Familiar face set to join GU staff

Mark Few looked neither far nor long to find a qualified successor to Bill Grier as the top assistant on his Gonzaga University men’s basketball coaching staff.

Few confirmed on Sunday that he will hire Ray Giacoletti, a close friend and former head coach at Utah, Eastern Washington and North Dakota State, to replace Grier, who will be introduced this afternoon as the new head coach at the University of San Diego.

“He’s been a close friend of mine for years,” Few said of Giacoletti, who resigned, under pressure, earlier this month as the head coach at the University of Utah, where he spent three seasons and compiled a record a 54-38. “And to get somebody that has 10 years of head coaching experience at the collegiate level is a real coup.”

Giacoletti, who was an assistant for four years (1993-97) at the University of Washington before becoming the head coach at North Dakota State (1997-2000), was hired as the head coach at EWU in 2000 and led the Eagles to their first NCAA tournament berth in 2004.

Following his successful stint at Eastern, he went to Utah, where he led the Utes (29-6) to the NCAA’s Sweet 16 in 2004-05 before suffering back-to-back losing seasons.

“With all of the experience he has in the Northwest, and with his familiarity with our program and how we’ve done things, I think he’s going to be a great fit,” Few said. “And I think he’s going to be a good mix with (assistants) Leon (Rice) and Tommy (Lloyd).”

Giacoletti, when reached at his home in Salt Lake City, said returning to Spokane to work for Few was the “best situation” he and his wife, Kim, “could have hoped for.”

“My wife and I are really excited,” he explained. “We love the people in that area of the country and, obviously, Mark and I are really good friends.”

When asked if he could deal with going back to being an assistant and deferring, in many cases, to someone else in charge, Giacoletti added:

“I’ve been a head coach for 10 years, now, but I’ll have no problem playing that new role. I’m a team player, and to be honest with you, Gonzaga has had so much success, I’m just hoping to fit in, help wherever I can and not screw anything up.

“They obviously have things figured out there.”