City of Basketball Love

Stephen Pianovich (@SPianovich)
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New Drexel coach Zach Spiker announced his coaching staff on Friday, bringing in a trio of assistants to join him on the Dragons’ bench.

Chris Clark, (Temple’s video coordinator last season), Rob O’Driscoll (a former James Madison associate head coach) and Paul Fortier (an associate head coach at Cal Poly) will all be joining Spiker in University City. Spiker, the former Army head coach, was named Bruiser Flint’s replacement last month.

“We are very excited to welcome this group of coaches to Market & 33rd,” Spiker said in a statement. “Each has served programs as an associate head coach and will no doubt bring that experience to Drexel. We feel this group will challenge and serve our players. All three are future head coaches and will bring the necessary combination of energy and skills to help our guys experience success on and off the court.”

Both Clark and O’Driscoll have heavy Philadelphia ties.

Clark, a St. Joe’s Prep graduate, played at Temple from 2004-08 and was a captain his senior season when the Owls won the Atlantic 10. He started his coaching career at St. Francis (Pa.), where he spent four seasons, including the final one as the program’s associate head coach.

After St. Francis, Clark was an assistant coach with Campbell University for two seasons and then took the job as the Owls’ video coordinator for the 2015-16 campaign and helped the team reach the NCAA Tournament.

O’Driscoll also holds a degree from a Big 5 school in Villanova, and that’s where his coaching career got started as an administrative assistant in the mid-1990s. From there, O’Driscoll had coaching stops at Manhattan, Iona and Marist, but he wound up spending the last eight seasons at James Madison.

With the Dukes, O’Driscoll was the associate head coach under Matt Brady – who was fired after the season and recently took an assistant job at La Salle. James Madison made the NCAA Tournament in 2013 and won at least 20 games in four of the eight years O’Driscoll was there.

Fortier, meanwhile, heads east after spending the last three seasons as Cal Poly’s associate head coach. Before that, he was an assistant at Washington – his alma mater -- for eight seasons.

He has ties with Spiker stemming from their days on Cornell’s staff in 2004-05 under current Penn coach Steve Donahue. Fortier boasts the best playing career of any current Drexel coach, being tabbed as an All-Pac 10 selection his senior year with the Huskies and going on to have a 17-year professional career in Europe.