City of Basketball Love

Ari Rosenfeld (@realA_rosenfeld)
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In advance of the July Live Period, Lafayette head coach Fran O’Hanlon has finalized his coaching staff for the upcoming season, officially announcing those who will be joining him on the recruiting trail this month.

Matt Blue will rejoin the Lafayette staff as an assistant coach after serving in the same role at Hartford over the last five seasons. Also joining the staff will be Jimmy Fenerty, who served as a graduate assistant under Fran Dunphy at Temple during each of the last two seasons.

Additionally, Pat Doherty was promoted from assistant coach to associate head coach position after six years at Lafayette in the former role.

The two positions on the staff were opened by the departures of Donovan Williams and John O’Connor after last season; Williams has joined the staff at Princeton, while O’Connor has left coaching to join a search firm specializing in helping programs find new coaches.

Blue is not new to Lafayette, having previously been an assistant on O’Hanlon’s staff in the 2009-10 season. A 2007 graduate of St. Lawrence University, he is known as a shooting specialist and helped Hartford consistently be one of the top perimeter shooting teams in the America East.

“We are excited to welcome back Matt Blue into the Leopard family,” O’Hanlon said in a release. “He brings great energy and enthusiasm, while his ability to relate with the players will be a real asset to our program.”

If Fenerty’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he is indeed the son of longtime Germantown Academy head coach Jim Fenerty, who has led the Patriots to 15 Inter-Ac titles since arriving there in 1989.

What the younger Fenerty may lack in experience, he certainly makes up for in basketball acumen, having grown up as a coach’s son before a playing career at Dickinson and his time at Temple.

“Jimmy is a terrific addition to our staff,” O’Hanlon added in the same release. “He has had the good fortune of growing up around basketball his whole life with his father being one of the finer high school coaches around. In learning under Fran Dunphy, one of our top college coaches, he adds so much to our program with his ability to teach and develop players. His energy and enthusiasm are contagious.”

Doherty’s promotion officially makes him O’Hanlon’s right-hand man, as the associate head coach often takes on more responsibility than the other assistants as the second-in-command of the program. Doherty is a 2004 graduate of Lafayette and was a walk-on player for O’Hanlon and the Leopards during the 2000-01 campaign.

“Pat has been an invaluable part of our success here,” O’Hanlon said. “He does so many of the things that promote our program in such a positive way. I am very excited for his expanded role.”

With the staff officially in place, the Leopards will look to build on a 20-13 season that saw them capture the program’s fourth Patriot League Tournament title and make an appearance in the NCAA Tournament.

The new additions to the coaching staff will have to hit the ground running during the most important month of Division I recruiting; Lafayette has already secured a commitment from 2016 Parkland (Pa.) wing Kyle Stout, but still has three scholarships to work with in hopes of extending the program’s recent success.