UNCW Board of Trustees confirms hire of C.B. McGrath

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Noah Thomas/The Seahawk

UNCW Board of Trustees meets just before confirming C.B. McGrath as UNCW’s men’s basketball coach.

Dan West, Contributing Writer

After a closed session held Monday morning, the University of North Carolina Wilmington Board of Trustees officially announced that C.B. McGrath of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will take the reigns as the head coach of the men’s basketball team effective April 4. McGrath has spent the last 22 years with UNC coach Roy Williams as both a player at the University of Kansas under Williams and within each of Williams’ programs as an assistant.

His coaching tenure, originating in 1999 while Roy Williams was still the head coach at the University of Kansas, will come to an end – one way or another – upon the conclusion of Monday’s men’s basketball national championship game between the Tar Heels and the Bulldogs of Gonzaga University. There were no immediate details released about McGrath’s contract.

UNCW’s director of athletics, Jimmy Bass said of McGrath in the official release by the university that he is “very pleased to welcome C.B. and his family to Wilmington.”

McGrath’s wife, Kris, was Big 12 Player of the Year while playing tennis at Kansas. Chancellor Jose V. Sartarelli, during the post-meeting press address, cited McGrath’s recruiting and his ability to mentor student-athletes as the things that separated him from the other candidates and emphasized the importance of the athletes being students.

“We want them to be students, first, because that is the reason they are here,” he said. The university is planning an event for later this week to officially welcome Coach McGrath.

Click here to read the full story on McGrath’s hire.