| Green |
The City College of New York athletic department announced the hiring of Tom Green as men's basketball coach for the upcoming season, looking to turn around a program that is searching for its first CUNY conference championship since 2003.
Green replaces Andy Stampfel, who had been at CCNY for 11 seasons. CCNY was 3-22 this past season, losing 22 of 23 games after starting the season 2-0.
“Tom Green’s passion and appreciation for coaching basketball is evident by the way he recruits, prepares for the season, and deals with the numerous responsibilities that come with the territory of guiding student-athletes and assisting them to become successful on the basketball court and in the classroom,” athletic director Jackee Meadow said in a statement.
Green’s resume includes a long list of accomplishments, primarily from his time as the head coach at Division I Farleigh Dickinson. There, he served as the head coach for 26 years, from 1983 through 2009, becoming the winningest coach in the institution’s history, while also staking claim to being the winningest coach in NEC history. Also during his long tenure there, he helped produce a total of seven 20-win seasons, and took the Knights to four Division I NCAA Tournaments.
“I am very excited for the opportunity to come to City College and have a positive impact on the men’s basketball team and the CCNY campus,” Green said. “There are many transitional plans that are taking place at CCNY, and I’m thrilled that I’m going a part of the program. The staff is filled with great people, and I’m energized to getting started.”
Prior to his days at FDU, Green spent seven years as an assistant coach at Tulane from 1976-83, helping coach NIT squads in 1982 and 1983. Prior to that, he was an assistant coach at Syracuse for four seasons from 1972-76, and saw four teams qualify for the NCAA tournament. During the 1974-75 season, Syracuse finished 23-9 and reached the Final Four. Green’s first major coaching stint was when he was an assistant coach at Drew during the 1971-72 season. In all, Green’s coaching tenure has seen him be a part of eight teams that qualified for the NCAA Tournament, as well as four NIT squads.
The upcoming season promises to be exciting for CCNY because of the style of play that Green likes to preach. “Offensively, we will outshoot and outscore our opponents, while defensively I like my teams to challenge every shot,” the coach said. “I want my teams to be aggressive defensively and be well-versed in a variety of zone defenses. Basically, we want to be up-tempo and fast break on the offensive side of the ball, and we want to be unpredictable on the defensive end. We want to make it very difficult for opposing schools to prepare for us. That’s our goal.”