Cifliku chasing dreams while embracing his college home at OU

Key on irrational… for most.

For a large percentage of us, it’s not a feasible option. College is used as a springboard on to the rest of your life and you accept the reality that there’s a time to move on.

For some though, the best decision is to go nowhere else.

Back in September, it was officially announced that Mike Cifliku, a former student at Ohio University who is now in his seventh year of helping with the Men’s Basketball program, was added as the team video coordinator.

A Troy, Michigan native, Cifliku has chiseled out a huge chunk of his story across state lines in Athens. But his path into collegiate coaching began far before he was even born.

The basketball blood came from his father, who had played professional ball in his native country of Albania. He wasn’t around to see his dad play, but he got the game passed on to him.

“I just fell in love with the game,” Cifliku said in an interview with the Messenger. “I just started playing youth organized basketball when I was six. Played a little AAU and then played two years of high school. Then that’s where I kind of got my coaching start.”

It seems a bit young to make the decision to switch to coaching. Usually the natural instinct would be to hold on to the finite time that you can actually play the game. He had an awareness at a young age though that nearly all of us get at some point.

The dream of playing may end sooner than initially thought, but it’s not the only way to be directly involved with the game.

Cifliku credits Aaron Smith, his self declared mentor and current head coach of Royal Oak High School in Michigan, for his introduction into coaching.

Smith was his junior varsity coach at Troy High School. Now a junior, he made a pretty straight-forward decision and went to ask if he could help on the coaching side.

“I kind of asked him, ‘Man, do you need any help on JV? I want to get into coaching.' So he said absolutely and then I was just kind of learning the trade from him. With the way he operated things, his energy, his passion, how he dealt with players. I really shadowed him for a long time.”

Only one year later, Smith had taken the job at Royal Oak and then asked the still high-school student to come with him to help with the team.

“Senior year I’m 18-years-old, the same as some of these other guys, and I’m basically coaching them. That was a heck of an experience.”

It was a uniquely humbling experience for Cifliku. He noted multiple times that Smith, and Jeff Boals, the head coach of the Bobcats who he learns under now, instilled a passion to connect internally with the players. Coaches call the plays, but the ones on the court are the people who make the action happen. They deserve the same level of respect as those instructing them. It’s a lesson not lost on Cifliku.

“The first couple of times I was kind of scared. Because you have to earn the respect of these guys that are the same age as you,” He said about being asked to run drill for the first time in his life. “As soon as I got my foot in the door and more comfortable with it, I still remember I started to gain the respect of these players… At the end of the day, the players know more than the coaches sometimes, because they’re the ones that play.”

Once it came time to pick a school to go for college at the end of 2016, his path to Athens became pretty clear. You can’t necessarily major in coaching basketball, so he decided that he wanted to study sports business as a theoretical backup plan. A perfect fit.

“When I was researching schools, Ohio University had one of the top sports management programs. Not just for grad school, of course it’s the No. 1, but for undergraduates too. Then I came on a visit to campus and I was blown away by the beauty of this campus… OU is the definition of a college town.”

Not just OU and the campus, but Athens itself was going to sneak into the heart of Cifliku. The small town of roughly just over 24,000 residents became home for the Michigan native. Going on year seven now, it never gets lost on him why he’s sticking around.

“You just see students everywhere, people are always doing something, there’s always events going on. There’s no better college town than Ohio University. Throughout the travel of road games and different places I’ve been, I’ve never seen somewhere like Athens, Ohio.”

Once it’s time to finish star-gazing around a new home, the realization sinks in that you’re there for a purpose. It didn’t take long for Cifliku to get involved with the basketball program, starting as a student manager.

A simple email to a grad assistant in the program asking to become a student manager was all that was needed. It took all of one day for him to receive an email back telling him to come by to start working.

“I still remember my first year, walking into the gym and then one assistant coach at the time yelled at me and was like ‘Get in the drill! What are you doing?’ and I’m shook because you have no idea what to expect.

“The biggest thing I took away as a manager and then as a coach too was just being available. Availability is the best asset that I could have at that time. Any time a player wanted to shoot at night, I was always there.”

He eventually worked his way up to head manager for the team after a few years. But history often repeats itself in funny ways.

Much like when he was in a dilemma to start coaching back as a high-schooler, Cifliku was in another predicament as his undergrad days started to tick down.

And much like before, he needed the right coach to change his trajectory. Jeff Boals was hired to coach his alma mater of Ohio back in 2019, right as Cifliku would be scheduled to leave. He credits Boals entrance as his next key into breaking into the college field.

He described the former Ohio State assistant as being the “Perfect” coach.

With a new coach coming in though, even as the head manager, Cifliku had to stand out and become an asset that Boals could trust. He did that in ways completely off the court.

“I took the liberty to learn photoshop, learn how to do all the graphics and video editing… they just needed recruiting content for recruits because we needed players because of the transfer players that were out.”

From there on, he became that asset and started to garner more respect and responsibilities. Some of those responsibilities included watching film, creating databases and helping with workouts.

After the 2019-2020 season ended, Boals and the staff offered Cifliku the position of grad assistant. He officially gained the trust of the staff, and it could only go up from there.

Following some time as a grad assistant, he was finally offered the full-time spot as video coordinator in 2022. For someone who had fallen in love with the university and town he now called home, it was “the quickest yes you could think of.”

The ironic part of it all is that the position was created for him. There was no video coordinator before this season. It was a position that the staff had to argue for, and eventually get in order to keep Cifliku around.

Now securely set in Athens and with the Ohio basketball program, Cifliku gets to live out his dream job while also getting to don the logo of his alma mater, somewhere he cherishes deeply.

“Athens and Ohio University have a special place in my heart. The fact that I’ve been here for seven years, it’s a wonderful place. There’s so many memories I take out of it but the ability to call myself a double Bobcat. I received my undergraduate and master’s degree here. I get to continue to be with this great program, it’s a special feeling that not many people can say they do.”

As a young and ambitious coach, Athens obviously won’t be his home forever. It’s a fluid landscape in the coaching world, changes happen quickly.

For now though, he’s enjoying every single day of getting better and learning a craft that’s been a part of his family for decades while representing the town and University he cares so deeply for.