Dan Earl, the former Virginia Military Institute men’s basketball head coach, led the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball team to the National Invitational Tournament championship last week.
In the NIT championship game on Thursday in Indianapolis, the Mocs earned an 85-84 overtime win over the University of California, Irvine. It was the first NCAA Division I national tournament title for Chattanooga, which won the NCAA Division II tournament in 1977 before switching to Division I.
Chattanooga finished the season at 29-9 overall and 15-3 in the Southern Conference, defeating SoCon rival VMI twice. As the top seed, the SoCon tournament in early March in Asheville, N.C., the Mocs beat Mercer 76-71 in the quarterfinals before they were upset by Furman 80-77 in overtime in the semifinals. Furman went on to lose to Wofford 92-85 in the SoCon finals.
Earl just finished his third season as Chattoonooga’s head basketball coach. Previously, he was VMI’s head coach for seven years, from 2015-22, leading the Keydets to a 13-12 record in 2020-21, their first winning season in seven years. That year, after VMI made its first SoCon semifinal appearance in 18 years, Earl was named SoCon coach of the year. While at VMI, Earl went 78-138, going 29-28 in his final two years.
Earl stepped down in March 2022 to take the head coaching job at Chattanooga, and current head coach Andrew Wilson was hired to replace him the next month.
