Steve Donahue: Head Coach of Men’s Basketball |
|
March 24, 2015, Volume 61, No. 27 |
The University of Pennsylvania has named Steve Donahue as the John R. Rockwell Head Coach of Men’s Basketball. Mr. Donahue’s hiring marks a return to Penn for the Delaware County native, who will become the 20th head coach in the program’s 115-year history; he was an assistant coach for the Quakers under Fran Dunphy from 1990-1991 until 1999-2000. During that 10-year span, Penn won six Ivy League titles including four separate undefeated conference campaigns, compiling a 182-91 overall record that included a 114-26 mark in Ivy play.
Prior to his arrival at Penn for the 1990-1991 season, Mr. Donahue was an assistant coach under legendary coach Herb Magee at Philadelphia University for two seasons and helped the Rams to a pair of 20-win seasons and the NCAA Division II Tournament. Before that, Mr. Donahue was as an assistant coach for current Lafayette head coach Fran O’Hanlon at Monsignor Bonner High School, helping to guide them to the Philadelphia Catholic League title. He began his coaching career at Springfield (Pennsylvania) High School.
“After performing a robust and year-long assessment of the men’s basketball program, we entered the search process with a strong sense of the background, skills and character traits we felt were necessary for Penn’s next head coach,” said Penn’s Director of Recreation and Intercollegiate Athletics, M. Grace Calhoun. “An impressive group of candidates were thoroughly vetted, and Steve Donahue clearly rose to the top. Coach Donahue is a nationally recognized coach and proven recruiter with unquestioned integrity. His deep knowledge of and appreciation for Penn basketball, the Ivy model of student-athlete development and the Big Five were unparalleled in the search. We are confident in Coach Donahue’s ability to return Penn men’s basketball to prominence,” Dr. Calhoun added.
“I am thrilled to be coming back to Penn as its head men’s basketball coach,” said Mr. Donahue. “Having been a part of Philadelphia and Penn basketball for the greater part of my life, I have a great passion for this city and this program. I spent ten extraordinary years as an assistant here at Penn working with one of the great head coaches in all of college basketball, Fran Dunphy. That, combined with my experiences as head coach at Cornell and Boston College, have led me to this distinct opportunity to return the program that I grew up watching to national prominence. I plan to provide the energy and the enthusiasm that will put Penn basketball back atop the Ivy League.”
This past basketball season, Mr. Donahue was a regular analyst on college basketball broadcasts for ESPN and FOX.
He is a 1984 Ursinus College graduate, where he was a four-year letterman in both basketball and baseball for the Bears and captain of the basketball team as a senior. |