Inside the old Bishop Hannan gym, friends of Gerry McNamara think back and look forward to what’s next in his basketball journey.<\/p>\n
SCRANTON, Pa. \u2014 A look at the former Bishop Hannan basketball court brings back memories of championship seasons, long practices, and a name synonymous with Scranton basketball culture, Gerry McNamara.<\/p>\n
“My position was point guard, so yeah, as I tell everybody, I was the only point guard ever to start over him,” said former teammate of McNamara, Brian Coyle.<\/p>\n
A senior point guard when ‘GMac’ was just a freshman at Bishop Hannan. Today, Coyle and former assistant head coach Al Munley get to see McNamara excel on the court again.<\/p>\n
Reports say the Scranton native is slated to take the top spot as head coach of the Syracuse men\u2019s basketball team.<\/p>\n
“Well, we’re definitely excited for him,” said Coyle. “Gerry has put in a lot of hard work over the years, putting himself in this position to become Syracuse’s head coach.”<\/p>\n
“Gerry is about commitment and passion, and those things have carried him from his eighth-grade days over at Holy Rosary to this gym at Bishop Hannan. The next chapter of his life was as a player at Syracuse, which made him an absolute superstar. He brings that level of commitment and passion to his coaching career,” said Munley.<\/p>\n
GMac\u2019s success started at Bishop Hannan when the Lancers won a state championship in 2002.<\/p>\n
At Syracuse, he became a national champion on the 2003 team. Years later, he served as an associate head coach for the Orange before taking the reins at Siena.<\/p>\n
In two years, he led a once-floundering team to the Big Dance, where they lost a close game to the number one seed, Duke Blue Devils, last week.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, so if you listen to Gerry talk in his press conferences, especially after the success he’s had with Siena, he tells it how it is. He’s very genuine; he’s a high-character person,” said Coyle.<\/p>\n
Both men say GMac\u2019s journey is well-earned and that, hopefully, a career back at Syracuse will be fruitful.<\/p>\n
“I think they’re hiring the right guy, and I think some of the Syracuse people are going to be very happy that he’s back,” said Coyle.<\/p>\n
So, as the lights go dark on the court where it started brighter lights of the Atlantic Coast Conference may be shining the way for the future of GMac.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inside the old Bishop Hannan gym, friends of Gerry McNamara think back and look forward to what’s next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-146518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}