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This week's guest on The Passing Game with Fletcher Arritt is Fork Union Military Academy's prep basketball coach, Matt Donohue.  The first FUMA prep coach (including co-host Brooks Berry) to win a Virginia Prep Championship in the conference's 38-year history, Coach Donohue works closely with Coach Arritt's post-graduate squad while directing his high school program. 

Coach Donohue began his winning ways at Fishburne Military Academy in Waynesboro, Virginia where he was a team captain and helped lead his team to a Virginia Independent Conference Championship during his senior year (1997).  From there, Donohue went on to Wilkes University in Pennsylvania.  In his first season, the Colonels won the Mid-Atlantic Conference Championship and made an appearance in the NCAA Division-III Final Four in Salem, VA.  After one year at Wilkes, Donohue transferred to Longwood University.  During his junior year, the Longwood Lancers won the Carolinas-Virginia Conference Championship and made it to the second round of the NCAA Division-II Tournament.  In his final year at Longwood, Donohue was a team captain and played in all thirty-one games.  

An English teacher, Coach Donohue spent two years as the assistant varsity and head junior varsity coach at Varina High School outside of Richmond, VA.  In 2006, he moved into his current position at Fork Union.  As FUMA's head prep basketball coach, Donohue has guided his team to the Virginia Independent Schools Division-I State Tournament each of the past three years; his 2010 squad won the Virginia Prep League Conference Tournament for the first time in Fork Union History.  

Coach Donohue comes from a basketball family.  His grandfather, Ed Donohue, coached at King's College in Pennsylvania from 1968-1983.  He is currently the program's all time winningest coach and was influential in the development of future NBA great Calvin Murphy while an assistant at Niagara University from 1963-1968.  Matt's father, Ed Donohue III, played for his dad at King's and had a professional career as a player/coach in New Zealand.  Donohue works with Coach Arritt at Fork Union on a daily basis and we are delighted to  have him as a guest on The Passing Game. 

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Tubby Smith, head basketball coach at the University of Minnesota, joins Coach Arritt and Brooks Berry in the 19th edition of The Passing Game with Fletcher Arritt.  Coach Smith is entering his 4th season at Minnesota, where he has helped the Golden Gophers to 3 twenty-win seasons and back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances.

A 1973 graduate of High Point University (NC), Coach Smith spent 18 seasons as an assistant coach prior to earning his first head coaching job at Tulsa in 1991.  In 19 seasons as a head coach (Tulsa, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota), Coach Smith has tallied 450 wins to just 184 losses--an astounding .709 winning percentage.  In 1998, Smith led the Kentucky Wildcats to the school's 4th NCAA National Championship, and is the quickest UK coach to tally 100 wins (with the exception of Adolph Rupp).  He was elected to assist the 2000 U.S. Olympic men's basketball team in Sydney and named the Naismith College Coach of the Year in 2003.

The Gopher basketball program has witnessed a resurgence since Smith's arrival in March of 2007.  In his first season, Coach Smith took a team that went 8-22 the previous year and garnered 20 wins to just 14 losses.  In 2010, the Gophers won 3 games in the conference tournament to put Minnesota in the school's first ever Big Ten championship game (where they lost to Ohio State).  Smith's 2010-2011 Gophers are looking to compete once again for a Big Ten title and make their third straight NCAA tournament appearance.

Coach Smith, whose son Brian played for Coach Arritt in 2004, currently has 17 consecutive 20-win seasons.  We are honored to have him on the show and look forward to discussing his future successes.

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This week’s episode of The Passing Game with Fletcher Arritt features one of the youngest head coaches in Division I basketball, Shaka Smart.  Coach Smart is Virginia Commonwealth University’s thirty-three year old head men’s basketball coach.  Shaka, who is named after an African king, played his college ball at Kenyon College in Ohio.  At Kenyon, he earned all NCAC honors and still holds the school’s single-season and career assist record.  Coach Smart began his coaching career at the California University of Pennsylvania where he served as an assistant basketball coach while earning his master’s degree.   From there, Smart moved on to the University of Dayton, where he served as Director of Basketball Operations.  Two years later, after a short stint as Director of Basketball Operations at Clemson, Coach Smart took a coaching position at the University of Akron.  While at Akron, Smart helped lead the Zips to a 42-20 record in two seasons.  From Akron, he then returned to Clemson, this time as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator, a position he held for two years before spending a year at the University of Florida under Coach Billy Donavan.

               On March 31, 2009 Shaka Smart was named as head coach of the VCU Rams.  In his first press conference, Smart introduced his philosophy of “wreaking havoc” through an up tempo style that utilizes the full court press to its utmost potential.  In his first year at the helm, Shaka led the Rams to a CBI championship and a 27-9 record.

(LISTEN) Ron Everhart (Virginia Tech '85) is on the phone with Coach Arritt and Brooks Berry in this week's edition of The Passing Game with Fletcher Arritt.  Everhart, who is originally from Fairmont, WV has been a head coach at the D-I level since 1994.  He is currently entering his 5th season at Duquesne where he led the Dukes to the 2009 A-10 championship game.

Everhart has earned the respect of his coaching peers by turning around faltering programs--McNeese State (1994-2001), Northeastern (2001-2006), and now Duquesne.  In September 2006, Everhart's first season with the Dukes, the program was rocked by a "random act of violence" when 5 players were shot on campus while trying to calm a local man who had been disrtuptive following a school dance.  The five players eventually recovered, and 3 seasons later, Everhart has his program moving up the ranks in the Atlantic 10.  He shares lessons learned in during his life in basketball as well as thoughts on coaching in today's game and building a winning program.

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Joe Gallagher, a coaching veteran of over 30 years is on the phone with Fletcher Arritt and Brooks Berry in this week's edition of The Passing Game.  Gallagher spent decades at the collegiate and NBA levels, including head coaching stints at his alma mater UNC Pembroke (1975-1978), Methodist College (1973-1975), and Belmont Abbey (1991-1992).  As an NBA assistant, Coach Gallagher (left with his wife Sharon and family) made stops in Boston and Philadelphia where he established himself as an expert on post play. He also served as an assistant at UNC Greensboro, the University of Richmond, Boston College, and Campbell University.

As an assistant at the University of Richmond (1979-1986 and 1992-1996), Coach Gallagher helped the Spiders to two NCAA Tournaments and two NIT berths--defeating Charles Barkley's Auburn Tigers in the first round of the 1986 NCAA Tournament.

Coach Gallagher is a native of Philadelphia and a 1968 graduate of Pembroke State (now UNC Pembroke), where he averaged 20.1 points and 13.3 rebounds for the Braves.  He was inducted into the Pembroke Hall of Fame in 1980.