The Ivy Influence: Holding Down the Hardwoods

DID YOU KNOW? The Ivy League boasts five African-American alumni who are currently NCAA Division I men's basketball head coaches that have combined for 471 coaching wins (as of Feb. 4). 

Cornell's Jeff Jackson (at Furman), Penn's Jerome Allen (at Penn) and Princeton's Sydney Johnson (at Fairfield), Craig Robinson (at Oregon State) and John Thompson III (at Georgetown) headline a list of 11 Ivy League alumni serving as NCAA Division I men’s basketball head coaches during the 2011-12 season. They traded in their sneakers for clipboards and now are leading the next wave of Ivy League graduates to make their way to the sidelines.

The son of John Thompson, Jr. mentored by Pete Carill and Bill Carmody, Thompson III (178 wins) almost had no choice than to go into the coaching business. Since he got his first head coaching opportunity at his alma mater, he has put together a stellar résumé that includes five conference titles (three Ivy League, two Big East), seven NCAA Tournament appearances and one trip to the Final Four in 2007 with the Hoyas.

Jackson (95 wins) never played a game of varsity basketball at Cornell. Actually, he went to Ithaca to play football, playing safety on the freshman team. However, it was during his undergraduate days when he got into coaching. Jackson served as a student coach with the junior varsity basketball team three years and even spent one season as a graduate assistant with the football team. He graduated from Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, majoring in management and organizational development. After serving one season as a graduate assistant coach at Southern California, Jackson's basketball coaching career took off. He had assistant positions at St. Bonaventure, Colorado State and Stanford before serving as head coach at New Hampshire for three seasons. Jackson departed New Hampshire following the 1998-99 season and went to Vanderbilt where he served as assistant coach and recruiting coordinator for seven seasons. During his seven years in Nashville, Vanderbilt advanced to the postseason five times (one NCAA Tournament and four National Invitation Tournaments). He got his second shot as a head coach on April 24, 2006, when Furman named him the school's 16th head coach.

Robinson (88 wins) was a two-time Ivy League Player of the Year for the Tigers. After his playing career did not blossom professionally, he stepped away from basketball to enter a career in finance. The sport would call him back, this time within coaching, and his big break came when Carmody hired Robinson as an assistant at Northwestern following his tenure at Princeton. Robinson got the coaching bug and six years later would come back to the Ivies as the head coach at Brown. In two short years, Robinson sparked the Bears to a second-place Ivy finish and a postseason appearance in the College Basketball Invitational. Brown's success caught the eye of Oregon State, who hired him as its head coach on April 7, 2008. He has led the Beavers to double-digit wins in each of his four seasons, including winning the CBI title in his first season in Corvallis. Robinson's profile as a basketball coach is magnified even more than most as brother of First Lady Michelle Obama, also Princeton alumna, and brother-in-law of President Barak Obama, a graduate of Columbia and Harvard Law School.

Johnson (79 wins) has been a part of two of the memorable moments in League history, one as a player and the other as a coach. As a player, he led a 13th-seeded Tiger team to an improbable victory over fourth-seeded UCLA in the 1996 NCAA Tournament as a junior. The only three-year team captain in school history was named Player of the Year his senior season and earned first-team All-Ivy honors for the second year in a row. As a coach, Johnson led Princeton to a tie for the League title with Harvard last year, in his fourth season leading his alma mater. Princeton and Harvard faced off in a one-game playoff that was decided in dramatic fashion as Douglas Davis connected on a jumper as the clock expired to give Johnson's Tigers their first trip to the Big Dance in seven years. In its NCAA Tournament second-round game, Princeton was upset-minded once again as a No. 13 seed but was bested by fourth-seeded Kentucky on a late-basket. The next month, Johnson was hired by Fairfield to be its next head coach.

Allen (31 wins) was one of the all-time greats in Penn men's basketball history as a player. He led the Quakers to three-straight Ivy titles his sophomore, junior and senior seasons, all without a loss in League play. Allen earned Player of the Year honors twice and was named first-team All-Ivy and All-Philadelphia Big 5 three times. He continued his playing career professionally, first in the NBA and then overseas. He got into coaching overseas with the Italian team Snaidero Basket, a team he played with for four seasons. Following his retirement in 2009, Allen got a chance at Penn in August 2009 as a volunteer assistant. Just four months later, he was named the team's interim head coach for the final 21 games of the 2009-10 season. Allen had the interim tagged removed on March 30, 2010, with the goal of leading his alma mater to top of the Ivy League as it had been during his playing days wearing the Red and Blue.

Connected by the common bond of basketball and the Ivy League, these five exemplify influence every day on the hardwoods at their respective schools.