MOUNT PLEASANT – Iowa Wesleyan College men’s basketball coach Alan Magnani has been selected as one of six collegiate coaches from the nation who will serve as court coaches for the 2009 USA Basketball Men’s U19 World Championship and World University Games team trials, USA Basketball today announced.
Magnani will join a number of the premier names in the college coaching community in working at the USA trials, which will be held June 16-18 at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. The selected court coaches will work with the approximately 40 athletes vying for spots on the 2009 USA U19 World Championship and 2009 USA World University Games teams.
Coaches serving in addition to Magnani will be Mike Anderson of the University of Missouri, John Beilein of the University of Michigan, Johnny Estelle of Navarro (Texas) Junior College, Mark Few of Gonzaga University and Herb Sendek of Arizona State University. Magnani is the only coach representing four-year schools below the NCAA Division I level, while Anderson, Beilein, Few and Sendek all coached teams that appeared in the 2009 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament in March.
“I am definitely honored to have this opportunity to work with such a prestigious organization as USA Basketball, and I am looking forward to working with the best college basketball players in the country,” said Magnani. “I would like to thank Jim Carr and Scott McClure from the NAIA, and Sean Ford from USA Basketball for this fantastic opportunity.”
The 2009 FIBA U19 World Championship for Men will be held July 2-12 in Auckland, New Zealand, featuring 16 national teams comprised of athletes 19-years-old or younger. Included in the field of nations are: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Croatia, Egypt, France, Greece, Iran, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Spain, Syria and the USA.
The World University Games is a multi-sport competition organized by the International University Sports Federation and held every two years. The 2009 men’s basketball competition will take place July 2-12 in Belgrade, Serbia.
Magnani, who is taking on his first assignment with USA Basketball, has spent 13 seasons (1996-97 to 2008-09) as head coach at Iowa Wesleyan, where he is the program’s all-time leader in career wins (207), wins in a season (25), career winning seasons (6) and national tournament berths (3). In 2008-09, he led the Tigers to a 20-11 record and the Midwest Collegiate Conference Tournament Championship, which qualified IWC for the NAIA Division II National Tournament.
Magnani also is a two-time MCC Coach of the Year in both 2003 and 2004. He also has served on the NABC-NAIA Board of Directors the past five years and was chairman of the NAIA Division II Men’s Basketball National Tournament in 2007 and 2008.
