Ronald Nored was in a hotel room in Detroit, mentally preparing for one of the biggest job interviews of his life. It was Tuesday, March 24, and Nored was among the top candidates for the men’s basketball head coaching job at Butler University, his alma mater. Even having his hat in the ring was “a dream come true in a lot of ways,” he tells Hoops HQ. “I’ve had college interviews over the last five years. But this one was different.”
Grant Leiendecker, Butler’s Vice President/Director of Athletics and a former teammate of Nored’s on the Bulldogs, had made the trip to the Motor City to conduct the interview. Nored, an assistant with the Atlanta Hawks, was in town for a Wednesday night game against the Pistons. The two planned to meet for dinner at a nearby steakhouse. Nored had his outfit picked out and was getting ready when his phone rang. “My agent calls me and says, ‘Hey, I think this is going our way,’” Nored recalls. “‘I think this job is yours if you want it and this dinner with Grant is going to be celebratory.”
Nored couldn’t believe it. He called his mom, Linda, who broke down crying in the parking lot of a grocery store. He called his wife, Danielle, who was at home with their four kids. “Is this real?” she said, overwhelmed with emotion.
“There are probably a million words I can use to describe (that moment), but ‘blessing’ is really where I land,” Nored says.
Shortly after, he and Leiendecker convened for an unforgettable steak dinner and toasted to the next chapter of Butler men’s basketball. At long last, Nored could exhale. But the celebration was brief. The offseason loomed and a daunting challenge — to rebuild a stumbling and decimated program — lay ahead.
Since Nored helped lead Butler to back-to-back national championship games in 2010 and 2011, it’s been mostly downhill for the program. The Bulldogs have struggled to compete in the NIL era given their limited resources compared to other high-majors. They have not reached the NCAA Tournament since 2018 (although they would have in 2020 had the tournament not been canceled due to the pandemic) and have suffered six straight losing seasons in the Big East.
With Nored taking over, there is tremendous optimism in Indianapolis about Butler’s future. The start of the new era has the community dreaming of Final Fours once again. The administration interviewed several candidates to replace Thad Matta and believes it has found the perfect fit in Nored, who was the consummate leader during his four-year playing career at BU. Combine his love for and knowledge of the university with his decade of NBA coaching experience and complete alignment with Leiendecker and the ingredients are there for a dramatic turnaround.
“One thing I really appreciated about the process with Grant is that I had to prove that I could be the next head coach at Butler,” Nored says. “This wasn’t something that was given to me.”
As a player at Butler under Brad Stevens, Nored was a scrappy floor general who won two Horizon League Defensive Player of the Year awards. He remains the program’s all-time leader in games played (143), postseason games played (16) and steals (207). A year after graduating, he was hired by Stevens to be an assistant coach with the Maine Red Claws, the G League affiliate of the Boston Celtics. He spent two seasons in Boston, then one as an assistant at Northern Kentucky. For the past decade, he has been at the NBA level, serving as the head coach of the G League’s Long Island Nets (2016-18) and an assistant with the Hornets (2018-21), Pacers (2021-23) and Hawks (2023-26).
Nored joins a growing list of coaches who have transitioned from the NBA to the NCAA in recent years. Butler is confident that his experience dealing with professionals — both on and off the court — will help the program navigate the new realities of college basketball.
“Guys in college basketball are getting paid — some a lot of money — and there’s a lot that comes with that,” Nored says. “That’s not easy. So to be in an NBA environment for as long as I was and be able to help players navigate what comes with that is something that I took great pride in as an assistant coach and really connected with guys through. One thing for me is, who I am as a coach, as a person, I want to be authentic 100 percent of the time. In the NBA, you can’t be fake. If you’re fake, those guys see through it and they just spit you out.”
There are others on Nored’s staff with NBA backgrounds — it was recently reported that Atlanta Hawks coaching associate Conner Varney will follow Nored to Indy — but he has also surrounded himself with veteran college coaches who understand the modern landscape well. That proved critical during his first month at the helm, as the program scrambled to put together a roster. Butler lost three players to graduation and seven more to the transfer portal. The team is returning just two rotational pieces from the 2025-26 campaign: 6-foot-2 senior guard Jalen Jackson (9.5 points per game) and 6-foot-10 junior forward Drayton Jones (6.3 points per game).
Butler Hires Ronald Nored as New Head Coach
As a player at BU, Nored helped the program reached back-to-back national title games in 2010 and 2011
Over the past several offseasons, Butler has been fighting an uphill battle on the recruiting front due to a deficient NIL pool. The hope is that the program is better positioned to succeed in the new revenue-sharing system considering that it doesn’t have an FBS football team. “This transformational change to the funding model of intercollegiate athletics represents an opportunity for Butler to make up ground in the competitive basketball landscape, and we intend to do just that,” Leiendecker wrote in a letter to fans following approval of the House settlement in June 2025.
Leiendecker and Nored, who have been friends for more than 15 years, are aligned on the subject of financial support. Asked about the current state of affairs, Nored says, “I feel really good about where we are in all aspects of our program, including that aspect. I’ve obviously known Grant for a long time. We played together. Grant is really good at his job. He has been a leader in fundraising around the country for a long time. To have a guy in that role (where) we align from a values and vision standpoint about where this program can go was the thing for me.”
To get the program back on track, Nored is aiming to build teams that are — above all else — connected, competitive and prepared, just as his former BU teams were in the early 2010s. Those characteristics were top of mind as he began the recruiting process.
Butler has signed players from all over the map, literally and figuratively. Of the 10 newcomers, two are incoming freshmen, two are high-major transfers, three are mid-major transfers and three are international prospects. Among the portal additions, standouts include 6-foot-5 sophomore guard Eduardo Klafke (4.6 points per game at Ole Miss), 6-foot-4 freshman guard Jordan Ellerbee (13.1 points per game at Florida Gulf Coast) and 6-foot-9 sophomore forward Treyson Anderson (10.4 points per game at North Dakota State). High school signee Herly Brutus, a 6-foot-7 wing who’s ranked in the top 100 in his class (per the 247Sports Composite), flipped his commitment from LSU to Butler in mid-April.
Nored has also leaned heavily on the overseas market, landing promising talents from Croatia (7-foot center Marko Maric), Serbia (6-foot-8 forward Asim Djulovic) and Finland (6-foot-6 guard Samu Adler). Maric, a stretch four, posted 9.1 points and 1.5 blocks per game while shooting 37 percent from three for Novi Zagreb of the Croatia Prva Liga, a second division league; Djulovic is a big wing who’s currently averaging 13.8 points and 4.7 rebounds for Mega Superbet in the AdmiralBet ABA League and Serbian Superliga; and Adler has shined for Salon Vilpas of the Korisliiga, the top league in Finland, earning Rookie of the Year honors in 2025. “We will turn every rock to find the players who best fit Butler,” Nored says. “There are relationships that many of us have had internationally. We want to tap into all of those relationships.”
Nored’s system reflects both how he played the game and his years in the NBA, pairing a hard-nosed, physical defense with a modern offense that prioritizes pace, space and ball movement. His debut team has exceptional versatility, which is imperative to make that system work. Nored also prides himself on being able to adjust quickly, having been exposed to tons of different styles during his NBA tenure.
With the roster complete and summer sessions around the corner, the excitement in Indy is mounting — not just for the 2026-27 season, but for the overall future of Butler under Nored’s guidance. “I love where we are now,” he says, “and I think the vision for where we’re going is a good one. I think this place will be a special place for a long time.”
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