Akron Basketball Suddenly Has a Head Coach Vacancy and That’s Bad News

The coaching carousel giveth, and it taketh away too.

Duquesne, bottom-dwellers of the A-1o in recent years, was having a hard time filling its head coaching vacancy earlier this month. Several prominent names—including UVM’s John Becker—reportedly turned down offers, and for a minute it looked like the job might not be filled for a while.

Alas, on Monday night came word that the Dukes had hired away longtime Akron Head Coach Keith Dambrot. He had been with the Zips for 13 years, and amassed quite the resume during that stretch: a record of 305–138, 20-win seasons every year, five regular season titles in the MAC, ten postseason appearances and three trips to the Big Dance.

Duquesne’s gain is Akron’s loss though, and now it falls to the Zips to find their next head coach. This is the part where Stony Brook fans should sit down.

Prior to joining Thad Matta’s staff at Ohio State in 2009, Jeff Boals spent three seasons as an assistant under Dambrot at Akron. His familiarity with the MAC extends back even further, to his days playing college basketball at Ohio University. And of course, Boals is deeply familiar with Ohio, both as place to live and a place to recruit.

Sure enough, by Tuesday morning Akron fans and local media were loudly beating the drum for a handful of names to fill their coaching vacancy. At or near the top of every list: Jeff Boals.

First things first: we have no insider knowledge as to whether or not he’s even been formally approached by Akron about the position, or whether or not he’s even interested in it. It would have been one thing had Akron’s vacancy happened a year earlier, but Boals just relocated his family to Long Island and is about to get his first crack coaching a team of players that he had a hand in recruiting. Relocating back to Ohio so soon after taking over at Stony Brook would mean further delaying his chance to build a team of his own making rather than inheriting a roster of guys brought aboard by someone else. It’s no small thing, taking over a program and convincing a bunch of teenagers and 20-somethings to buy into a whole new system of basketball. To do it twice in two years is a big ask.

Of course, there’s likely plenty of appeal about the Akron job, too. For starters, the Zips have been competitive for well over a decade, and have the hardware to show for it. The MAC, while no Power 5 conference, does enjoy a higher profile than the America East. And again, Ohio.

So should Stony Brook fans be worried? In a word, yes. Stony Brook is likely not eager to conduct another coaching search, so they might be willing to pull out all the stops to keep Boals if he does get approached by Akron. And Boals, though considered a top target by many Akron insiders, is not the only name on their wish list. Former Illinois Head Coach John Groce, another alum of the MAC, was recently made available when the Illini parted ways with him. Lamont Paris—an assistant at Wisconsin whose name was also mentioned during Stony Brook’s coaching search last year—is another candidate.

Bottom line: Stony Brook had better keep their fingers crossed that Akron falls in love with somebody else quickly.