A heartfelt Mazel Tov to Steve Donahue.
The former Penn assistant and Cornell coach just cashed in on the Big Red’s Sweet Sixteen run and is taking a big-time job in Beantown.
Donahue will take the reins at Boston College next season, replacing the recently fired Al Skinner, who had been with the Eagles for 13 years.
If Steve was going to get out of the scholarship-deprived Ivy League, now was the time.
The headlines he made after leading No. 12 seed Cornell all the way to the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAA tournament would likely never be eclipsed if Donahue had stayed put in Ithaca, N.Y.
While his Big Red were ultimately thwarted by top-seed Kentucky, Cornell finished the season ranked No. 17 in the Coaches’ Top 25 Poll — a rare achievement for any Ivy team.
It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future, but I can’t see the Big Red climbing much higher than they did this year. They’re losing a nine-man senior class that is unrivaled in recent Ivy memory, and the incoming freshmen have generated little buzz.
Donahue did a swell job in Ithaca, turning a once bottom feeder into an annual contender. He took over the last-place Big Red in 2000, and in his first four years Cornell lingered in the lower half of the Ivy standings. But Donahue rebuilt the program, and the Big Red only lost four Ivy games in the last three years.
His success peaked with a 29-5 overall record this season, including a nearly spotless 13-1 Ivy record. The only blemish was a 15-point loss to Penn on Feb. 12. (Sorry, Steve, you can’t win ‘em all.) It was Cornell’s third-straight Ivy title.
Donahue will be similarly tasked with turning around another ailing program at Boston College. The Eagles have gone 19-29 in the Atlantic Coast Conference during the same three years that Cornell was tops in the Ancient Eight.
The Eagles best finish in the ACC was third place in 2005-06 — the year they moved to the ACC from the Big East.
Can Steve make the jump from mid-major to major? He definitely showed he could compete in the big leagues during this year’s tourney.
But at least one thing is certain: he can keep wearing those red ties for quite some time.
CALDER SILCOX is a sophomore science, technology and society major from Washington, D.C., and is Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is silcox@dailypennsylvanian.com.
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