Which A-10 Program Just Made a Surprising Coaching Change?

Recent changes to college basketball have made life even more difficult for coaches in this sport. Recruiting has extended past finding brilliant freshmen at the high school and international level; now coaches have to recruit their own players to stay more than one year while finding new talent in the transfer portal. After months of this process, rosters are nearly finalized as we near mid-September but that doesn’t mean everything is set in stone.

An unexpected coaching change came this week at Saint Joseph’s, as head coach Billy Lange departed from his position to take an assistant coaching gig with the New York Knicks. Lange formerly worked with the Philadelphia 76ers and is no stranger to the NBA, but it certainly comes at an odd time in the calendar, with the regular season starting in less than two months.

Lange has more than a decade of head coaching experience and had led Saint Joseph’s for the last six seasons. After making little headway during a previous D1 tenure with Navy, he was finally starting to turn things around for the Hawks. After finishing near or at the bottom of the A-10 in his first three season, Lange had increased the program’s win total four years running, including a 22-win campaign that featured 5th place in this tough mid-major league.

However, Lange is joining Mike Brown’s staff with the Knicks and the Hawks are turning their program in a new direction. This coaching change comes at a terrible time with rosters already set and expectations already brewing for the season ahead. Fortunately for them, there was already someone on staff with extensive collegiate head coaching experience.

Steve Donahue has spent nearly a quarter century as a head coach, most notably taking Cornell to the Sweet Sixteen in 2010 before moving on to Boston College. He had spent the last at nearby Penn, taking the Quakers to the Big Dance in 2017 before some middling results in recent years. Despite getting fired by the Quakers just six months ago, Donahue now takes over as the new permanent head coach of the Hawks.

We won’t know the ramifications of these moves right away but it’s a strange maneuver that benefits these two coaches but could hurt this program in the long haul. It’s unknown if the Hawks will retain the entire roster, as any incoming or current athletes could opt to leave the program after this coaching change either now or after the season ends. It’ll also be very interesting to see Saint Joseph’s face off against Donahue’s former team in the Big 5 in just a few months.

You can understand jumping at a chance for an NBA gig, but leaving a program so close to the start of the season is a cold move that’s starting to become too commonplace in this sport. Regardless of Lange’s early work with Saint Joseph’s, he was actually starting to build something in Philadelphia and the hope is that Donahue can continue that momentum even after his own struggles in recent years at Penn.