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May 2, 2008

Brown basketball search is progressing

PROVIDENCE – Brown University hopes to name a new basketball coach by the end of May.

The search committee has winnowed the initial list of 80 applicants to about 10 and will meet next week to decide which candidates to invite to campus, athletics director Mike Goldberger said today. He predicted as many as five coaches will visit.

Brown must replace Craig Robinson, who left last month to become head coach at Oregon State. Robinson won 30 games in his two seasons at Brown, more than any coach in Brown history in his first two years, and his 2008 team won 19, a school record. It also finished 11-3 and second in the Ivy League.

Robinson’s success raised the profile of Brown basketball, resulting in a stronger applicant pool than two years ago, when Brown hired him from Northwestern to replace Glen Miller, who had left for Penn.

The fact that Robinson is the brother-in-law of the presidential candidate Barack Obama garnered even more attention for the program this season.

“We have head coaches who have been successful and top assistants from good Division I programs,” Goldberger said of the applicant pool. He declined to list any names.

“We have no leading candidate at this point,” he said.

Goldberger emphasized that the next coach must understand, as Robinson did, the academic as well as athletic demands placed on Ivy League athletes.

“We won’t sacrifice that credential for anything,” he said.

Posted by Mike Szostak  at 1:49 PM to College Sports | Permalink

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