April 20, 2007
(San Diego, CA) - USD head men's basketball coach Bill Grier, who was named USD's head coach on March 26th, has completed his coaching staff. Joining Grier at USD will be Bill Carr, Walter Roese, and Kyle Bankhead. Bill Carr has been named the Associate Head Coach, while Roese and Bankhead are assistant coaches.
"I'm excited about our staff," said USD head coach Bill Grier. "Everyone brings something a little different to the table. I feel getting Bill Carr is a coup for our program. He has six years of head coaching experience, and was an assistant at the Division I level for eleven years. With his knowledge of San Diego and California, he will be someone I can lean on for both recruiting and player development. Walter Roese is someone who is well connected in the coaching ranks. Besides his recent experience at BYU, he has coached the U-19 Brazilian team, and has done a great job in helping place kids from both Brazil and Columbia. In Kyle Bankhead I get a guy who understands taking a program to the next level. He understands what we want to do both offensively and defensively, and he is someone who is very familiar with me. I believe the four of us will work well together."
Bill Carr comes to USD from nearby UC San Diego where he has been the head coach the past three seasons. Carr compiled a 38-45 record for the Tritons, and his 15-14 mark of 2005-06 was the first winning season since the Tritons moved to NCAA Division II in 2000-01. This past season UCSD went 12-15 overall and 10-12 in the California Collegiate Athletic Association. Carr returns to the West Coast Conference where he was a player and assistant coach at the University of San Francisco. Carr played two years (1985-87) at USF for former USD coach Jim Brovelli. The first year was the "Back to Basketball" group that marked the restart of the program after a three-year hiatus. Carr earned a degree in accounting and went on to spend nine years as an assistant at USF for Brovelli (5 years) and Phil Mathews (4 years). He helped land 10 first team All-WCC performers, including the 1998 and 2000 WCC Freshmen of the Year. USF advanced to the NCAA Tournament in 1998 after winning the WCC Tournament title.
Before getting the head position at UCSD, Carr served two seasons as the associate head coach at Long Beach State, and three as the head coach at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. A native of Glendale, Calif., Carr accumulated a career mark of 84-23 (.785) at Spring Hill, leading the Badgers to three appearances in the NAIA National Tournament. In 2000 and 2001, Spring Hill advanced to the NAIA "Elite Eight". In his first season (1999-00) Carr led Spring Hill to a 29-8 mark, a Gulf Coast Athletic Conference (GCAC) championship and a trip to the NAIA Tournament, where it advanced to the final eight. Carr was named GCAC Coach of the Year that season and was a finalist for the NAIA National Coach of the Year. Bill and his wife, Pam, have three children - Allie, Madison and Paul.
Walter Roese comes to USD from BYU where he has been an assistant coach the past two seasons. When he first joined BYU in 2005 he became the first Brazilian full-time assistant coach in NCAA Division I Men's Basketball. With his outstanding knowledge of the game and large international recruiting network, Roese is a valuable addition to the USD coaching staff. A 1994 graduate in International Business Administration from BYU-Hawaii, Roese earned an MBA at BYU in 2003 before serving as BYU's director of basketball operations under former Cougar coach Steve Cleveland for two years. Roese coached the Brazilian Junior National Team this past summer, helping his native country qualify for the 2007 World Cup. He also previously served as a volunteer assistant at BYU-Hawaii under Ken Wagner after finishing his professional playing career.
A native of Novo Hamburgo in southern Brazil, Roese played seven years professionally in Brazil and Italy after graduating from BYU-Hawaii. He has represented the Brazilian National Team and professional clubs at four World Cup tournaments and several international championships in Europe, Asia and South and North America, winning state, national and South America championships. Roese has experience at nearly every level of the college game. He attended the University of Houston, West Texas A&M and BYU-Hawaii while playing at the Division I, Division II and NAIA levels. He was the MVP of the Lone Star Conference in 1992 while playing at West Texas A&M, and was a Scholar-Athlete All-American at BYU-Hawaii.
Roese comes from an athletic family that has seen six members participate at the Olympic level in basketball, volleyball and tennis. Fluent in English, Spanish and Portuguese, Roese and his wife Monique are the parents of two children, Leonardo and Agatha.
Kyle Bankhead, who played under Grier at Gonzaga, is beginning his first full-time position as an assistant. The past two years he assisted Gonzaga as an administrative assistant. Bankhead walked on at Gonzaga for the 1999-00 season and red shirted. He played four years (2000-04) for the Bulldogs with the team winning four straight WCC titles and advancing to the NCAA Tournament each year, including a Sweet Sixteen appearance in 2001. A three-time WCC All-Academic selection, Bankhead appeared in 121 career games. For his career he shot 45.7% from the field (219-479), 45.3% from three-point range (169-373), and 73.1% from the free throw line (76-104). He ranks 7th all-time in three-pointers made with 169. After earning his degree in Sports Management, Bankhead played in Germany for one year (2004-05), before returning to Gonzaga for the 2005-06 season.
