University of Richmond men's basketball coach Chris Mooney signed a seven-year contract extension with the school on Friday night that could keep him coaching the Spiders through the 2016-17 season.
Mooney, who led Richmond to a 26-7 record and a number seven seed in the NCAA Tournament, had interviewed with Boston College about the Eagles coaching vacancy and had been rumored to be interested in jobs with St. John's University and Seton Hall University.
"The reasons I'm staying have nothing to do with the typical reasons that you read about in the newspaper or the reports, nothing to do with the conferences or facilities or chartered flights," Mooney said. "If I had to give a list of reasons they would all be names: Dan Geriot, Kevin Anderson, Justin Harper, Kevin Smith. It would be just a list of names of people I want to be associated with and see them through."
Financial terms of the extension were not released because of the athletic department's policy. Mooney made his decision to stay at Richmond Friday night and called a meeting with his players.
"I think they were nervous and I think their anticipation was that I was announcing that I was going," Mooney said. "I wanted to have them there personally and not have them read about it; I think they were very excited and very relieved."
Mooney came to Richmond in 2005 after serving as the head coach at the Air Force Academy. Mooney is 83-79 over his five-year tenure at Richmond, and the Spiders have had back-to-back 20-win seasons.
The Spiders struggled the first few years under Mooney's Princeton-style offense. No game typified their struggles more than a loss at Dayton University during the eight-win 2006-07 season. Richmond scored just eight points during the first half and lost the game 72-54. Even after that game, Richmond Director of Athletics Jim Miller had faith in Mooney's ability to turn around the program.
After that game, Miller e-mailed Mooney and wrote: "I know the first half this afternoon was almost unbearable for you. But you and the kids appeared to handle it well and recovered for a competitive second half. You should be proud of the effort under the circumstances. Don't spend one second worrying about whether you have my support. We are on the way to having a very good basketball program."
Mooney made strides to bringing Richmond back to competitive basketball by making the College Basketball Invitational in 2008 and 2009. Late during the 2009 season, Miller gave Mooney a multi-year extension despite hesitation by many Richmond supporters.
"About half the people said that we shouldn't [extend Mooney] and the other half said maybe we should," Miller said. "There was not let's go ahead."
Miller's faith in Mooney was justified this year when the Spiders made their first tournament appearance in six years and set a program record for wins.
With Mooney and a senior-laden team returning, including the Atlantic 10 Player of the Year and an All-American honorable mention in Anderson, Richmond is set to continue improving over the next few years. And with Butler University -- a non-BCS school -- appearing in the Final Four, expectations are growing with Richmond fans.
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"I had an email earlier about maybe we could make one or two Butler-like runs the next few years," Mooney said.
While those expectations are lofty for even the best basketball schools in the strongest conferences, he said he would rather make the Final Four than coach at one of the BCS schools.
"I think my goal would be to coach in the Final Four," Mooney said. "As we see this year, that doesn't necessarily restrict it to BCS teams."
Along with four key seniors returning, the talk of the NCAA Tournament being expanded to 96 teams will increase Richmond's chances of making back-to-back tournament appearances for the first time in 20 years.
A strong recruiting class will help make the Spiders a more balanced team. Among the three players signed to play for Richmond next year is Derrick Williams, a 6-foot-8-inch forward from New Jersey. Williams should help out with rebounding, something that hurt Richmond in its loss in the NCAA Tournament to St. Mary's College.
The contract extension should help Mooney recruit even more players next year. His turning down of the Boston College job to stay at Richmond will also be a tool for Mooney to use, he said.
"If a prospect is deciding between Richmond and a BCS school I can legitimately say that I choose Richmond," Mooney said.
Mooney's desire to stay at Richmond will most likely be tempted again over the next few years if he continues to have success. His name will be brought up when future jobs are opened in BCS conferences, but if Miller is right, it will take a lot for Mooney to leave.
"I think the best thing about the past few weeks is that Chris got the chance to go see what Seton Hall was like, what BC was like, what other schools are like and talk to people and get advice," Miller said. "One the things he may not want to say publicly but I'll say is that he found out Richmond is a pretty nice place."
Contact staff writer Andrew Prezioso at andrew.prezioso@richmond.edu
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