East Carolina hires Lebo to coach basketball team
Mar 23, 2010 - 12:08 AM GREENVILLE, N.C.(AP) -- 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 athletics 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 at Tennessee Tech and Chattanooga previously.
The school has scheduled a news conference for Lebo on Tuesday.
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.
In the years since, East Carolina has reached .500 once and compiled a 141-230 record.
Lebo had a strong start to his head coaching career, taking over a Tennessee Tech program in 1998 that was coming off four straight losing seasons. Two years later, Tennessee Tech had its first 20-win season in a half-century, then won 27 games and reached the NIT in 2002.
Lebo then headed to Chattanooga and won 40 games in two seasons before taking over at Auburn for the 2004-05 season. But he went just 35-61 in Southeastern Conference play while the team's 2009 NIT appearance was his only postseason trip there.
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