After being officially turned-down by former NBA coach Jeff Van Gundy, the Texas A&M Aggies are apparently poised to hire Billy Kennedy away from Murray State to become their next basketball coach.
This Houston Chronicle report claims it's all but a done deal, and that the Aggies will announce Kennedy as the school's 22nd head coach in a Monday press conference.
It's a solid hire for the Aggies, who are looking to continue the program's forward momentum that begun when Billy Gillispie took over for Melvin Watkins in 2004. Since then the program's profile has been raised considerably, and Mark Turgeon kept A&M moving forward until he springboarded to the Maryland job on May 9th.
While Kennedy wasn't the Aggies' first choice, but he's a coach on the rise, and with good talent returning to College Station for the 2011-2012 season, the Aggies may not miss a beat.
Coaching history:
Billy Kennedy has amassed a 211-179 record as a head coach in stints with Centenary (1997-99), Southeastern Louisiana (1999-2005), and Murray State (2006-11). At Murray State he has logged a 105-73 record, with the last two seasons going extremely well at 31-5 (2009-10), and 23-9 (2010-11).
Kennedy has taken teams to the NCAA Tournament twice, resulting in a first-round exit (2004-05 with SE Louisiana), and a second-round exit (2009-10 with Murray State) where his 13th-seeded Racers defeated 4th-seeded Vanderbilt 66-65 before getting taken out by eventual Tournament runner-up Butler by a score of 54-52.