As a student manager, Patrick Herlihy already had a pretty sizable role with the Syracuse men's basketball team. That crew is integral behind the scenes, working all of the Orange's workouts, being ready with water and towels and ready to take care of whatever the coaches need. They'll rebound for the players in shootarounds and sometimes they're just good to have around for a few words of moral support.
Yet the former Charleston Catholic boys basketball player had aspirations of something different, something more. He didn't want to just chase down rebounds for the guys in the uniforms. He wanted to be one of them.
This season, when the Orange jogs out to the court, he will be one of them.
Herlihy recently was given a walk-on spot on the Syracuse roster after three seasons as a manager. It's a euphoric feeling for a guy who always has loved the game of basketball and wanted to continue in the sport any way he could.
When he first earned a manager's job with the Orange as a freshman, he didn't plan on working toward a spot on the team. There were signs, though, that it wouldn't be crazy to give it a shot.
"During the year, the managers play pickup with Gerry McNamara, one of the assistant coaches here," Herlihy said. "I had been working hard. I love the game of basketball and want to coach some day. I was working on my game, and we were playing, and after my freshman year, some of the other managers were saying, 'Y'know, you should try to walk on.' "
That love for the game led to a nice career on Catholic's boys basketball team. He earned honorable mention on the Class A All-State basketball team as a senior in 2014. That year, the Irish made it to the state championship game, losing to Chase Harler and Wheeling Central in double overtime. So began the process of earning a uniform, which was no easy task. He played club basketball at Syracuse and tried walking on as both a sophomore and junior, but the walk-on spots always were full.
Some openings, however, appeared this offseason. Herlihy had stayed at Syracuse during the summer to work as a manager, and joined in some workouts with the Orange's forwards and centers. At that point, coaches saw he had improved even more, had gotten more physical as a player. It was everything the coaching staff needed to see.
One day, assistant coach Allen Griffin, a former Syracuse standout himself, came up to Herlihy and offered him a spot on the team. He'll practice under Griffin's tutelage with the centers.
"I'll do my best to try to push them around," the 6-foot-6 Herlihy said.
Now as a walk-on, Herlihy moves into another important role with the team. The main members of the roster are the "Blue Team." Walk-ons and little-used scholarship players are the "Orange Team." It's the Orange that spends every practice helping the Blue prepare for the next game.
"We're always doing scrimmages against them," Herlihy said, "trying to help them get better and simulating game situations."
Herlihy has no delusions of being Syracuse's next Derrick Coleman. He understands his job on the court. So he always tries to remember little defensive acts the starters might see in a game - smacking at the ball and other minute moves.
Yet while he knows dreams of hitting the winning shot against Duke or Louisville is far-fetched, the dreams of pulling off his warm-ups in the late stages of a game and earning a few minutes of playing time are not. The entire roster, Blue and Orange, has a spot the bench at home games. The team takes fewer players on the road, so Herlihy could rotate with others for the last couple of spots on that list.
"If it happens, it's great," Herlihy said of getting some game action. "If it doesn't, it doesn't really matter to me. I'm just really thankful to be on the team."
The entire experience, from manager to walk-on, has been wonderful, Herlihy said. And since coaching is a goal, seeing the game from this new perspective can only help. And seeing it from any perspective under Boeheim - a former Big East and National Coach of the Year with five Final Fours and a national championship to his credit - is amazing. He watches how Boeheim instills good on-court habits, things as simple as grabbing a rebound with two hands, and puts those lessons away for the day that, hopefully, he can teach those things to Division I basketball players.
For now, Herlihy is ecstatic being a Division I basketball player.
"It still hasn't really set in for me," Herlihy said. "It's a pretty unreal experience. It's been amazing to watch how Jim Boeheim works, and now to say that I'm playing for Jim Boeheim, it's an even more unbelievable experience."
Contact Derek Redd at 304-348-1712 or derek.redd@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @derekredd.