The Morning Dish – Sunday, June 15th:
Happy Father’s Day!
Head of the Herd: Reports out of Huntington, West Virginia are indicating that former Georgia head coach Ron Jirsa will be hired to head up the Marshall basketball squad. Apparently Jirsa interviewed with the university president yesterday, and a press conference is now scheduled for Monday to make the announcement. Jirsa, who replaces Greg White, who chose to return to D-II Charleston across state for family reasons, was one of three finalists for the job, but the first one not to remove themselves from consideration. Earlier this week, both NC State assistant Larry Hunter and Tulane coach Shawn Finney interviewed and subsequently removed their names from the short list. Jirsa coached Georgia for two seasons (97-98 and 98-99) before being fired to pave the way for Jim Harrick. Jirsa also was an assistant at Dayton the last four seasons.
Two New Rams: New Fordham head coach Dereck Whittenburg announced the hiring of two new staff members to his Rams program, Ross Burns and Alex Groothuis. Burns, who will be an assistant, comes from Youngstown State, where he worked as an assistant coach this past season. He had worked with Whittenburg at Wagner previously, and was a player at UMass. Groothuis, who also worked with Whittenburg at Wagner, joins the staff as director of basketball operations. He is a Syracuse grad, and previously was an assistant at D-III Brooklyn College, and has coached in many camps in the US and Europe.
Rejoining Coach: California coach Ben Braun has announced that his former player at Eastern Michigan has been named an assistant to the Golden Bear staff. Lorenzo Neely, who was MAC rookie of the year in 1988, will join Braun’s staff after leaving an assistant position with Wayne State in Detroit. The two previous seasons, he was an assistant at Western Michigan an at Michigan under Brian Ellerbee. Braun was the head coach of Eastern Michigan from 1986-95.
