African-American coaches coming up through the ranks of college basketball know what you might think. They’ve been hearing it for years, but it’s high time they want the world to know they do a lot more than just bring in black players.

“I think my background would show I’m more than just a recruiter,” Xavier Joyner, who is in his first season as an assistant at James Madison, said. “I ran my own program for 12 years at the junior college level. More than 40 guys graduated from my program and now have four-year degrees. To get guys through the junior college system you have to do more than just recruit and coach basketball.”

Joyner, who came to JMU after two seasons at Mount St. Mary’s, has an extensive resume. One of the most accomplished junior college coaches in Maryland history, he won more than 200 games at Prince George’s and Montgomery Community Colleges and spent time working at Paul VI High School in Northern Virginia and with the Team Takeover AAU program.

There’s no denying his ties to DC-area AAU and high school powerhouses are intriguing from a recruiting perspective. The same goes for JMU women’s assistant Ashely Langford, who just this season was key to the Dukes signing Jamia Hazell, a top-100 recruit out of Raleigh, N.C. But each has also played key roles in developing all-conference players and working in every aspect of their programs.

“I think I am a good recruiter,” Langford said. “I want you to say I am a good recruiter, but that’s not the only thing I do. I’m also breaking down film and working with players as much as anyone else.”

Basketball has fought a decade’s long battle with lazy, stereotypical descriptors. A 2013 University of Dayton study of sports media concluded that black players are more often complimented on physical strength and natural abilities while white counterparts receive more praise for leadership skills and basketball IQ.

“People say African-Americans are strong, but white people can shoot,” Kiki Jefferson, the CAA Rookie of the Year last season for the JMU women said. “Why is that a stereotype? I’m a city kid and sometimes I play a streetball style, but I’m also a gym rat.”

Similar subtle racism seems to extend beyond players, with the success of black coaches often attributed simply to their recruiting.

“That’s real,” Langford said. “That’s very real. I’m going into my ninth year and when I first got in it was very much that way. We were the recruiters. We weren’t Xs and Os. We weren’t smart enough for that. We were there to recruit. That’s what was portrayed.”

Andrew Wilson, another new assistant with the JMU men, played five seasons at Florida State under Leonard Hamilton.

Hamilton, one of the pioneers for black coaches in college basketball, took over as head coach at Oklahoma State in 1986, but has only in more recent years really begun to shed the label of “just a recruiter.”

Wilson said those who played for Hamilton know he’s always been much more than that.

“I just learned so much from him,” said Wilson, who is white. “To be able to play for such a well-respected and well-connected coach, but also somebody who looked after his players and was willing to share all his knowledge, was amazing. That’s one thing about coach Hamilton. He always wanted to share his knowledge with players and it’s made a major impact on my life, relating to players, with my own family and in my coaching career.”

While the media can be guilty of painting that picture of the black recruiter, it can also come from within the programs themselves. According to Langford, there are some programs that do little more than hire token black assistants and don’t give them the same levels of responsibility or trust as their white counterparts.

Langford said that hasn’t been her experience under Sean O’Regan at JMU. Joyner said the same about new men’s head coach Mark Byington, but said he knows people in the business who have felt isolated within their programs.

“I have heard those stories and I know that it exists,” Joyner said. “I was fortunate in my two years at Mount St. Mary’s and now I’m on to a third year where I was given responsibility other than to just recruit. Coach Byington has made that very clear that he wants his staff to all be involved in all aspects of it. I’m very fortunate to work for a head coach that values my voice other than just to recruit.”

Ironically, when black coaches are pigeonholed as recruiters it can actually have a negative effect on their ability to do so. How black coaches are valued within an athletic department doesn’t go unnoticed by college athletes.

“On recruiting trips, I’ve definitely seen it,” JMU junior guard Madison Green said. “Having the black assistant coach who was only there to signal diversity. That’s how they want to get black kids. That’s their token coach. But we can tell when it’s a program where the black coaches are actually appreciated.”