Ohio Athletics hired a familiar face to fill the men's basketball team's assistant coach vacancy.
The Bobcats hired former assistant coach Jamall Walker to be their new assistant head coach, the team announced in a statement yesterday. Walker served as an assistant under coach John Groce in 2008-09 - Groce's first season at Ohio.
The Bobcat basketball family is excited to announce the return of Coach Walker to our coaching staff
Groce said in the statement. Jamall understands at a high level how we do things at Ohio.
We were looking for a home run hire and we were able to accomplish this by bringing Jamall back to Athens Groce wrote.
Walker replaces former assistant Chris Holtmann, who was hired to be the men's basketball coach at Gardner-Webb University last month. Holtmann's name was linked to Gardner-Webb for weeks before the official hiring.
In an April 22 news conference, Groce said he had a good idea as to who he planned to hire to fill Holtmann's position, but said he did not want to reveal any names at that time.
Walker spent last season as an assistant coach at Arizona, where he served under coach Sean Miller, who was an assistant with Groce at Xavier from 2001-2004.
Before coming to the Bobcats in 2008-09, Walker previously served as an assistant at Murray State in 2007-08, Saint Louis University in 2006-07 and Ball State from 2004-06.
A former point guard for Saint Louis, Walker will get the chance to work with reigning Mid-American Conference Freshman of the year D.J. Cooper next year.
He did a terrific job for us in our first year and contributed indirectly to our success this past season Groce said in the statement. I know that he is very eager to continue to help us move our basketball program forward.
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Vince Nairn
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