ECU expected to hire Tennessee assistant as new basketball coach, replacing Joe Dooley
East Carolina University is expected to hire Michael Schwartz as its next basketball coach at a special meeting of the ECU Board of Trustees Wednesday afternoon, according to two sources with knowledge of the hiring process.
Schwartz has been an assistant coach at Tennessee since 2016 and became the program’s associate head coach in 2019. He will remain with No. 3 seed Tennessee through the NCAA tournament.
ECU fired Joe Dooley last week. Dooley coached in Greenville for four seasons, compiling an overall record of 44-67. The Pirates ended the 2021-22 season last week, losing to Cincinnati, 74-63, in the AAC tournament. ECU went 15-15 overall and 6-11 in league play.
The 15 wins were the most under Dooley during his second stint as the Pirates’ head coach.
Schwartz, 46, has signed and coached 15 NBA players and was the lead recruiter for three McDonald’s All-Americans. He is a 1999 graduate of Texas, where he started as a graduate assistant.
He had stops at Long Beach State (operations and video assistant) and Texas again (video coordinator) before getting his first assistant coach job (2004-05) at Texas-San Antonio.
From there Schwartz coached at Miami, Fresno State and Tulsa before landing at Tennessee, reuniting with head coach Rick Barnes, who he first worked under, and played for, at Texas.
In 2019, The Athletic named Schwartz one of the top 25 up-and-coming college coaches in the country.
The last four years under Barnes, Schwartz has served as the defensive coordinator for the Vols. Tennessee held teams to 62.8 points per game this year, ranking 24th nationally.
The Volunteers have been to four straight NCAA tournaments. ECU hasn’t been to the tournament since 1993. Its last postseason appearance was 2014 when the Pirates made it to the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament (CIT).
There is a connection between Schwartz and Greenville.
Current Pirates athletic director Jon Gilbert spent six years at Tennessee as executive senior associate athletics director prior to being named the athletic director at the University of Southern Mississippi in January 2017, and ultimately accepting the same role at ECU.
Gilbert’s son, Kent, is currently a sophomore on the Tennessee basketball team. He walked on as a freshman.
This story was originally published March 15, 2022 at 4:11 PM.
