Alex Black wasn’t chasing coaching roles of any sort when her college basketball career ended.
Now she has an opportunity not many women have had as a coach for a professional men’s team.
The former University of Tennessee at Chattanooga guard, a senior in 2013-14, is back in her hometown of Memphis and working as an assistant for Team 901, which is scheduled to play in The Basketball Tournament, a 64-team, single-elimination event with a take-home prize of $2 million for the winners. Games take place in July and August and will be televised on ESPN.
NBA alumni have been among the participants in the annual event, with the TBT teams often geography-based as the general managers typically choose players based on where they live or the college for which they played.
After a Mocs career in which the 5-foot-9 Black tallied 649 points, 173 assists, an All-Southern Conference season as a senior and all-tournament recognition as a member of the UTC teams that won league tourney titles in 2013 and 2014, she remained around the game, but mainly through pickup basketball games in her hometown. However, that led to an assistant coaching role at her high school alma mater, Harding Academy, and she was at a gym shooting when Quintin Delaware, the GM of Team 901, approached her.