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Chattanooga head coach Matt McCall is off to Amherst to become the new head coach of the UMass Minutemen, ESPN’s Jeff Goodman reports.
As expected, Matt McCall is the new coach at UMass. 5 year deal, source told ESPN.
— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanESPN) March 29, 2017
McCall has only been a head coach for two seasons, both of which were at Chattanooga, where he took over in 2016. After making the NCAA Tournament as a 12 seed in his first year with the Mocs, McCall won 19 games in 2017. Chattanooga, however, fell to Wofford in the first round of the Southern Conference Tournament. McCall was also previously an assistant at Florida under current LSU head coach Will Wade.
McCall is one of the youngest head coaches in all of college basketball at just 35 years old. UMass is getting an exciting, if slightly untested, coach to become the new face of its program.
The Minutemen went 15-18 and just 4-14 in the Atlantic 10 this season under Derek Kellogg, who was fired at the end of the season. The university then had a deal in place with Winthrop coach Pat Kelsey, but Kelsey backed out at the last minute to remain with the Eagles.