Ohio State hiring Grand Canyon's Jamall Walker to Jake Diebler's coaching staff
Ohio State is hiring Jamall Walker, most recently an assistant coach at Grand Canyon, as a member of new coach Jake Diebler's coaching staff.
Walker, 46, has spent the last four seasons at Grand Canyon, where the Antelopes reached the NCAA Tournament three times and as a No. 12 seed beat Saint Mary’s in the first round before losing to Final Four team Alabama this year.
He is the third assistant announced as part of Diebler's staff. As he enters his first full season as coach, Diebler has added Dave Dickerson and Joel Justus. Dickerson has been a head coach at Tulane and USC Upstate in addition to an eight-year stint at Ohio State on Thad Matta's staff, while Justus most recently was associate head coach at N.C. State.
“I could not be more happy to welcome Jamall and his family to the Ohio State basketball family,” Diebler said in a statement. “Jamall’s recruiting success, his experience in the Big Ten as well as working with a coach like Bryce Drew were all really important intangibles that I was looking for when filling out a staff. He's got a great defensive mind and a tremendous ability to connect with players. He’s going to be a great asset for our program.”
After a four-year playing career at St. Louis, where Walker recorded 350 career assists for the Billikens from 1995-99, he was hired for his first Division I job at Ball State in 2004. After subsequent assistant coaching jobs at St. Louis (2006-07), Murray State (2007-08) and Ohio (2008-09), Murray went to Arizona as director of basketball operations for coach Sean Miller for one year before returning to the Bobcats for the 2010-11 season. While there, he mentored D.J. Cooper, a two-time first-team Mid-American Conference selection and the 2012 MAC Tournament most valuable player.
He remained there for two seasons with coach John Groce, and when he was hired at Illinois following the 2011-12 season Walker followed him to the Big Ten. Walker was on staff for all five years of Groce’s tenure and remained with the Fighting Illini when Groce was fired after the 2016-17 season and replaced with Brad Underwood.
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In the interim, Walker was the team’s coach for the 2017 NIT after Groce was let go after the Big Ten Tournament and before the postseason. Illinois went 2-1 in the NIT as a No. 2 seed, and after having served as an assistant to the head coach and defensive coordinator in 2019-20, Walker joined Bryce Drew’s staff at Grand Canyon.
Diebler worked for Drew while at Valparaiso from 2011-13 and at Vanderbilt from 2016-19. Before that, Diebler worked for Drew's father, Homer, as a graduate assistant and director of basketball operations
“Jamall is a talented young coach who, without question, has a future as a college head coach," Brad Underwood is quoted as saying in Walker’s biography page on Illinois’ website. "I saw that first-hand with the outstanding job he did leading the Illini during the 2017 NIT.”
Ohio State still has two assistant coaching positions available.
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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State basketball hiring assistant coach Jamall Walker from GCU
