April 6, 2007
SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Santa Clara University named Kerry Keating the head men's basketball coach at the Mission Campus today. Keating comes to the Mission Campus after serving for four seasons as an assistant coach at UCLA, helping the Bruins to Final Four appearances in 2006 and 2007.
He will be formally introduced to the media at a press conference on Monday, April 9.
"We are absolutely thrilled to be able to announce Kerry Keating as our head basketball coach," said Director of Athletics and Recreation Dan Coonan. "He has earned a tremendous reputation for himself within the industry as a phenomenal recruiter, a tireless worker and a person of solid character. He embraces Santa Clara's academic mission and he has the type of leadership and mentorship skills to be phenomenally successful in this role. He will also develop wonderful relationships with all of the Santa Clara family. He is the right person at the right time to build upon the great success that Dick Davey and his staff achieved this past season."
"I am very pleased with Dan Coonan's selection of Kerry Keating as Santa Clara's men's basketball coach," said University President Paul Locatelli, S.J. "Kerry is a highly regarded recruiter, coach, and motivator, and has experience at the top level of Division I basketball representing outstanding academic institutions. He has strong ties to high school and AAU coaches in California and nationally and is loved and respected by his players; I know the Santa Clara community will welcome him as a man of integrity who knows and appreciates the educational mission of Santa Clara as a Catholic, Jesuit university."
Keating, who replaces Dick Davey, will be the 14th head coach in the 100-year history of Santa Clara men's basketball, and will lead the Broncos into their second century of hoops beginning with the 2007-08 season. He is also only the fifth SCU head coach since Bob Feerick took the reigns of the program in 1950. Since that time, Feerick (1950-62), Dick Garibaldi (1962-70), Carroll Williams (1970-92), and Davey (1992-2007) have served in that role at Santa Clara. Keating, 35, will also be the youngest head coach in the West Coast Conference.
"I am extremely excited and humbled by the opportunity to be the head coach at a school with such a rich basketball tradition," said Keating. "Santa Clara has had a great lineage of coaches in the past 50 years, Bob Feerick, Dick Garibaldi, Carroll Williams and Dick Davey, and I am proud to now be a part of such an outstanding coaching family. I have the utmost respect for those coaches and their accomplishments. I am looking forward to being a part of the Santa Clara family and helping prepare this team to compete for the WCC Championship well into the future."
Keating has made a name for himself as one of the top recruiters in the nation as well as one of the most technologically innovative assistant coaches in college basketball. He recently completed his fourth season as a UCLA assistant coach under Ben Howland, and helped lead the Bruins to back-to-back Final Four appearances in 2006 and 2007. While an assistant coach at UCLA, Keating helped lead the Bruins to three NCAA Tournament appearances and a 91-41 record. He also played a pivotal role in bringing All-Pac-10 point guard Darren Collison to UCLA, along with helping develop former UCLA Bruin and current Los Angeles Laker, Jordan Farmar.
In 2005, Rivals.com tapped Keating as one of the nation's Top 25 collegiate recruiters, and in 2004, he was featured in a USA Today article about the rigors of college basketball recruiting. With a respected knowledge of technology and its use in recruiting, Keating has been featured in recent articles about the topic in both the Los Angeles Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education, in addition to serving as a frequent clinician on the topic. In 2003, scout.com named Keating the "most high tech" assistant in the nation. In the 2003-04 Athlon Sports College Basketball Preseason Magazine, Keating was named one of the Top 10 assistant coaches in the U.S. His recruiting efforts helped UCLA earn the nation's No. 4 (Rivals.com) incoming freshman class in 2004 and the No. 13 (Scout.com) recruiting class in 2005.
During his two seasons at Tennessee (2001-03) under Buzz Peterson, Keating helped the Volunteers land top-ranked recruiting classes--highlighted in 2003 by freshman C.J. Watson, who led the Southeastern Conference in minutes played and was the league leader in assists. In 2002-03, Tennessee was 17-12 overall and advanced to the first round of the NIT.
Prior to Tennessee, he spent the 2000-01 season under Peterson at Tulsa in the Western Athletic Conference. That season the Golden Hurricane was 26-11 overall and won the NIT crown.
From 1998-2000, Keating was an assistant coach under Peterson at Appalachian State in Boone, N.C. During those two years, the Mountaineers were 44-17 overall, won two regular season conference titles, made two appearances in the Southern Conference championship game and earned a 2000 NCAA berth. At ASU, he worked with backcourt players and was also responsible for on-campus recruiting and scheduling. Keating helped aid in the development of Tyson Patterson, the 2000 Southern Conference Player of the Year.
Keating's coaching relationship with Peterson began in the Southeastern Conference at Vanderbilt in 1994-95, when they were both assistants on Jan van Breda Kolff's staff at Vanderbilt. Keating and Peterson, now the head coach at Coastal Carolina, worked together at four different schools.
Before his stint at Appalachian State, Keating spent three seasons (1995-98) at his alma mater, Seton Hall, as an assistant coach under George Blaney and Tommy Amaker. With the Pirates, Keating helped produce two All-Big East guards, Shaheen Holloway and LaVell Sanders, along with current Chicago Bull Adrian Griffin.
From 1993-94, Keating was an administrative assistant under Dave Odom at Wake Forest. The Demon Deacons, led by Randolph Childress and Tim Duncan, were 21-12 overall and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
The 1993 Seton Hall graduate was a walk-on for head coach P.J. Carlesimo's Pirates during the 1989-90 season. Keating began his coaching career the next year when he served as a student assistant coach and video coordinator from 1990-93. During his four years in South Orange, N.J., the Pirates won a total of 88 games and played in the NCAA Tournament each of his last three seasons. In 1991, Seton Hall advanced to the NCAA Elite Eight.
Keating was born on July 15, 1971 in Stoughton, Mass., and was raised in Rockville Centre, N.Y. He attended high school at Archbishop Molloy and graduated from Seton Hall Prep. His father, Larry, is one of the country's top collegiate athletic administrators. Currently a senior associate athletic director at Kansas, he was Athletic Director at Seton Hall University from 1985-97 and also served as the Associate Commissioner of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) in Edison, N.J.
About Santa Clara University Athletics
Santa Clara University Department of Athletics and Recreation sponsors 19 intercollegiate athletics teams and competes as a Division I member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the West Coast Conference (WCC), the Pacific Coast Softball Conference and the Western Water Polo Association. The department is enjoying a successful 2006-2007 season. Both the men's and women's soccer teams captured the WCC championship, while the men's basketball team won 21 games. Santa Clara's four-year student-athlete average graduation rate of 74 percent is tied for first in the WCC and second on the West Coast.
About Santa Clara University
Santa Clara University, a comprehensive Jesuit, Catholic university located in California's Silicon Valley, offers its 8,397 students rigorous undergraduate curricula in arts and sciences, business, and engineering, plus master's and law degrees. Distinguished nationally by the third-highest graduation rate among all U.S. master's universities, California's oldest higher-education institution demonstrates faith-inspired values of ethics and social justice. The More information is online at www.scu.edu.
