On Sunday around noon, Mount St. Mary’s men’s basketball coach Donny Lind texted his counterpart at American, Duane Simpkins, about the soon-to-be-released bracket for the NCAA Tournament.

“He said something along the lines of, ‘Man, I hope we don’t have to play each other,’” Simpkins said. “I said, ‘I’m with you, Coach, but it looks like that’s probably going to happen.’”

Ultimately, both coaches’ suspicions were proven correct. The Mountaineers (22-12) and the Eagles (22-12) both earned No. 16 seeds in the East Region and will meet in a First Four game on Wednesday at 6:40 p.m. in Dayton, Ohio. The winner will advance to a first-round matchup with No. 1 seed Duke (31-3) on Friday at 2:50 p.m. in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The game might be awkward for Lind and Simpkins. Although they haven’t crossed paths often, they got to know each other as guests in Under Armour’s suite at M&T Bank Stadium when the Ravens hosted the Buffalo Bills for a Sunday night game Sept. 29. They texted each other after American walloped Navy, 74-52, on Wednesday to capture the Patriot League Tournament championship and Mount St. Mary’s outlasted Iona, 63-49, on Saturday to claim the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference title.

“We both had a feeling we were going to play each other,” Lind said. “Neither one of us was excited about it, but it was destined, I guess, for two teams that are less than an hour from each other to go fly to Dayton and play there.”

While the Mountaineers and Eagles might not be well known nationally, Simpkins and Lind have deep roots locally. Simpkins grew up in Fort Washington, became just the third freshman to make the varsity squad at DeMatha (where he played for the late Morgan Wootten) and starred at Maryland under Gary Williams, where he contributed to three NCAA Tournament appearances (including two Sweet 16 berths) and continues to rank eighth in program history in career assists with 483.

While playing professionally in the United States Basketball League, the American Basketball Association and overseas, Simpkins began individual and group instruction. He then served as an assistant coach for the JV team at DeMatha and an assistant coach at Bishop O’Connell in 1999-2000 before helming the varsity programs at Sidwell Friends from 2005 to 2007 and St. Albans from 2007 to 2011.

Simpkins is the latest in a long line of point guards who became coaches. UCLA’s John Wooden, the Terps’ Williams, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, Arizona State’s Bobby Hurley, and Memphis’ Penny Hardaway were point guards, and Simpkins said coaching is a natural fit for him.

“Whenever I played, I embraced the idea of being in a leadership position,” he said. “Football was my first love, and I was the quarterback. In basketball, I was one of the taller guys, but I still played point guard. That’s just been in my DNA.”

When Pat Skerry was introduced in 2011 as Towson’s new coach, he was surprised to see Simpkins in attendance. After a conversation during which Skerry questioned why Simpkins would be interested in getting into coaching at the college level, the former hired the latter as the coordinator of basketball operations.

“I just liked that he came up to the press conference even though he already had a good job and wanted to get in,” Skerry said. “When I met him, I knew he really wanted to get in because we were in tough shape. But he wanted to do it, and he did a great job.”

In just two years at American — his first as coach — Simpkins has amassed a 38-28 record and guided the school to its first NCAA Tournament bid since 2014. Only Mike Brennan, who took the Eagles to the postseason in his debut in 2014, enjoyed a much faster rate of success.

“For 12 years, I was an assistant coach and had not touched the NCAA Tournament,” Simpkins said. “So being a point guard and being a head coach, in my own mind, I always felt that if I had my own program, I knew what it took to get there. I did it three times as a player, and I’ve been coached by some very good coaches, two Hall of Fame coaches in Gary Williams and Morgan Wootten. So to be in this position, it’s very satisfying.”

Williams, whose first head coaching job was at American from 1978 to 1982, credited Simpkins with reviving the program.

“You see a guy get an opportunity and take advantage of it, and that’s what you want if you aspire to be a college coach,” he said. “You want to get an opportunity, and then we find out how good of a coach you are after that, and I think Duane has shown in his two years coaching at American that he’s very competitive where he is.”

Unlike Simpkins, Lind tried to play at Loyola Maryland as a walk-on, but didn’t make the cut under coach Jimmy Patsos. Instead, he agreed to become the team’s student manager who laundered uniforms, wiped down the court, and bottled energy drinks, and then video coordinator for the team before earning a bachelor’s in economics in 2010.

“To be honest, I was miserable until about halfway through the season because I didn’t really care about what I was doing,” he said. “I went home for Christmas break, and I remember talking to my parents about it, and they encouraged me to look at it as an opportunity to grow. So that kind of changed my mindset, and I fell in love with just being around the team and finding ways to add value.”

After assistant coaching roles at Mount St. Mary’s, Radford and UNC Greensboro, Lind was hired in April to succeed Dan Engelstad, who left to become an assistant at Syracuse. In Lind’s debut, the Mountaineers set a single-season record for wins since moving to Division I in 1988, won their first MAAC crown in their third season in the league, and qualified for the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2021.

“I didn’t know how long that would take, to be honest with you,” he said. “I didn’t know if we’d be able to get that done right away. So for us to be able to get that done in our first year and turn that into wins and big moments is pretty special. At some point in time, it will hit me, and I’ll be really proud of it, but can’t do that right now.”

Right now, both Simpkins and Lind are focused on finding winning strategies for their respective teams, which have met 70 times with American owning a 37-33 record including four straight victories. The unfortunate result of Wednesday’s game is that one of the coaches and their teams will go home.

“Fans in this area want people to root for,” Lind said. “So that stinks, but once that ball goes up, there’s no more pleasantries. He’s going to try kicking my butt as much as I’m going to try to kick his.”

Simpkins agreed. “They could put us in front of Mount St. Mary’s, The Little Sisters of the Poor, whoever, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’re going to try to beat them. We want to win an NCAA Tournament game.”

Have a news tip? Contact Edward Lee at eklee@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/EdwardLeeSun.