Arizona basketball hires Mark Phelps as assistant coach

Former Drake head coach Mark Phelps has been officially added to the Arizona Wildcats staff.

UA announced Phelps' hiring as assistant coach Monday, two weeks after Damon Stoudamire announced he was leaving Arizona to rejoin Josh Pastner's University of Memphis staff.

Phelps, 49, knows UA coach Sean Miller well. The two worked together on Herb Sendek's North Carolina State staff from 1996-2001, while Phelps continued to work with Sendek at N.C. State and ASU until 2008, when Drake hired him to replace Keno Davis.

Phelps, coincidentally, also had the misfortune of facing Miller in a round of the 2011 Shots from the Heart charity free throw competition. Phelps made 24 of 25 free throws, only to lose when Miller hit all 25 shots.

Phelps went 77-86 over five years at Drake, leading the Bulldogs to two CIT appearances, but was fired in 2013 after going 15-17. He became a candidate that spring to replace James Whitford, who left UA as associate head coach in 2013 to become the head coach at Ball State. But Stoudamire was hired, and Phelps instead took an assistant coach's role at Missouri.

Last year, Phelps moved to Marquette to work under new head coach Steve Wojciechowski. When it became clear that Phelps was leaving for UA – which had to post the opening publicly for 10 days – Wojciechowski hired ASU assistant Stan Johnson.

After Johnson was hired, Phelps thanked Marquette and its fans via Twitter.

"I didn't expect my time in (Milwaukee) at Marquette to be so short or so incredibly rewarding," Phelps tweeted. "Coaching college basketball = exciting & adventurous!

"The people in this state & the people in the Marquette Community are rare & special. My family & I are so much richer for the experience."

A native of Dayton, Ohio, who grew up in Virginia Beach, Va., Phelps began his coaching career at two different Virginia independent high school teams, coaching them to a collective 148-53 (.736) mark over six seasons.

He graduated from Old Dominion in 1996 and joined Sendek's N.C. State staff that year, serving as director of operations until becoming an assistant coach in 2000. He became Sendek's recruiting coordinator and director of scouting in 2005 and accompanied Sendek to ASU.

Phelps becomes the second former college head coach to work on Miller's staff. Associate head coach Joe Pasternack was the head coach at New Orleans before joining UA in 2011.

Phelps will likely be paid in the mid-$200,000s. On last season's UA staff, Pasternack was paid $235,000, while Stoudamire and Book Richardson each made $204,000 as assistants.