Veteran college basketball coach Steve Robinson, a longtime aide of Roy Williams at Kansas and North Carolina, will replace Jason Terry as an assistant on the Wildcats' new coaching staff.
The news was first reported Tuesday evening by WildcatAuthority.com, and later confirmed by the Star.
The 63-year old Robinson coached alongside Williams in two stints at Kansas and one at UNC, a 26-year partnership that ended when Williams retired this offseason. Robinson was not retained by new Tar Heels coach Hubert Davis, who hired a staff of all former UNC players.
Robinson has also coached at Radford, Cornell, Tulsa and Florida State, serving as the head coach of both the Golden Hurricane (1995-97) and Seminoles (1997-2002). Robinson took Tulsa to the NCAA Tournament in both seasons with the Hurricane, going 46-18 overall. In five years at FSU, Robinson was 64-86, reaching the NCAA Tournament in his first season of 1997-98.
Robinson and Suns player development coach Ricky Fois will be UA's two new assistants on the new coach Tommy Lloyd's staff, joining associate head coach Jack Murphy, who was retained from the staff of former coach Sean Miller.
The new staff appears well-rounded: Fois, 34, is known for improving players, Murphy, 42, is a former head coach who is also known for tireless recruiting. And Robinson now brings decades of experience with perennial powerhouse teams.
After Terry left last week to become the head coach of the Denver Nuggets' G League team, Lloyd indicated he would consider hiring a veteran assistant coach to fill Terry's spot.
βWe will definitely have somebody in place by the time we get ripping and roaring here in a few weeks,β Lloyd said.
The Wildcats have two support-staffers already with fulltime college coaching experience: player relations director Jason Gardner, who recently served as the head coach at IUPUI; and special assistant TJ Benson, who was an assistant at Grand Canyon. But the staff overall is relatively young and Lloyd is a first-year head coach.
Fois' hiring is not official yet, but Lloyd said he has identified Fois as his choice pending the hiring process, which appears to also involve Fois' work visa, since he is an Italian citizen.
The Wildcats are scheduled to open full-length practices in late September, then hold their Red-Blue Game on Oct. 2. Their regular season is scheduled to start on Nov. 9 against NAU.
