Seattle University has hired Cameron Dollar to lead the return of its men’s basketball team to Division I.
Athletic Director Bill Hogan announced Dollar’s appointment in the SU Student Center today, noting that a national search ended two miles away at the University of Washington, where Dollar has been an assistant coach for the past seven years.
“Coach Dollar gives us everything we are looking for and more,” said Hogan. “He is a proven winner. He has been on the national stage as both a coach and a player and has great contacts in the region, our core recruiting area. He has a lot of care and concern for student athletes and an appreciation of our Jesuit traditions.”
“Seattle University is an outstanding academic institution that is laying a strong foundation to return its basketball program to national prominence,” said Dollar, 33. “It’s a great challenge?and an exciting opportunity.”
Dollar’s basketball roots go back to his childhood in Atlanta, where his father Don coached Clarkston High School. He was a four-year letterman at UCLA from 1994-97 and played in the Bruin’s 1995 national title game in Seattle’s Kingdome.
Of local note, the Bruins defeated the University of Washington Huskies in all eight appearances while Dollar was on the team. In 1996, he single-handedly clinched one of the victories with a half-court shot at the overtime buzzer.
In 1998, at the age of 22, he became the third-youngest coach in the nation, taking the helm of Southern California College in Costa Mesa, Calif. In 1999, he went to Saint Louis University as an assistant to then-coach Lorenzo Romar, whom he followed to the University of Washington in 2002.
With Romar, Dollar helped recruit several classes ranked among the best in the nation while taking the team to several NCAA tournament appearances and its first sole PAC-10 championship title since 1953.