Since exchanging wedding vows in 2001, Cassie and David Patrick have packed up their belongings and moved more times than most couples would care to remember.
A quick count by David Patrick, the newest member of the LSU basketball staff, shows they’ve relocated 14 times — five between Australia and Europe and nine within the United States — for his playing and coaching career.
"That's 14 times on our journey as a basketball family," he said, "helping me pursue my dreams."
Their most recent change of address in mid-May brought the Patricks and their daughters, Bailee and Madison, to Baton Rouge for a second time after he worked for then-LSU coach Johnny Jones from 2012-16.
And while Louisiana is like a second home for Patrick, who starred at Chapel Trafton (now Dunham) and UL after growing up in Australia, this move wasn’t as easy as it would seem when LSU coach Matt McMahon called.
“Yeah, I couldn’t stay away from the crawfish,” Patrick said with a laugh. “When Matt called, Cassie was like, ‘There’s no way we’re moving again.’
"But under the circumstances, Baton Rouge is like our second home — at least it is for me.”
After all, Patrick was just two years into a six-year contract at Sacramento State. It was his second head-coaching job after two seasons at UC Riverside from 2018-20.
He was quite comfortable there, teaming up with athletic director Mark Orr, whom he had worked with at St. Mary’s of California, to rebuild the Hornets’ program.
But after trying to navigate the current college basketball landscape of NIL and the transfer portal at a mid-major like Sacramento State, Patrick listened when McMahon called and offered the job of associate head coach.
“Not to say I’m pig-headed, but I kind of get a lot of calls asking if I’d go to this job or take that job,” said Patrick, who’s regarded as one of the nation’s top recruiters. “When I took the Sacramento State job, it was pre-NIL and all this free-to-transfer-anywhere-you-want-deal.
“I know that happens everywhere, but to sustain building a program at a mid-major now is a little bit trickier,” he added. “The resources just aren’t the same.”
Knowing his top three players from last year’s team that reached the Big Sky tournament semifinals had already transferred, Patrick figured it was time to take a long, hard look at his future.
Of course, the decision-making included Cassie, a native of Oberlin, Louisiana. Even though her initial thoughts didn’t include another move, the deal was finally done.
Patrick said he and McMahon talked about the biggest off-court challenges college basketball coaches face these days.
“We talked about what he did at Murray State and how he may not be able to do that in this temperature, like (current NBA star) Ja Morant staying there three years,” Patrick said. “That’s probably not going to happen any more.
“He talked to me about needing my help — and I thought he could help me also — in navigating Louisiana and the South. From a basketball standpoint, it just sounded right.”
Despite the pull of coming back to Louisiana, tt was far from an overnight decision.
“It took a few weeks for me to really make sense of it ... for everybody,” Patrick said. “I felt like we could balance each other out, and I was excited for the opportunity to come back here.”
Ultimately, the decision came down to one day having an opportunity to take over and lead a program as a head coach in a Power 5 conference.
“Every coach wants to be a head coach, right?” said Patrick, who has also been an assistant at St. Mary’s TCU, Arkansas and Oklahoma. “These jobs are hard to get, but I’ve been blessed to be a head coach twice and had the opportunity to turn two programs around.
“I just felt like coming back home gives me the best opportunity to do that one day. If not, I'm content with being back home at LSU and trying to get the program back to competing for SEC championships and making NCAA tournament runs.”
That will have to wait a little longer for Patrick, who has been an assistant coach for the Australian national team since 2018. He and former LSU center Duop Reath will go for a second straight Olympic medal in Paris after taking bronze at the 2020 Tokyo Games.
Before leaving for their training camp in Melbourne in mid-June, however, he briefly worked with his new LSU players when they launched their summer program.
“I don’t know the whole team yet, but I’ll be finding out what we want to do offensively and what we want to do defensively,” he said last week from Melbourne. “I have known some of the staff for a while, so there’s a lot of synergy there.”