By Ben Sales
As the most exciting time in college basketball began this week, Jewish coaches were basking in the spotlight.
For much of the season, four coaches — Auburn University’s Bruce Pearl, Duke University’s Jon Scheyer, the University of Florida’s Todd Golden and University of Southern California’s Lindsay Gottlieb — have been at or near the top of the game.
And last Sunday, Mar. 16, all of them were rewarded with No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Division I men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments.
Each tournament has four regions, with 16 teams each. And in this year’s men’s tournament, the top team in three of those four will be led by a Jewish coach. The fourth No. 1 seed is Houston, whose coach is not Jewish.
- Duke, which was also the top team in the AP’s final college basketball poll, is the No. 1 seed in the eastern region and is coached by Scheyer, who played professionally in Israel and has garnered support from Jews on campus.
- Auburn, coached by Pearl, is the No. 1 seed in the southern region. Pearl is the founder of the Jewish Coaches Association and is an outspoken supporter of Israel.
- Florida, coached by Golden, is No. 1 in the western region (regions often do not correspond with geography). Golden also played professionally in Israel as well as in the Maccabiah Games, where he was coached by Pearl. Earlier this year, he faced a Title IX investigation after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct. The charges were dismissed when the office found Golden had not committed misconduct “within a university program or activity.”
In the women’s tournament, USC, coached by Gottlieb, is No. 1 in the Spokane 4 region. A Scarsdale, New York, native, Gottlieb has already been inducted into the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame of Northern California.
March Madness will also see some Jewish players on the court. Among them is Danny Wolf, who plays for Michigan’s men’s team, the N0. 5 seed in the South and may enter the NBA draft after this season. Another is Yarden Garzon, an Israeli who plays for Indiana, the No. 9 seed in the Birmingham 2 region in the women’s tournament.
Will a Jewish coach win it all? Quite possibly: Six out of the past seven men’s tournaments have been won by No. 1 seeds.
Of course, the most Jewish team in the college basketball postseason saw an early exit: The Yeshiva University Maccabees lost in the first round of the DIII tournament earlier this month.
Ben Sales wrote this article for the JTA global Jewish news source.
A former college campus activist, Veksler will speak at Chizuk Amuno on June 8 at the Ruth and Jay Lenrow Visiting Scholar-in-Residence for Combating Antisemitism.
The Orioles' weak defense plays a major role in the nightly carnage, writes Michael Olesker.
For 35 years, the late Deborah Brodie, aka Bubbie Cookie, amassed a collection of over 200 Jewish ritual objects, which she used to teach her Hebrew school students with special needs.