Complete NABC Release In PDF Format
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The University of Dayton's all-time winningest men's basketball coach, Don Donoher, has been selected to join the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in November. The announcement was made today in Kansas City, Missouri, the home of the Hall of Fame.
Also part of the 2015 Hall of Fame Class are Rolando Blackmon (Kansas State), Quinn Buckner (Indiana), C. Felton "Zip" Gayles (Langston), John Havlicek (Ohio State), Lou Henson (Hardin-Simmons/New Mexico State/Illinois), Ed Ratleff (Long Beach State) and Charlie Scott (North Carolina).
Donoher's 437 wins in his 25 years as UD's head coach from 1964 to 1989 are nearly 100 more than his coach and mentor Tom Blackburn's 352. Donoher led the Flyers to eight NCAA tournament appearances, and was the first coach to take his alma mater to the NCAA Division I championship game after appearing in the tournament as a player. (There are now three.)
He is one of 12 Hall of Famers whose entire college coaching careers were spent at their alma maters. The other 11 are: Jim Boeheim (Syracuse), Howard Cann (NYU), Doc Carlson (Pitt), Lou Carnesecca (St. John's), Bruce Drake (Oklahoma), Slats Gill (Oregon State), Guy Lewis (Houston), Arad McCutchan (Evansville), Jack Ramsay (Saint Joseph's), Stan Watts (BYU) and Fred Taylor (Ohio State).
In addition, he was an assistant coach on the last team made up entirely of college players that won the gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
As a player, he was a three-year letterwinner and co-captain for legendary coach Tom Blackburn. UD's MVP as a senior, Donoher scored the game-winning basket in the Flyers' upset of #1-ranked Seton Hall.
He was inducted into the University of Dayton Athletic Hall of Fame in 1992 and was honored further by the University in 1998 when the Donoher Basketball Center was built adjacent to UD Arena.
The Class of 2015 will be inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame Friday, November 20, 2015, at the Arvest Bank Theatre at the Midland in Kansas City as part of a three-day celebration of college basketball. Tickets will be available to the general public online beginning August 1, 2015. For more information, follow @CBHOF on Twitter or visit www.collegebasketballhalloffame.com.
The National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame is located in the College Basketball Experience (CBE), a world-class entertainment facility adjacent to Kansas City's Sprint Center, which will serve as the venue of the annual CBE Hall of Fame Classic. The annual four-team tournament will take place at the end of the enshrinement weekend on November 23-24 and will feature Kansas State, Missouri, North Carolina and Northwestern. Tickets for the Classic will be available through www.axs.com and www.cbehalloffameclassic.com, as well as by phone at 1-888-929-7849 or in person at the Sprint Center box office starting Friday, March 20.
