Based on the season they had I think this is a good hire though. ECU will be a desirable job I think they open it up to all viable candidates to get the best person.
Agreed! It will be interesting to see if they give another non D1 coach a chance. Hiring from D2 worked well for them and proved to be successful. Not just another D1 assistant or head coach moving from one school to the next.
I'm not sure he's even 50 yet (the bio doesn't look like it, anyway -- and it's still up on their site).
Had this debate over the years. I like seeing D2/3 head coaches moving up but there's a lot of bias toward a D1 pedigree that favors asst coaches. Plenty of examples of both paths working or not. Depends on the AD's exp and contacts of course, and if you have good d2s around and they do in the Carolinas. Other places there aren't as many. Should be interesting....
VCU called Stoia from West Virginia. That would be a good get but she’s fielded calls for years from other schools and always stayed put. I don’t see that changing.
No official announcement, but Casey Brown’s name scrubbed from BU’s website-both roster and directory. No idea if assistant will get job.
Still trying to find out. She told he assistants she was told to ‘resign’ or it would be the university’s decision for her to be done.
OPEN: UC Riverside (interim) Loyola Chicago (interim) Cal Poly (retirement 6/9) Mississippi Valley State (8/25) Western Illinois (10/31) VCU (11/7) VMI (11/8) Youngstown State (11/8; retirement) Pacific (11/12) Chicago State (11/14) Duquesne (11/15) Wofford (11/24) North Dakota (11/25) UC Davis (12/2) St. Bonaventure (12/4) Southeast Missouri State (retirement 12/6) East Carolina (12/12) Boston (12/13) FILLED: Duke - Kieran Hall (Duke associate head; filled after Fall 2024 season retirement) San Francisco - Pinder Nijjar (interim; 9/17) Oregon State - Caroline Kelly (OSU interim; 11/13) Wisconsin Green Bay - Matt Kagan (Washington State assistant; 11/4-11/29) Oregon - Tracy Joyner (UC Davis head; 10/29-12/2) Kansas State - Colleen Corbin (SLU associate head; 10/28-12/2) Auburn - James Armstrong (Miss St head; retirement 11/26-12/3) Mississippi State - Nick Zimmerman (Miss St associate head; 12/3-12/3) Niagara - Donny George (St. Bonaventure head - 8/27-12/4) Weber State - Kyle Christensen (Utah Valley associate head; 11/5-12/6) IU Indianapolis - Angela Berry White (high school coach; 11/7-12/9) North Carolina - Damon Nahas (UNC interim; retirement 8/9-12/9) Illinois - Katie Hultin (Grand Valley State head; retirement 10/30-12/10) Maryland - Michael Marchiano (Maryland assistant/interim; 10/10-12/11) NC State - Gary Higgins (East Carolina head; 11/8-12/12) Apologies! Wrong school listed.
It speaks volumes that BU has hid the story in the news archives section and they post it late on a Friday. I don’t know if BU had this info, but I heard from a couple of people that this was not isolated to BU and happened at Penn.
At Boston U, Brown was having inappropriate relationship and contact with a player. Included grooming the player for a relationship post-college. Investigation included going through hundreds of text messages from a university issues cell phone. No chance she was returning once this got started and revealed. Sad way for Brown’s tenure to end. Good player at BU and a loyal assistant to Nancy Feldman. Will need to go a different career path as she won’t get a college gig again. Also heard of a similar situation at her previous spot at Penn but don’t know details on that one. Hopefully an assistant gets the head job, they were terrific in dealing with it and being understaffed and winning the Patriot League.
What happened to UTEP? Only 7 wins total the last two years combined, consecutive bottom 3 finishes in a weaker Conf USA. Kevin Cross had them winning roughly 10 games per year on average, they fired him in 2017 after only posting an 8 win season that year. Since then, they've only had one 8 win seasons the past 7 years. Keeton is new as a head coach, but he cleaned house his first year there, brought in some transfers and some Tx Tech recruits. But they've struggled still, Im a bit surprised, I thought he would do better. Now his top freshman, one of his star TX Tech alumni little sister, just jumped into portal to leave. How much time do they give him there to turn it around before his seat is hot? I'm not hoping he gets fired, not interested in the job. Just remember UTEP used to go to NCAA tourney and titles and competitive, to now struggling to make conference playoffs as bottom teams.
He literally just took over, give the guy some time. Players will always leave the first 2 years of transition. Some buy into the culture and some don’t.
Soccer Wire After leading UNC Women's Soccer on their 2024 NCAA National Championship run, Damon Nahas has been named head coach of the Tar Heels, removing the interim tag.
If you're going to come late to the party, don't make much noise. This was addressed a full week ago. You can literally scroll up a couple posts... ps - @ThePonchat has been awesome this cycle with the list so thank you!
It feels like the Damon Nahas story is just getting repeated without any real new information. We knew at the end of the Championship Game that Nahas was going to be the next head coach at UNC, and the only thing different appears to be a board approval. I still don't see any information about his contract anywhere.
He took over 2 seasons ago, usually you get 3 seasons, sometimes 4 if lucky at a mid major to get the team headed in the right direction. Year two just ended with no playoffs again, if they make it 0-3, I think his seat will be hot. Not saying he can't or wont turn it around, just noticing it used to be a NCAA tourney team, and team that continually made the playoffs, to now not making it at all. Hope he does get the ship righted, just thinking it's down to one, maybe two more seasons is all to do it before he joins the open list.
Did you intentionally leave out the coach he replaced? Or, was it a mistake? The years before Gibbs took over, the previous coach went 7th, 10th, 13th, and 10th in C-USA. Not exactly a perennial tournament team there. Turning a program around isn’t such an easy thing to do. Even football at UTEP has struggled, something they have a decent history of success with. Maybe it’s something deeper going on?