Arizona basketball legend Damon Stoudamire named head coach at Georgia Tech

A former Arizona Wildcat guard and ex-UA assistant coach is replacing another former Arizona Wildcat guard and ex-UA assistant coach — in Atlanta?

That’s right. Damon Stoudamire, the 1995 Pac-10 Player of the Year, 1996 NBA Rookie of the Year, former head coach at Pacific, and current assistant with the Boston Celtics, was hired Monday as the next head coach at Georgia Tech.

Stoudamire takes the position most recently vacated by former UA guard and assistant coach Josh Pastner, who was let go by Georgia Tech last week after his seventh season at the helm of the Yellow Jackets ended unceremoniously in the ACC tournament. Pastner was 109-114 overall with a 51-78 record in the ACC. Pastner led the Ramblin’ Wreck to one NCAA appearance during his tenure, but won 20 games just once in Atlanta — that coming in his first season on the job.

Stoudamire worked for Pastner on two different stints when the latter was head coach at Memphis and Stoudamire an assistant coach with the Tigers.

“I’m proud to represent Georgia Tech and can’t wait to walk out of the tunnel and onto the floor at the Thrillerdome in front of our fans,” Stoudamire said Monday via a school-issued statement. “It is an incredible honor to be entrusted with leading such a tradition-rich program.”

To date, Stoudamire’s lone head coaching stint in college or higher came from 2016-2021, a five-year run at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Stoudamire earned respect for what he did with the Tigers considering he took a team that went 11-22 his first season to a 23-10 record by year four while playing in the West Coast Conference — the league dominated for decades now by national power Gonzaga while also housing steady WCC stalwart Saint Mary’s not far geographically all that far from Pacific’s Northern California campus.

That 23-win campaign earned the Portland, Oregon, native the 2020 Ben Jobe National Coach of the Year award, given to the top minority coach in NCAA Division I men’s basketball, and the WCC Coach of the Year nod.

“Coach Stoudamire’s success and credibility as a player and coach at both the collegiate and professional levels make him a great fit to lead our program,” Georgia Tech athletic director J Batt said in the school’s statement. “He will serve as an outstanding mentor on and off the court and will attract talented student-athletes to The Flats.”

Stoudamire left Pacific on his own accord after a .500 finish during the COVID-19-altered 2020-2021 season to join former Celtics head coach Ime Udoka’s staff in Boston. With Stoudamire, who played 13 years in the NBA, on the bench, the Celtics went 51-31 in 2021-22, reaching the NBA Finals where they lost the title in six games to the Golden State Warriors.

Udoka was suspended for the 2022-23 season for a reported violation of team policies tied to an improper relationship with a colleague, and was eventually let go by the team earlier this calendar year. Stoudamire, however, stuck with new head coach Joe Mazzulla’s staff for this season, helping Boston to the second-best record in the league to date at 47-21.

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After his playing days ended, Stoudamire’s first foray into coaching came when he became director of player development at Rice in 2008. From 2009-2011, he was an assistant with the Memphis Grizzlies, before joining the University of Memphis as an assistant coach under Pastner — a role Stoudamire would keep for two seasons. He’d then head west as an assistant under Sean Miller at Arizona, before going back to Memphis and Pastner’s staff in 2015. He’d leave for Pacific the following season.

Stoudamire’s track record gave him traction among UA players as a potential candidate to take over at his alma mater after Miller was fired after the 2020-2021 season; Arizona of course plucked another WCC name instead — Tommy Lloyd, then an assistant at Gonzaga.

As a player at Arizona, Stoudamire was second to just about nobody in the lore of what became “Point Guard U.” The player known as “Mighty Mouse” for his electric game while standing just 5-10 helped Arizona reach its second-ever NCAA Final Four in 1994 and shared that Pac-10 Player of the Year award a year later with UCLA’s Ed O’Bannon while averaging 15.5 points and 7.3 assists for the Wildcats.

Stoudamire was then drafted seventh overall in the 1995 NBA Draft by the Toronto Raptors. He’d average 13.4 points and 6.1 assists along that 13-year NBA career.

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