Katz: Turgeon Brings Bill Walker With Him To Maryland
By petevolk
ESPN basketball scribe Andy Katz had an interesting article today about whether Texas A&M would decide to stay in-house and promote Scott Spinelli as their new head coach. This was interesting originally because Spinelli is rumored to be heading over to Maryland as an assistant coach, and Katz said the job is his if he wants it:
"Spinelli is running the interim phase at Texas A&M while he awaits his fate. He’ll have a job at Maryland if he doesn’t land the Aggies gig."
Even more interesting, however, is the sentence right before that one:
"Turgeon already has taken Bill Walker with him to Maryland."
Say wha? Apparently, Turgeon has brought Walker over with him, presumably as an assistant coach, and this slipped through the cracks of the local media, leaving Katz to mention it matter-of-factly. So, who is Walker?
A graduate of Missouri-Rolla, Walker spent time as an assistant coach with UAB (three years), Missouri-St. Louis (seven years), Central Missouri State (four years) and Minnesota (ten years) before being hired as a senior athletic assistant by A&M in 2007. After two years in that position, he became an assistant coach with the Aggies.
A good recruiter, Walker brought Kris Humphries, Vincent Grier and Rick Rickert to Minnesota. His 2001 class was ranked in the top ten nationally by a lot of different folks, and he also recruited former D-II All-American Antonio Rivers to Central Missouri State.
I’m going to guess Walker will be an assistant coach at Maryland (which is not good for Rob Ehsan, meaning it is also not good for Sterling Gibbs, Martin Breunig, and Terrell Stoglin, if you want to take it that far), but he could also have the vague “athletic assistant” title. We’ll have to wait and see until an official announcement is made.