Lappas Hired At UMass
Steve Lappas was hired on Monday as basketball coach at Massachusetts two days after he unexpectedly resigned at Villanova.
He replaces James "Bruiser" Flint, who in five years restored the program's integrity but did not produce a winner. The hiring was announced by the school before a campus news conference.
UMass posted a 15-15 (11-5 Atlantic 10) record this year but failed to earn an invitation to the NCAA or NIT tournaments.
More important, flagging attendance in the school's primary revenue sport was dragging down an athletic department that had grown accustomed to the money a winning program provided.
Lappas had signed a contract extension in July that was to have kept him at Villanova through the 2003-04 season. But he quit after the Wildcats failed to make the NCAA tournament and lost in the first round of the NIT.
The defeats rekindled what had become annual complaints about his postseason failures.
Villanova earned its last NCAA bid in 1999 but lost in the first round to Mississippi. The Wildcats were 2-4 in the NCAA tournament under Lappas, losing three straight years in the first or second round despite be seeded Nos. 3, 3 and 4 seeds.
In all, Lappas was 174-110 in nine seasons at Villanova, with four NCAA tournament berths and three in the NIT.
UMass had 11 consecutive losing seasons before John Calipari arrived and transformed the school into a national power. The Minutemen won five consecutive Atlantic 10 titles and went to the 1996 Final Four under Calipari, but the improvement came at a price.
Marcus Camby, the most illustrious UMass player since Julius Erving, later admitted taking gifts from an agent, including $5,300 of jewelry and the services of a prostitute. As a penalty, the NCAA expunged the school's Final Four appearance and ordered it to repay the proceeds from the trip.
Camby and Calipari were gone by then, having jumped to the NBA. That left Flint, Calipari's longtime assistant, to try to revive the program.
Flint went 86-72, making the NCAA tournament in his first two seasons. But the Minutemen fell to 14-16 in 1998-99, and 17-16 last season, including a first-round NIT loss.
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