GREENVILLE, N.C. — East Carolina has turned to former Auburn coach Jeff Lebo to lead its long-struggling men’s basketball program.
The school announced Monday it had hired Lebo to replace Mack McCarthy, who spent three seasons on the sideline for the Pirates before stepping down to take a fundraising job in the school’s athletic department. Lebo had spent the past six seasons at Auburn, going 96-93 overall before he was fired earlier this month.
The 43-year-old coach played at North Carolina under Dean Smith in the late 1980s and had coached previously at Tennessee Tech and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. McCarthy also coached at UTC before Lebo, with Henry Dickerson between them as head coach.
East Carolina has scheduled a news conference for Lebo today.
Lebo inherits a difficult job at East Carolina, a Conference USA school located in the shadows of instate Atlantic Coast Conference programs Duke, North Carolina and North Carolina State. The program hasn’t been to the NCAA tournament since making a surprise run to win the Colonial Athletic Association tournament in 1993 and hasn’t had a winning record since the 1996-97 season.