Ohio basketball coach Tim O'Shea has accepted the head coaching job at Bryant University after seven seasons at Ohio.
O'Shea agreed to an eight-year contract with Bryant, a NCAA Division II school which will start Division I play next season and is located in Smithfield, R.I.
O'Shea declined to comment further.
O'Shea, who has a home in Rhode Island, previously worked as an assistant at Boston College and the University of Rhode Island before taking the Ohio position.
In April, O'Shea interviewed for the Providence head coaching position, and had interviewed for the Massachusetts job following the 2005 season.
After the 2005 season, O'Shea signed a contract extension that kept him in Athens until the 2009-2010 season. But following the 2006 season, O'Shea interviewed for the vacant Seton Hall position.
Bryant University will join the Northeastern Conference next season and play 11 games as a temporary member of the conference. The following season, the Bulldogs will play the full 18-game slate in conference play, but will not become eligible for postseason play until the 2012-2013 season.
Sports Information Representatives for Bryant University did not return calls seeking comment late Thursday.
O'Shea compiled a 119-93 record at Ohio and won a Mid-American Conference title in 2005. That same year he took the Bobcats to the NCAA tournament and lost to Florida in the first round.
He had two years remaining on his contract and earned a salary of $198,230 last season. In that season, the Bobcats finished 20-13 and earned a berth into the inaugural College Basketball Invitational.
Reader Comments
This new athletic director's job gets better every day. He's has to replace what, a third coach now? And now he'll have four new ones next year...
Glad to see O'Shea finally got what he wanted and that it came after Leon graduated, I would have hated to see his senior year marred but the mediocre performance a rookie coach will bring. If this Schaus has any sense he'll give the job to Rhodes, he's a Bobcat who holds' significant spots in the top 10 of major stat categories at OU and probably the most energetic and enthusiastic coach I've ever met. He'd be a great guy to play for. Not that O'Shea wasn't for many of the past players, Rhodes is just so much more charismatic and he would work wonders in recruiting and getting players in to professional basketball after school. He's a legend in Iceland.
Yeah, Rhodes is a good recruiter, he's a great people person, and he's put in so much work at OU as a player and a coach. But what I want from a coach is something that O'shea couldn't do to often, win on the road against teams we should beat. Losses at BG, EMU, Toledo, Ball State, Marshall, and Samford that have happened in the past two years just shouldn't happen. Whoever the new coach is has to motivate the team to win regardless of who and where we are playing. The new coach must be a better in-game coach than O'shea was.
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