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Report: Terps adding former No. 1 pick Danny Manning as assistant originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington
A few days after DeAndre Haynes left for an assistant coaching position with Marquette, Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon has filled the void on his staff. And he filled it with somebody he knows very, very well.
Turgeon will turn to former Wake Forest head coach Danny Manning to be his final assistant this upcoming season, Stadium’s Jeff Goodman reported. Turgeon and Manning are close friends in the industry, stemming from their time playing together at Kansas, where Turgeon was one year ahead of the big man.
Manning is one of the most decorated players in the history of college basketball. He holds several records at Kansas, including being the Jayhawks’ all-time leading scorer with 2,951 career points. Next closest for Kansas is at 2,097, so it’s a record unlikely to be broken soon, if ever.
He won three Big Eight Player of the Year awards and was a multi-time consensus All-American. He was also a National Player of the Year and a national champion, and he was the number one overall pick in the 1988 NBA Draft. He made two NBA All-Star games, and he was inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2008.
Manning hasn’t had the same level of success as a coach as he did during his playing days, though that is obviously a high bar to clear as he was one of the most dominant players in the history of the sport. He was a top assistant for Kansas when they won the 2008 NCAA Tournament and had success as the head coach at Tulsa.
His teams at Wake Forest struggled, but Manning has a reputation as an excellent developer of big man talent. His hiring will be music to the ears of incoming transfer Qudus Wahab and top-50 recruit Julian Reese. Manning is also considered a strong national recruiter, though he doesn’t have any specific local ties to the DMV area.
All things considered, this is as close to a home run hire as Turgeon and Maryland fans could have hoped for. Manning has a terrific resume outside of his stint at Wake Forest, and he won’t have the same types of responsibilities as an assistant that he did leading a program.
His hiring is different than the incoming transfers Maryland has added this offseason, but it may end up being nearly as impactful in what is shaping up to be a big year in College Park.