Cory McClure takes a lot of people with him when he’s on the road representing St. Bonaventure University.

They’re not in the car with him when he’s on a recruiting or scouting trip, but they’re with him when he’s visiting a recruit, scouting an opponent or helping a player stay on track academically.

There’s coach Dick Plummer, his varsity coach and life-long mentor growing up in Lisbon Falls. There’s a host of college coaches who helped shape him as a player or coach, or helped him on his way up through the ranks – Westbrook College’s Jim Graffam, CMCC’s Dave Gonyea, Phil Rowe from the University of New Hampshire.

All of them have helped Cory McClure become what he is today, an assistant basketball coach for the Bonnies of the Atlantic 10. If and when he realizes his dream to head his own Division I program, they will accompany him there in some fashion, too.

“I’ve been very fortunate to have worked with people who have allowed me a lot of freedom and a lot of room to grow by doing a lot of things hand-on and with a lot of trial and error,” said the 30-year-old McClure.

He’ll need all of the wisdom he learned from those veteran coaches. McClure’s job now is to help resurrect a St. Bonaventure program still reeling from a player eligibility scandal that surfaced last year. The scandal led to the Bonnies being barred from last year’s conference tournament and the dismissal of head coach Jan van Breda Kolff. The NCAA issued several sanctions, including placing the school on three years’ probation.

“I don’t know as there are any bigger messes to clean up,” he said of the task before him and the rest of head coach Anthony Solomon’s staff. “But it’s a tradition-rich program that has a lot of great people and integrity behind it.”

McClure, who joined Solomon’s staff in June, will have an important role in bringing the Bonnies back to respectability. In addition to his coaching and scouting duties, he recruits the Northeast and some international prospects. He’s also the program’s academic liaison.

His responsibilities require long hours and a lot of time away from his new bride, the former Destiny Tardif of Sabattus, whom he wed in June. For instance, the couple only had a brief 48-hour window to spend the holidays with family back here before the team has to head for Texas for a holiday tournament.

McClure said his wife accepts that he has chosen a tough, lonely line of work, but under at least one condition.

“If I lose a recruit or we lose a game, we’ve kind of got a house rule that I don’t get any sympathy hugs afterwards,” he joked.

Plummer might be more sympathetic. He and McClure were neighbors from the time Cory was 7 and became close before McClure played forward for Plummer at Lisbon High School.

“He really had a great passion for the game of basketball,” said Plummer, who coached at Lisbon from 1985 to 1994. “He wasn’t as gifted as a lot of players I coached, but he did all of the little things well and paid such attention to detail.”

One of the details about Plummer that McClure quickly noticed was that he cared more about his players as people than as athletes.

“Guys always wanted to play hard for him because he worked hard for you,” McClure said. “He developed tremendous relationships with his players.

“I knew very early on that I wanted to coach,” he added. “The relationship Dick had with me as a kid was very important, and it’s still something I carry with me now.”

He carried that desire to coach into college, even as his playing days weren’t quite over. One of the first things he told his coach at Westbrook College, Jim Graffam, was that he wanted his job. Graffam might have been willing to give it to him after McClure and his roommate, Derek Vogel, led Westbrook to 101 wins, three conference championships and two trips to the NAIA nationals over four years.

Armed with a bachelor’s in psychology, McClure began his coaching career in 1996 as one of Gonyea’s assistants at Central Maine Technical College (now CMCC). He’s still impressed by the amount of faith Gonyea showed in his green assistant.

“He was great because he allowed me a ton of freedom that, if I was in his position, I don’t think I would have allowed a 23- or 24-year-old kid,” McClure said.

After a year in Auburn, McClure moved on to become a graduate assistant and then full-time assistant coach at New England College, where head coach John Scheinman taught him valuable lessons about the business side of college coaching.

He finally got his first head coaching job in 1999 at New England College. There, he led a team that included 10 freshmen to the conference playoffs.

Despite almost instant success, McClure knew he hadn’t arrived yet.

“I was a head coach with no insurance living in a studio apartment above someone’s garage,” McClure said. “I don’t think my mother was getting much sleep at that time.”

The accommodations improved when Rowe hired him as director of basketball operations at UNH and invited him to live with him for a year. That job covered all aspects of college basketball – recruiting, scouting, scheduling, academic monitoring and organizing camps, and McClure did it well enough to attract some top prospects to UNH and help the Wildcats become factors in the Atlantic 10. He then joined Rowe on the bench for three more years before an old acquaintance from NEC connected him with the St. Bonaventure job.

“There are some similarities that I drew from that experience at UNH to this one at St. Bonaventure,” he said. “UNH was a program that hadn’t had a lot of success, and hopefully now they’re reaping the rewards from what I was a part of there.”

“A lot of it is perseverance and trying to be proactive in a negative situation,” he added.

That was a lesson McClure didn’t have to learn from a coach. He learned perseverence and work ethic from his parents, Larry and Barbara.

“Definitely, the biggest influence on me was my parents,” he said. “They were always talking about whatever it is you want to do, do it to the best of your abilities or don’t do it.”

“He’s always been willing to do whatever it took,” said Plummer, who remains good friends with McClure. “He’s always been willing to do what he had to do.”

Will it ultimately lead to Cory McClure joining an exclusive fraternity of Division I head coaches?

“This business is all timing,” McClure said. “That time may or may not ever come, but I know I’ve put enough in to this to create my own timing.”