Six months after he put on hold his dual role of coaching Napa High’s varsity boys basketball team and teaching after six years, Mike Warrington is enjoying a life of hoops — nothing but hoops.

As the second assistant coach for the San Francisco State University men’s basketball team, an unpaid volunteer position too time-consuming for him to have a paying job on the side, the 1982 Napa High graduate is living off his savings — and living out his dream.

“It’s a dream come true, to get to coach full-time and not have to teach as well. It’s not that I don’t enjoy teaching, but to be able to devote all of your time to something you really love is a great opportunity, and a hard job to find,” he said Thursday by phone from the SFSU campus.

“I’m here every day in the office working on basketball and coaching and helping with administrative stuff as well.”

Since school began, players have been allowed to weight train, condition and do individual workouts up to eight hours a week in groups of as many as four.

Warrington is helping them with that until official practices begin Oct. 15.

“What a coup for our program,” SFSU head coach Bill Treseler said in a release. “Mike’s knowledge, experience and energy give the Gators a real jolt. He has made positive contributions immediately and is really going to enhance our quest to be a great defensive team.”

Defense was the name of Warrington’s game at Napa. His last two teams had 12-15 seasons, following a 16-12 campaign in 2004-05 and 6-21 campaign in 2005-06. But those four teams allowed an average of just 52.5 points a game and gave up 70 or more points in only six times.

San Francisco State yielded 67.2 points a game last season while finishing 17-12 overall and 11-9 in the California Collegiate Athletic Association.

Warrington’s Napa teams relied mostly on full-court-pressure, while San Francisco State focuses on half-court defense.

“We definitely had a big emphasis on defense at Napa, and Coach Treseler is definitely a defense-oriented coach as well,” he said.

Warrington said he’ll work mainly with the post players —one of whom happens to be former Vintage High and Napa Valley College player Ryan Wessels, who grew from 6-foot-2 in high school to his current 6-foot-8 height.

“We’re really excited about the coming year,” Warrington said. “We have eight guys returning, three of them starters, so we feel really good about the nucleus coming back. Ryan’s been working really hard and had a great (summer basketball) trip in Canada.”

Warrington played three years of varsity basketball for the Indians, mostly at point guard, and was inducted into the Napa High Hall of Fame in 2004. He said his point-guard experience has more to do with being a coach overall than his current emphasis on post players.

“There seem to be more guards who are coaches,” he said. “As a coach, you learn to do everything well, or else you’re not very good.”

Warrington was in charge of all aspects of the day-to-day operations of the Indians’ program, including practice planning, game strategy, player development, fund-raising, off-season conditioning, hiring and managing lower level coaches, scheduling, budgeting and running the summer program.

He was the boys basketball head coach at Fountain Valley High in Southern California from 1994 to 2000. Before that, he was the associate coach at Porterville College, working with post players and helping with fund-raising, recruiting, player development and scouting and serving as director of the Buccaneer Basketball Camps and Clinics.

Warrington wanted to return to the college coaching ranks, and jumped at the chance when Treseler’s second assistant left. He said he’d known Treseler and admired how he had rebuilt the Gators’ program.

“Bill does an unbelievable job, so I thought I could learn (NCAA Div. II) coaching from him,” said Warrington, who received his master’s degree in kinesiology from Saint Mary’s College in 2007. “He had an opening and things kind of fell into place. I’ll give it a year and see what happens.”

The Gators make their closest trip to Napa in their third and fourth games, playing Menlo on Nov. 21 and Northwest Nazarene (Spokane) on Nov. 22 in the Ron Logsdon Classic at Sonoma State in Rohnert Park.

They will also visit Sonoma State on Jan. 3, to play the Seawolves in a CCAA contest.