The University of Delaware has become a leader in basketball circles, with five former Fightin' Blue Hen head and assistant coaches now with head coaching jobs either in the NBA or in NCAA Division I.

Perhaps the best known among the coaches is Mike Brey, the UD men's basketball head coach from 1995-2000, who is now head coach at the University of Notre Dame.

Since leaving for South Bend, Brey has led the Fighting Irish to 20 or more wins and NCAA tournament appearances in each of his three seasons.

Brey had 50 wins in his first three seasons at UD, the best mark in University history, and 99 total with the Hens.

Current UD Head Coach David Henderson, like Brey a product of Mike Krzyzewski's Duke University staff, has won 49 games in his first three seasons, the second two of which have been in the basketball-rich Colonial Athletic Association.

A former UD assistant basketball coach, Kevin O'Neill, is the new head coach of the NBA's Toronto Raptors. O'Neill was on the UD staff from 1983-85.

After leaving Newark, O'Neill moved through the ranks and served as head coach of college basketball teams at Tennessee, Northwestern and Marquette. Most recently, he was an assistant with the NBA's Detroit Pistons.

Dennis Felton, a UD basketball assistant coach from 1986-90, is now head coach at the University of Georgia. Felton moved to Athens from Western Kentucky University, where he turned the Hilltoppers into a Sun Belt Conference power.

After leaving UD, Felton served as an assistant coach at Tulane and St. Joseph's before joining the staff of Rick Barnes at Providence and Clemson. He was named head coach at Western Kentucky in 1998 and recently accepted the head coaching position at Georgia.

Ron Jirsa, a UD basketball assistant coach in 1983-84, is now head coach at Marshall University in Huntington. Jirsa was named head coach this summer, and this is his second stop as a Division I head coach. He earlier had led the program at Georgia, succeeding Tubby Smith when Smith left for Kentucky.

The last several seasons, Jirsa worked on the staff of Oliver Purnell at Dayton and Clemson.

Larry Davis, a UD basketball assistant coach from 1985-89, has been the head coach at Furman University since 1997 and has led the Paladins to the upper reaches of the Southern Conference.

After his stint at UD, Davis served as an assistant at Wake Forest, Ball State and Minnesota.

Anthony Solomon, a UD assistant basketball coach in 1988-89, is now head coach at St. Bonaventure University, where he has the difficult assignment of restoring order to a program that had to forfeit several games for using an ineligible player and that endured a disruptive player boycott of the final two games of the 2002-03 season.

Solomon moved to St. Bonaventure from Notre Dame, where he was on Brey's staff. He also served as an assistant at Bowling Green, Manhattan and Richmond.

Learn more about Delaware as a cradle of coaches in a variety of men's and women's sports in the Fightin' Blue Hens Today athletics annual, which will be on sale this fall.