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March 26, 2015Threat Level: Cavs ’ Potential First Round Foes
March 26, 2015Mark Price has moved on to the latest phase in his basketball career: college head coach.
The Cavalier great will take over the UNC-Charlotte hoops program, agreeing on Wednesday to become the 49ers’ tenth head coach. He was offered a five-year deal, according to ESPN. The university will officially welcome Price at a news conference Thursday afternoon.
No. 25 took to Twitter to express his excitement.
Very excited to be named the head basketball coach @49ersBasketball tomorrow! Can't wait to meet the team and get to work!
— Mark Price (@Mark25Price) March 26, 2015
Price, 51, has spent the past two seasons as an assistant with the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets. He started bopping around the NBA in 2007, having been an assistant with Orlando, Golden State, Atlanta, and Denver before heading to Charlotte.
He was head coach of the South Dragons of Australia’s NBL for a brief spell in 2006, but was fired after the team started 0-5. He was also head coach at Atlanta-area Whitefield Academy from 2000-2001, where he coached current Houston Rocket Josh Smith. Price has also been an assistant at his alma mater, Georgia Tech, and Duluth (GA) High School.
Price played 9 of his 12 NBA seasons with the Cavs. He made the All-Star team four times and was named to the All-NBA First Team for the 1992-93 season, when he averaged 18.2 points and 8 assists. He is the second-best free throw shooter in NBA history, with the recently-retired Steve Nash besting his career mark by four-thousandths of a percent.
Price will be taking over at UNC-Charlotte for Alan Major, who spent five years with the school. From ESPN:
Price will replace Alan Major, who parted ways with the school last week after five seasons in which he took two medical leaves of absence. Major was 67-70 personally, and the school was 75-81 in his time at the school.
The 49ers went 14-18 in 2014-15, including a 7-11 record in Conference USA. They were a relatively high-scoring outfit, averaging 73.8 points per game, 37th-best in the country. They figure to return two of their top three leading scorers in rising sophomore guard Torin Dorn (no relation to Roger) and senior-to-be big man Mike Thorne, Jr.
If nothing else, expect Price’s new team to improve on last year’s 65 percent free throw shooting.
3 Comments
Torin Dorn (no relation to Roger)
So, you are saying that Torin is the illegimate love-child of Rick Vaughn?
Wow, with Nash’s retirement, Price is 2nd in all-time FT% by only 1 missed FT. Hope he doesn’t care about records because that would haunt me.
Let’s just hope he stays out of the announcing booth