Having good assistants to deal with game plans and recruiting are vital to building and maintaining a top-tier NCAA basketball program. Ask Al Skinner.
When Bill Coen and Ed Cooley left Boston College in 2006 to take head coaching jobs, it was the beginning of the end for Skinner. Now his replacement, Steve Donahue, is making sure he has a good comfort level around him.
Even though the jump from the Ivy League to the ACC could pose a challenge, the former Cornell coach doesn’t seem concerned and is bringing in three current Ivy League coaches to complete his staff.
Although Donahue is a lifetime Ivy League coach, his new associate head coach has been through the grind in a major conference. Joe Jones was pried away from the head coaching position at Columbia to be Donahue’s right-hand man.
Before his seven-year stint with Columbia, Jones was on the bench for a school that BC knows very well from its days in the Big East — Villanova, a fellow Catholic university. Jones stayed on after Jay Wright replaced Steve Lappas and played a large role in the Wildcats’ recruiting.
While Jones will provide much of the major conference experience, Donahue couldn’t leave his whole staff from Cornell out in the Ithaca cold and is bringing along one of his assistants, Nat Graham. After playing under Donahue when the new BC boss was an assistant at Penn, Graham has been an assistant for Donahue the past five seasons.
Donahue poached another coach from an Ivy League rival to round out the bench, adding John Gallagher from the Penn Quakers.
The ACC isn’t the Ivy League, but Donahue already has a good support staff to make the transition easier.
