University of Dayton Vice President/Director of Athletics Neil Sullivan has announced that Anthony Grant will be the next head Flyer men’s basketball coach.
“Anthony Grant is a proven winner with the highest integrity,” Sullivan said. “He has successful experience in coaching, recruiting and playing basketball at an elite level. I welcome Anthony to our staff and look forward to partnering with him as we continue to aggressively pursue graduating student-athletes, winning conference championships and advancing in the NCAA Tournament. He is absolutely the right coach.”
“I am honored and humbled to be the head coach at the University of Dayton,” Grant said. “It’s a great responsibility to take over at an institution that is so well-respected. Anyone you talk to in college basketball would say our program is a successful one, but the potential is here for so much more.”
Grant was most recently on the coaching staff of the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder, working with athletes such as Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. He spent the last two seasons on Billy Donovan’s staff after nine seasons as head coach at Alabama and VCU and 13 seasons as a Division I assistant coach.
In nine seasons as a head coach, Grant took his teams to three NCAA tournament appearances and six postseason tournament berths. He has a career record of 193-110 (.637).
Grant is also a 1987 graduate of the University of Dayton, where he was a four-year basketball letterwinner and three-year starter. He played in 105 games at Dayton, averaging 11.6 points and 6.7 rebounds per game over his career. He was the Flyers’ co-captain and the White-Allen Most Valuable Player as a senior. His teams played in two NCAA tournaments and one NIT.
“I join Neil and the entire Flyer Nation in offering a warm welcome to Coach Grant, his wife Christina and their family,” UD President Eric F. Spina said. “In our time together, Anthony clearly demonstrated his ability, his desire to be here and is a clear fit with the University’s values and priorities, which include integrity, the development of character, and winning.”
In six years at Alabama, Grant amassed a record of 117-85 (.579) while guiding the Crimson Tide to the 2012 NCAA Tournament, their first tournament berth since 2006. He also took Alabama to the NIT on three occasions.
Prior to Alabama, the Miami, Fla. native spent three seasons as the head coach of VCU where he led the Rams to a 76-25 (.752) record and three consecutive Colonial Athletic Association Championships. VCU went to the NCAA tournament twice under Grant and was 45-9 (.833) in CAA games.
Prior to becoming a head coach, Grant spent 13 years as a respected Division I assistant coach. The last 10 years were at the University of Florida (1996-2006) where he served under Donovan. Grant helped lead the Gators to their first national title in 2006, and Florida won the national title again in 2007 with players he recruited and developed.
The 19th coach in Dayton’s history, Grant is just the seventh Flyer coach in the last 70 years. In the modern era of UD basketball, Grant is just the second Dayton grad to coach the Flyers. The first was his former coach, College Basketball Hall of Famer Don Donoher (1964-89).
He and his wife Christina have four children.
UD is one of only 19 schools to play in the last four NCAA tournaments. Dayton returns seven letterwinners from last year’s Atlantic 10 Conference championship team.
http://www.daytonflyers.com/news/2017/3/30/anthony-grant-named-new-dayton-mens-basketball-coach.aspx
