Ex-UConn coach Sellers joins Hofstra staff

Four months ago, former Connecticut assistant basketball coach Patrick Sellers was in the city of Urumqi, China, trying to keep his coaching career alive as an assistant with a professional team.

But one email changed everything. After reading it, the 42-year-old former Central Connecticut State player went to the Xinjiang Sports Centre and dunked a basketball.

"I usually do that on my birthday,'' the 6-6 Sellers said. "Each year it gets a little harder, but this time I was dunking with two hands, feeling so good, the players were cracking up.''

The email brought Sellers back to college basketball and to Long Island as a member of Mo Cassara's men's basketball coaching staff at Hofstra. Cassara has known Sellers for more than a decade, dating to when Cassara coached high school basketball in Massachusetts and Sellers was an assistant at Central Connecticut.

It wasn't that long ago that Sellers believed he was almost ready to become a Division I head coach.

But in May 2010, Sellers and another assistant got caught up in the NCAA investigation of the UConn program, which initially centered around the recruitment of a high school player. Sellers and the other assistant were described in the NCAA's notice of allegations as "misleading'' investigators about the program. Sellers left UConn later that month after six seasons on the staff of head coach Jim Calhoun.

In February, Sellers was cleared of any wrongdoing when the NCAA's Committee on Infractions disclosed its penalties for UConn's program.

The committee suspended Calhoun for three Big East games in the 2011-12 season and penalized the school one scholarship from the maximum 13 for the next three seasons. The basketball program also was put on three years' probation. The other assistant, who resigned along with Sellers, cannot work for another NCAA-affiliated college for the next two years without that institution first petitioning the NCAA for permission.

No players on UConn's 2010-11 NCAA championship team were involved in the investigation.

Sellers, who is single and had been at UConn for six years, said he had to resign.

"Basically, I didn't have a choice," he said. "They said your name has appeared in a notice of allegations. I just felt embarrassed. I've never had any NCAA violations. Whenever we had a recruiting test, I was the first guy to sign up for it. I've never done anything wrong. It put me in a bad light. My name had been mentioned for head jobs. I was feeling like I was getting close.''

Calhoun did not return a call seeking comment. UConn athletic director Jeff Hathaway did not directly respond to questions about the circumstances of Sellers' departure. "We are unable to discuss personnel matters and UConn is in Patrick's past,'' he wrote in an email released by the university's athletic communications department. "Pat is both an outstanding person and coach. I'm thrilled that he has this opportunity to coach at Hofstra. He'll do a great job.''

Cassara said Sellers, whose collegiate experience includes four seasons at Central Connecticut and one at Massachusetts in 2003, was hired only after Hofstra was certain he had been cleared in the UConn case.

"We wanted to make sure there are no issues with the NCAA," he said. "That's something you want to certainly have open eyes about. We did our homework, he was exonerated and there were no issues. On a personal and professional level, Pat Sellers is a great friend and a great hire for Hofstra.''

Sellers, who will be heavily involved in recruiting at Hofstra, is happy to be back in the college game.

"It's a continuation, another chapter,'' he said. "I'm with a great group of guys [at Hofstra]. A negative situation has ended up being a positive.''