As Carlin Hartman ascended to the top of the ladder, he turned to the crowd, stretched his long arms and flashed a large grin.
Over the previous 2 ½ hours, Hartman never cracked a smile. At times he looked downright surly. The University of Florida associate head coach knows it’s his job to stay straight-faced to balance the exuberance of head coach Todd Golden.
But on the ladder after Florida’s come-from-behind win over Texas Tech, Hartman could let loose. He was about to cut a piece of the net, signifying Florida’s berth in the Final Four, Hartman’s first 29 years of college basketball, 25 as a coach.
The Grand Island native got to the top of that ladder by doing just as he did throughout the course of the game. He’s even-keeled, never too excited nor too angry. He turns up the personality during timeouts, right before Golden steps in to give the team’s final instructions.
In a profession built on salesmanship, Hartman doesn’t offer much fluff. He tells people what they should hear, not what they want to hear. And that has endeared him to head coaches and recruits.
Coaching is a business of relationships and Hartman thrives. More impressively, whether it’s been at the 10 different colleges he’s coached since 1996 or childhood friends from Grand Island, Hartman maintains relationships.
“When I started playing sports, things got a little easier for me because that’s what happens when you start playing on teams and so forth,” Hartman told GNN Sports. “… Coach (Jon Roth) was always great to me and just kind of made me feel part of their family. That gave me the confidence to get to know everybody at Grand Island. … I can’t name (all of my teachers), but they were so instrumental. That time was very, very valuable and molded me into the person that I am today.”
Hartman moved with his mother, Darlene Brown, from the east side of Buffalo to Grand Island, an affluent and predominantly white town, before his freshman year of high school in 1986. Suddenly he was in a completely different environment and not just because he was a 6-foot-5 14-year-old.
The first time Jon Roth, the school’s basketball coach at the time, saw Hartman, he didn’t see basketball prodigy. He saw an outgoing teenager who assimilated easily with any crowd.
Hartman didn’t even play varsity as a freshman. It wasn’t until the following year, after Hartman grew two inches and swatted 13 shots in a game against defending state champion Trott, that Roth realized there was something special in him as a player.
“You could tell that he had a lot of athletic ability, but he wasn’t anything like a superstar,” Roth said. “Because if he had a little more physicality, I probably would have brought him up to the varsity (as a freshman) because I could use a 6-5 guy.”
Their relationship was rooted in basketball, but it wasn’t transactional on either side. When Roth’s wife, Jean, would make a special dinner, Hartman was always invited and he had an open door to come and go at his whim.
During basketball season, Roth would take his son Jeff, three years younger than Hartman, to scout opponents. Hartman and a few other players always piled into the car to tag along.
Hartman averaged nearly 29 points and 15 games as a senior, leading Grand Island to the Section VI Class B-1 final against Kensington. Graduating in 1990, Hartman’s 1,513 points still ranks first on the Vikings’ all-time leaderboard.
He accepted a scholarship to Tulane, where he became a defensive whiz who made the school’s all-decade team. Once Hartman left for college, he still spoke to Roth once per week.
Thirty-five years removed from graduation, Hartman still has a daily three-way texting chain with Jon and Jeff Roth. Hartman returns to Grand Island once per year, while the Roths visited him in Gainesville, Florida last fall.
“He’s got that magnitude that attracts kids to him,” Roth said. “They listen to him. He’s a player’s coach, but he isn’t soft. There still is a fine line, but the kids love him. I went to one of (Florida’s) practices; he’s like a magnet and that kids just draw to him. It’s his personality.”
During his high school summers, Hartman didn’t visit the Roths as often. He spent most of his time traveling for basketball with Michael Hamilton, former director of operations for the Niagara Falls Boys and Girls Club.
Hamilton helped introduce Hartman to AAU basketball, playing in the summer with some of the area’s top players like former LaSalle star Willie Cauley. Hartman was a dogged defender with a high basketball IQ that didn’t get overly emotional on the court and commanded respect when he chose to speak, according to Hamilton.
But when Hartman spoke to Hamilton, it was less about basketball but more about daily life. It’s the same now when they converse each week. They talk basketball on occasion, but it’s mostly about family and life.
“He doesn’t have to stay in touch with people, but he appreciates where he came from,” Hamilton said. “There’s nothing fake about him. He’s genuine and that’s the kind of coach I see on the sidelines. Kids can tell who’s fake and who’s real.”
Younger head coaches are also beginning to lean on Hartman’s experience.
Current Stanford head coach Kyle Smith hired Hartman to be his associate head coach for his first head coaching job at Columbia in 2010. Penn State coach Mike Rhoades did the same when he became a first-time head coach at Rice in 2014.
Kevin Kruger, who served as an assistant with Hartman under his father, Lon Kruger, at Oklahoma, got his first head coaching job at UNLV in 2021, he brought Hartman along with him as the associate head coach. And Golden, who was an assistant with Hartman at Columbia for two seasons, hired his old friend at Florida in 2022.
Hartman’s genuine nature has kept him in the game for nearly three decades and now it’s keeping him relevant. He was the lead recruiter when Oklahoma landed NBA All-Star Trae Young in 2017, but the transfer portal has changed the recruiting process completely.
Long recruiting trips are becoming obsolete, going from dealing with parents of high school kids to their AAU coaches. Now it’s finding older, more experienced college players to fill the roster.
Instead of building a relationship to lure a kid to school for four years, it’s a transactional relationship that may only last one year. But Hartman believes the nuts and bolts of coaching remain the same once they enter the gym.
“Kids have changed over time because the landscape of basketball has changed,” Hartman said. “… But at the end of the day, you hope that the foundation of kids that are still good people, that are willing to be coached, you hope that hasn’t changed. And you have the responsibility to find those kinds of kids.”
But as a coach, Hartman entered this season with five tournament appearances and just two wins. However, Hartman had tournament success as a player. In 1992 and 1993, Tulane entered the tournament as a double-digit seed and pulled off first-round upsets of St. John’s and Kansas State, respectively.
Yet before this season, Hartman had never gone past the Round of 32 as a player or coach. Now Hartman and the Gators are two wins from a national championship.
“This is probably the pinnacle of my coaching career, getting to this point,” Hartman said. “A lot of the lessons, a lot of the journey has been getting these programs from the ground and molding it into winners. This is the ultimate form of winning.”