Hall of Fame men’s basketball coach and three-time NCAA champion Jim Calhoun is stepping away from his post at coach at NCAA Division III Saint Joseph, he told the Hartford Courant. Calhoun, 79, will transition out of his role effective immediately, this coming after leading his Blue Jays to a 3-0 record to open the 2021-22 season.
“You’ve got to know when it’s time,” Calhoun told The Courant Thursday. “We’re a really good team. The program is in great shape, we’re going in the right direction, now’s the time.”
Calhoun will turn the program — which he helped start in 2017 — over to associate head coach Glen Miller, who was on Calhoun’s original staff both at Saint Joseph and at UConn when Calhoun took over the Huskies job in 1986. Miller was also an associate head coach at UConn from 2010-17, first under Calhoun and later, when Calhoun retired, under Kevin Ollie.
In two full seasons (plus three games) with Saint Joseph, Calhoun authored an incredible post-UConn run with the upstart Blue Jays. After spending a year recruiting and putting together a team, he led the program to a 16-12 record in its first season in 2018-19 and followed it up in 2019-20 with a 26-3 campaign. (They played only four games last season during a pandemic-ridden lost year.)
Such was the trajectory for him at UConn, too. After his first season with the Huskies finished in a disappointing 9-19 record, he never again finished with a losing record, going 629-245 in his tenure. He steps away having collected 920 wins at Northeastern, UConn and Saint Joseph.
