The things you can learn while attending an Albuquerque Thunderbirds’ media mixer at a Northeast Heights sports bar ...

Sparsely attended, head coach Jeff Ruland and assistant John Coffino are never deluged with questions, so they find time to check messages left on their cell phones and send text messages outward.

On this particular day, Ruland and Coffino, Albuquerque’s 21st century version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, are busily working their phones to consummate a trade. Their team is in the hunt for a playoff berth, and were in the midst of what became a franchise-record six-game winning streak.

Then, voila! Before the visit with two newspaper reporters and a cameraman from a TV station are finished with them, the Thunderbirds have all but acquired a new player: Will Conroy, a former standout at the University of Washington, who’d been playing overseas.

The point guard started paying dividends right away, showing he didn’t need any tutelage in how to get the rock to the team’s scorers.

If you think that’s exciting, you should have seen Coffino’s excitement when he heard there are a lot of Italians in Rio Rancho, which he visited last week to see a Scorpions hockey game.

The native New Yorker has bounced around more than a basketball before a free throw.

He realizes it’s a fact of life, that coaches are hired to be fired, although it’s been his choice each time to move on.

He met Ruland at Iona, where he spent two seasons as Ruland’s assistant and was on board when the Gaels advanced to the NCAA Division I Tournament in 1998.

When opportunity knocks, Coffino answers.

He began his coaching career — like most coaches, he loved playing the game but realized his size wasn’t going to allow him to extend a playing career — at Westchester Community College in Valhalla, N.Y., helping head coach Ralph Arietta, the winningest coach in junior college history.

He went from there to Iona, then to Niagara for three seasons, then to St. Peter’s College, where he worked as an admissions counselor, assistant coach and student. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in social science and criminal justice in 1996.

Nobody will doubt that he’s from a tough neighborhood in the Bronx, where he somehow managed to be a Yankees and a Mets fan and was obviously beside himself when the New York Giants won Super Bowl XLII.

“Originally, we lived right down the block from Yankee Stadium,” he said. The family later moved north of the House That Ruth Built, and he somehow was allowed to be a Mets fan and a Yankees fan.

“I still haven’t grown up yet, that’s for sure,” he said. “Any of you women out there that want an immature man, give me a call.”

Coffino was told this story wasn’t to be a want ad, merely something on his sense of humor.

“I always played basketball in the schoolyard,” he recalled. But being located in a melting pot ended that. “The guys that I looked up to, they took the rims down because they didn’t like the clientele that was coming in there. That hurt me; they spited me, you know.

“I lived with my basketball,” he said, determined to stay involved with the sport. “I was a big Knick fan. My dream was to be a coach. Walt Frazier was my idol. I met him a couple times, went to a couple of his lectures. … That’s why No. 10 is my favorite number.

“I used to sleep with my basketball and I was very short and never got to play much,” he continued. “I got better and I became a point guard. I didn’t make my high school team. I was a manager.”

He later made a junior college team, and that evolved into a coaching job. Coffino didn’t hesitate on taking up the coach on his offer. He was tired of throwing up after every practice and, being older than the rest of the roster, had a hard time keeping up.

Trying to enter the world of comedy came recently.

“I was always funny. I was the life of the party, but that’s different than being on stage,” he said. “What I learned about being a comic was that you really have to be upset or sad about things. You have to have a premise. You don’t see guys that are funny on stage and off.”

“My comic teacher said, ‘You think funny.’”

Your last chance to see the T-Birds in the regular season comes April 12, when the team entertains Colorado at 7 p.m.

And maybe there’ll be some playoff action. The team has five road games between Friday and their home finale.

Maybe another deal is imminent.

And if Ruland finds another coaching job, look for Sundance to follow.

“(He’s) one of my closest friends in the world,” Coffino said. “He’s always looked out for my best interests.”