a week from the U.S.,” Czepil said. “They’d play one of the Chicago Bulls’ games, or an Orlando Magic game when Shaq was drafted.”
An AAU tour at the age of 16 marked Czepil’s first trip to the U.S., with stops in Florida, Las Vegas and Houston. Czepil said making the mere 19-hour flight across the world was a necessity for overseas athletes at the time.
“It was much harder back then, because when it started, DVDs barely existed, there was no Facebook, YouTube and you couldn’t upload your film,” Czepil said. “You had to be seen or you had to send DVDs or VHS across to the US and hope that they worked.”
By the time Czepil was 18-years-old he had been on multiple basketball tours to the U.S., enough for him to put the right people on notice. He and his family were visited in Australia by a cast of coaches from Nicholls State in 2004, a small school in Louisiana with an enrollment of just over 5,000 students at the time.
Who played the lead role in that cast from Louisiana? None other than Patrick; the man Czepil is now replacing, indicating the start of a long-lasting relationship that saw the two link up well past their time at Nicholls on multiple occasions.
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Czepil started at Nicholls State in 2005. For most, college is a place where people figure out what they want to do in life and, more importantly, who they want to be. For Czepil, he had an inkling of what that may look like, even before injuries plagued his collegiate career.
“When I was in high school, I definitely thought I would coach one day, just because I love the sport,” Czepil said. “Coaching would have been my way to stay in sports for my life, and not have a real job.”
That love for sports was a driving factor in his decision to change his major. Not many can juggle being a student-athlete, rehabbing injury, attempting to get a degree in pre-med, all while trying to enjoy the experience of being a college student.
Sitting in organic chemistry one day, he came to the realization that all that wasn’t going to work. So he changed his major to journalism, another decision made by his biggest passion.
“How are you going to be around sports? Well, you can write about it or you can talk about it,” Czepil said.
Czepil jumped right into a coaching spot at Nicholls after receiving his bachelor’s degree and stayed there for three additional years, while also obtaining a master’s in educational leadership. Czepil returned home to Australia for four years after Nicholls, acting in two separate roles: a head coach for a third-tier professional team, and an administrator for a basketball development program.
In 2018, he got a call from Patrick, who had been hired as head basketball coach for UC Riverside, wondering if he’d be interested in coming over to join his staff. Czepil obliged, marking the official start of his rise to a position at the front of the bench.
Czepil spent four years at UCR, two as an assistant and two as associate head coach after Patrick left, before joining Patrick again at Sac State in 2022 as his associate head coach.
Now, three years later, it’s up to Czepil to continue the trajectory of the team that Patrick led; one that saw the Hornets end the season on a historic run. Czepil, his wife and 16-month-old daughter, aim to make Sacramento a permanent home.
Everyone in the locker room holds Czepil to a high regard, and there seems to be no questions of whether or not he has what it takes to be the man at the helm.
“He’s at another level of respect,” sophomore center Bowyn Beatty said. “This is our coach, this is who we play for.”
