Basketball News

Nothing Imus-related here. Really!

Harvard hires a new men's basketball coach, less than two weeks after the Boston Globe reported that Harvard has no black coaches for their 41 varsity sports. The new hire: Tommy Amaker, the former Duke All-American and coach of Seton Hall and Michigan. Yes, he's black. Good for them.

LSU has hired Pokey Chatman's replacement: It is Van Chancellor, the former Olympic, Houston Comets of the WNBA, and Ole Miss coach. Chancellor has announced that he will keep Bob Starkey, the white male assistant who took over after Chatman left, and would consider keeping the other female assistants including Carla Berry, the coach who blew the whistle on Chatman.

My sister predicted to me a month ago that Pokey Chatman's replacement would be a white male, and that a lot of the southern schools with coaching vacancies would hire white males. On this one she was right. But Texas hired Gail Goestenkors (away from Duke) and Duke offered their job to former Duke player Joanne Boyle (who turned down the job and is staying at Cal.) It will be interesting to see what happens at Kentucky, where longtime Pat Summit assistant Micki DeMoss unexpectedly resigned after four years. She put Kentucky on the women's basketball map; hope she enjoys retirement.