As Dan Earl takes over the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball program, with UTC announcing Thursday it had come to an agreement with the 47-year-old former Virginia Military Institute head coach, he brings more than 15 years of experience working in the Division I ranks.
After five seasons as an assistant at Penn State (his alma mater) and four at Navy, he spent the past seven as the head coach at one of the most difficult places to win in the country due to VMI’s military standards, its remote location and the inability to recruit transfers due to school policy (while being able to lose transfers every year).
He won’t have that problem at UTC, where Lamont Paris essentially built a winner primarily off additions from the NCAA transfer portal before his recent departure for South Carolina, but there will be challenges for Earl even with the Mocs coming off a Southern Conference championship season and the program’s first NCAA tournament trip since 2016.
Here are three things Earl can do to help himself immediately.
Run at Eddie Shannon