TENNESSEE, USA — Tennessee associate head coach Mike Schwartz has been named head basketball coach at East Carolina University.
Shwartz is the fourth Rick Barnes assistant to leave Tennessee for a head coaching job and the third in the past year. Rob Lanier is now at Georgia State, Kim English was hired at George Mason and Desmond Oliver was named head coach at ETSU after six seasons with the Vols.
Schwartz has been on staff at Tennessee since 2016. He is known for installing an elite defense at Tennessee.
East Carolina fired Joe Dooley as head coach after four seasons. The ties to ECU as strong for Schwartz.
ECU athletic director Jon Gilbert was at Tennessee when Barnes was hired in April 2015 as Executive Senior Associate AD and his son, Kent Gilbert, is a walk-on guard with the Vols.
"I am pleased to welcome Michael, along with his wife Stephanie and children Sydney and Samantha, to ECU," Gilbert said. "This is an exciting day for our men's basketball program and Pirate Nation. Mike has all the intangibles and acumen we were looking for as a head coach during the process and it became immediately clear he was the right fit to lead our program."
In the fall of 2019, Schwartz earned feature placement on The Athletic’s list of the nation’s top 25 up-and-coming college basketball coaches.
Schwartz earned the role of defensive coordinator for each of the last four seasons at Tennessee. And last season, Tennessee posted the nation’s fourth-best defensive efficiency rating, per KenPom.com—its second top-10 finish in the last four years.
