Back on 5/16, HoopDirt.com mentioned that former Delaware assistant Jeff Rafferty would be hired as an assistant at NJIT. It has now been made official…
Veteran men’s basketball assistant coach Jeff Rafferty is changing locations from Newark, Delaware, to Newark, NJ, as he joins the NJIT men’s basketball coaching staff after serving nine years at the University of Delaware, where he held the title of Associate Head Coach since before the 2013-14 season.
Rafferty, a 1997 graduate of Springfield College, enjoyed one of his highlight seasons with Delaware in 2013-14, when the Blue Hens finished 25-10, tying for the second-most wins in program history, and made the 2014 NCAA Tournament as the #13 seed in the East Regional.
Delaware was champion of the highly-regarded Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) that season, winning 14 conference games for the Blue Hens’ first CAA regular season crown. They followed the regular season by sweeping to three wins in the 2014 CAA Tournament, good for an automatic spot in the NCAAs, where they lost in the second round to Michigan State, ranked 11th in the nation.
Rafferty has been credited for playing an instrumental role in the recruitment of and development of Devon Saddler, Delaware’s all-time leading scorer (2,222 career points), and Jamelle Hagins, the all-time leading rebounder and shot blocker for the Blue Hens, among other recent standouts.
Rafferty’s work in helping to build the Delaware program was recognized in 2008, when FOXSports.com named him one of the Top 10 Mid-Major Assistant Coaches in the country and in 2012, when RecruitDirt.com named him as the top assistant coach in the CAA.
Immediately prior to joining the Delaware coaching staff, Rafferty was an assistant coach at the University of New Hampshire and before that spent four years as the top assistant at UMass Lowell when that program competed in Division II. In his time at UML, the River Hawks were a combined 94-30 and made back-to-back trips to the Division II national Elite Eight in 2003 and 2004.
He coached in NCAA Division III at Union College (2000-01) and at his alma mater, Springfield, which was a combined 40-17 and reached the Division III Sweet Sixteen in his second season on staff.
He began his coaching career with an internship with the NBA’s Boston Celtics and coached in 1997-98 at one-time NJIT opponent Texas Pan American (now known as Texas Rio Grande Valley).
He holds the distinction of having worked as a coach in all three levels of the NCAA (Division I, II, and III), as well as the NBA.
He and his wife, Whitney, are the parents of sons Patrick and Brendan and a daughter, Kaitlyn.
“I would like to officially welcome Jeff, Whitney, Patrick, Brendan and Kaitlyn Rafferty to the NJIT Men’s Basketball family,” first-year head coach Kennedy commented. “Jeff brings over 20 years of college coaching experience to the “Brick City”. He was most recently the Associate Head Coach at the University of Delaware during the most successful stretch of basketball in the school’s history. He has forged an exceptional reputation as a recruiter and in-game tactician. Jeff’s knowledge and experience will be a tremendous asset to the program as we continue to build upon the success of the NJIT basketball program.”
