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Donahue completes staff with Mihalich hiring

04/02/2015, 3:00pm EDT

By Jack Goodwillie

Steve Donahue was introduced as the 20th coach in Penn basketball history last month. (Photo: Josh Verlin)

Jack Goodwillie (@JackGoodwillie)
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Newly-anointed Penn basketball coach Steve Donahue figures to bring a great deal of change to the Quakers’ program.

Aside from the hiring of Donahue himself, few of those changes will be made off the court, though, as Donahue has elected to hang on to Nat Graham and Ira Bowman, two assistants who worked under Jerome Allen during his six-year tenure as head coach.

Donahue has a great familiarity with both Graham and Bowman. The two played under Donahue when he was an assistant at Penn in the early 1990s. Graham would go on to become an assistant under Donahue during his time at Cornell and Boston College before returning to West Philadelphia last season; Bowman, after a seven-year professional career, came to Penn in 2012 following a three-year stint in the same position at NJIT.

Still, due process played its part in Donahue’s hirings, as he met separately with each in an interview-style setting, talking to both for several hours about the program and its future. He believes he is bringing in the best men for the job.

“I wanted to evaluate it to try to figure out if this is the right thing for Penn basketball,” Donahue said. “I know [Graham] greatly but I still wanted to do it in a format that I was interviewing him and get his thoughts about what’s going on and how we would proceed going forward. He made me feel really good about what he was doing and I thought it was the right thing for Penn basketball.”

As for Bowman, Donahue has always believed he had what it took to be a great coach.

“I did the same thing with him,” Donahue said. “I sat down, interviewed him, he really impressed me with his growth as a coach. I’ve been really impressed with what what they’ve done here and I also got a good feeling for what the guys on the team felt about those two guys.

“I just felt like it was the right thing to do.”

The third man on the bench for Penn will be Joe Mihalich, Jr., the son of current Hofstra men’s basketball coach Joe Mihalich. Like his dad, the younger Mihalich is a Philadelphia native, having spent two years as a graduate assistant under Jay Wright on the Villanova bench.

Mihalich will bring youth, good genes and a winning pedigree to a team looking to make its first NCAA tournament appearance since 2007.

“I got to know Joe since he was a very young kid,” Donahue said. “He’s been everything I thought he was these first two weeks–great passion, great energy, great understanding of what we’re trying to do. He’s a role model to the guys, and I think he’s someone they can relate to as well, with his young age.”

Next year’s Penn basketball team will not be lacking talent. The Quakers will return leading scorer Tony Hicks and 6-11 behemoth Darien Nelson-Henry. Both players will be seniors, but both players will nonetheless have the opportunity to improve and potentially thrive under Donahue’s new direction.

By bringing back two assistants from the previous staff and a young coach looking to make a name for himself, Donahue is confident that the transition from Jerome Allen will be an easy one for next year’s players.

The Quakers are bringing in a very well-regarded 2015 recruiting class, led by Cherry Hill East point guard Jake Silpe and a duo from Northfield Mt. Hermon, forward/center Collin McManus and sharpshooter Jackson Donahue (no relation).

He also believes his new staff is well equipped with the tools to bring in recruits that will help bolster the Quakers’ roster both now and in the coming years.

“I got a sense from recruits that Nat and Ira had done a very good job of building relationships,” Donahue said. “That was the key thing for me. They’re so well-versed in everything we’re doing here that we’ve got a chance to hit the ground running and go forward right away.”