Siena's Fran McCaffery Named the 2009 The Rock MAAC Coach of the Year
MAAC Sports
Albany, N.Y. Siena College men’s basketball coach Fran McCaffery has been named the 2009 The Rock MAAC Coach of the Year, by his peers the MAAC’s head coaches.
McCaffery led the Saints to an overall record of 23-7 and a 16-2 mark in the MAAC, en route to claiming the league's regular season title for the second consecutive season and the top seed in the 2009 Citizens Bank MAAC Basketball Championship.
Last season, McCaffery guided the Green and Gold to an overall record of 23-11, a 13-5 record in league play, and the school's first appearance in the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championships since 2002. The Saints, the 13th seed in the Midwest Regional, earned a first-round victory over No. 4 Vanderbilt, 83-62. In the process, McCaffery became just the 31st coach (15th active) to take three different programs to the “Big Dance,” and he was the first to do so with three programs from one-bid leagues (conferences that sent just one team the year his program advanced).
McCaffery was introduced as the 14th coach in Siena basketball history on April 1, 2005. After guiding Siena to the fifth greatest turnaround in all of Division I in his first year, he helped the Saints to a 20-win season and a MAAC Championship game appearance in his second.
McCaffery came to Siena from UNC-Greensboro where he posted a 90-87 record in six seasons. He spent the 11 years prior to his arrival at Greensboro at the University of Notre Dame as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator, working on the staffs of Richard “Digger” Phelps and John MacLeod. At Notre Dame he helped the team to NCAA Tournament appearances in 1989 and 1990. The Irish reached the NIT finals in 1992, losing to Virginia in overtime, and advanced to the quarterfinals of the event in 1997.
At age 26, McCaffery was the nation’s youngest Division I head coach when he was hired Sept. 11, 1985, at Lehigh. McCaffery capped his three-year tenure with the Engineers with a 21-win season and an NCAA berth in 1988.
As a player, McCaffery lettered three years as point guard on the men’s basketball team at Pennsylvania in the early 1980’s as one of the first transfers to play for the Quakers. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from The Wharton School of Finance and Commerce in 1982. In 1985, McCaffery received his master’s degree in education from Lehigh. Recruited as the successor at point guard to Skip Brown at Wake Forest, he played one season at Wake Forest (1977-78), helping the Demon Deacons to a 19-10 record.