CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Texas A&M-Corpus Christi announced on Saturday that it had named Jim Shaw as the interim head basketball coach. Shaw was an assistant coach for the Islanders under head coach Steve Lutz for the past two seasons.
"He's been a great part of our success here," said Texas A&M-CC athletics director Adrian Rodriguez. "Honestly, the reason a lot of our players are here is because of Shaw. He's a great X's and O's guy, knows the ball incredibly well. Obviously he's really connected to our players, our coaches and our program.
Lutz announced Saturday that he had taken the head coaching job at Western Kentucky after leading the Islanders to back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances and winning the school's first-ever tournament game.
"We're not surprised," said Dr. Kelly Miller, president of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. "We knew that there would be a lot of folks coming after Coach Lutz when we had such an incredible season last year and another this year with so much national attention."
Shaw is a native of San Antonio and has worked mostly in Texas over his 19 seasons with stops at Texas Tech, Nebraska, UTEP, Texas State and Tarleton State.
A search is underway for the permanent coach.
"It's a national search," Rodriguez said. "We announced that today as well. There's obviously an interest with our players, our great basketball brand and all that we got here. We certainly will take an extensive look at the best interest of Islander basketball moving forward."
"We already have folks reaching out," Miller said. "We already had folks reaching out even before his announcement hoping that he might be going somewhere else because they're interested in working here at the Island University."
Miller added that the tournament significantly increased Texas A&M-CC's exposure.
"There were Twitter battles going on about whether or not we were really an Island," Miller said. "There was one that wanted to know if we actually existed -- could such a gorgeous place really exist as a university? Izzy was recognized as the coolest mascot of all time."
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