Pat O’Connell has been named Director of Basketball Operations and Martin Bahar has been hired as the Director of Scouting and Video Operations, it was announced by USC men’s basketball head coach Andy Enfield.
O’Connell comes to USC from Towson where he served the past three seasons as the Director of Student-Athlete Development on the Tiger men’s basketball coaching staff. During his time at Towson, the 2012-13 team made the largest single-season turnaround in NCAA history and the 2013-14 team won a program Division I record 25 games. Towson also made its first two postseason appearances as a Division I program.
O’Connell spent the two seasons prior to joining Towson coaching staff as a graduate assistant at Florida State. He assisted 2012 ACC Coach of the Year Leonard Hamilton and his staff with both practices and individual workouts. At Florida State, O’Connell played a pivotal role in advance scouting, film breakdown and certain aspects of recruiting.
The Baltimore native O’Connell graduated from Johns Hopkins where he was a four-year standout for the Blue Jays’ basketball team. He was a member of the 2007 Centennial Conference championship team that went 24-5. O’Connell served as the team’s captain and earned all-conference honors in 2010. O’Connell ranks second all-time in career steals at Johns Hopkins, the same school where Enfield ranks first in career points scored.
O’Connell earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology with a minor in Entrepreneurship and Business Management from Hopkins in 2010. He obtained his Master of Science in Sports Management from Florida State in May of 2012.
Bahar spent the past three seasons as an assistant coach for the Fairfield men’s basketball team. He was promoted to that position after spending the 2011-12 season as the director of basketball operations. Bahar recruited two of the top three scorers on the 2014-15 Fairfield team.
Bahar helped the Stags earn two postseason berths, as Fairfield advanced to the 2012 and 2013 CollegeInsider.com Tournament (CIT). While at Fairfield, four of his student-athletes (Rakim Sanders, Ryan Olander, Derek Needham and Mo Barrow) signed professional contracts to play overseas.
He spent 2010-11 season as an assistant coach at Princeton, helping the Tigers post a 25-7 overall record and capture the 2011 Ivy League championship. With that title, the Tigers advanced to the NCAA tournament and nearly upset NCAA tourney runner-up Kentucky. He served as the school’s Director of Basketball Operations during the 2009-10 season.
From 2006-2009, Bahar was at Georgetown under head coach John Thompson III, where he served as a graduate assistant from 2006-08 and then as the video coordinator in 2008-09. The 2006-07 Hoyas, led by current NBA players Jeff Green and Roy Hibbert, finished 30-7, won the Big East Tournament, and reached the 2007 Final Four. The program won back-to-back Big East regular season championships in 2007 and 2008 while Bahar was a member of the staff. He earned his master’s degree in Communications, Culture, and Technology from Georgetown in 2008.
He was an undergraduate manager at Vanderbilt University until his graduation in 2006. Bahar completed a double-major in Communications and Spanish at Vanderbilt.
Bahar, a native of Potomac, Md., is married to the former Terrill Keiner who graduated from USC in 2008.
http://www.usctrojans.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/071615aaa.html
