Monmouth University Men's Basketball Coaching Staff Now in Place

New Monmouth University Men's Basketball Coach King Rice has named his coaching staff for the 2011-12 season.

His new staff includes assistant coaches Rick Callahan, and former North Carolina teammates Brian Reese and Derrick Phelps. Sam Ferry, a 2010 graduate of Vanderbilt, will be the team's Director of Basketball Operations.

"This is a great staff that can recruit nationally, but also has strong ties to the Northeast," Rice said. "It is a group of men with tremendous energy and experience and hungry to be good basketball coaches. We will be able to reach out to a lot of student-athletes, and teach our guys how to play the game."

Callahan was most recently an assistant coach at Radford University and has also had coaching stints at Texas Christian University, Penn State and South Carolina.

Reese, who was a teammate of Rice's at North Carolina under legendary head coach Dean Smith, joins the Hawks after a season at High Point University, where he was an assistant under another UNC grad Scott Cherry.

Reese scored over 1,000 points in his Tar Heel career and helped lead the team to its third NCAA Title in 1993.

Phelps is a 1994 graduate of North Carolina and even played in the NBA for a few seasons following a stellar college career where he became the only player in Atlantic Coast Conference history with 600 assists, 400 rebounds and 200 steals.

Phelps was the video coordinator at Fordham University last year.

Ferry joins the staff after serving as the Director of Video Operations at Vanderbilt, with Rice, during the 2010-2011 season. He worked for four years as a student manager before being appointed to the basketball staff in the summer of 2010.

Rice said he is excited for the season to begin his new coachign staff in place.

"I feel very lucky and blessed to have these men to go on this journey with me," Rice said.

Rice spent the last five years as an assistant coach at Vanderbilt University under head coach Kevin Stallings. Vanderbilt qualified for the NCAA Tournament in four of those five years.

Rice also coached at Oregon, Illinois State and Providence College before becoming an assistant coach at Vanderbilt.

He replaces Dave Calloway, who announced his resignation in February after serving as the team's head coach for 14 seasons, and five years as an assistant coach prior to becoming the head coach.

Calloway led the Hawks to three bids in the NCAA Tournament, and a win in the 2006 tournament, but his teams have struggled over the last five years and he was under pressure from the university to turn the program around.