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Tennessee Basketball hiring Amorrow Morgan as new assistant coach

IMG_3593by: Grant Ramey05/02/25GrantRamey
Amorrow Morgan, South Alabama Athletics
Amorrow Morgan, South Alabama Athletics

Rick Barnes is hiring Amorrow Morgan as an assistant coach on his Tennessee Basketball staff, sources told Volquest. Morrow replaces Rod Clark’s after Clark was hired at Indiana.

Morgan spent the last two seasons at California and was hired at Florida State on April 6. 

Morgan is a Memphis native who also coached at Loyola-Chicago from 2021-23,  as well as South Alabama, Nicholls State, Henderson State, the University of Illinois Springfield and Our Lady of the Lake University. 

At Cal he was described as “a relentless recruiter” who was responsible for bringing in Jeremiah Wilkinson, the ACC’s Sixth Man of the Year and an All-Rookie Team pick after averaging 15.1 points per game as a freshman last season. 

Tennessee Basketball’s first assistant coaching change since 2021

Morgan helped Loyola-Chicago win 35 games during his two seasons at the school, including a Missouri Valley Conference championship and NCAA Tournament appearance in 2022. He was South Alabama’s associate head coach for the final two of his three seasons with the Jags.

He’s a 2012 graduate of Idaho State, where he was a two-time All-Big Sky guard and a three-time team captain. He played professionally for three years in Europe and earned his master’s degree at Illinois-Springfield. 

Clark, who spent the last four seasons on the Tennessee bench, left on Wednesday for a position as an assistant coach at Indiana under first-year Hoosiers head coach Darian DeVries. 

Clark was hired by Bares in 2021 alongside current Tennessee associate head coach Justin Gainey. Clark and Gainey were hired after Kim English left to become head coach at George Mason and Desmond Oliver left to become head coach at East Tennessee State.

The departure of Clark was the first change on the Tennessee coaching staff since Schwartz left to become head coach at East Carolina. Schwartz was replaced by Gregg Polinsky, who was promoted from a volunteer analyst position.

Multiple Tennessee coaches have left for head-coaching opportunities

Multiple former Tennessee assistant coaches from the Barnes era have left to become head coaches: Schwartz, English, Oliver and Rob Lanier (Georgia State).

Chris Ogden is the only coach that left Tennessee another job as an assistant coach, joining Chris Beard’s staff at Texas Tech in 2016, after one season with Barnes and the Vols. He was later hired by UT Arlington in 2018, then later returned to the University of Texas.

Barnes said Wednesday during the Big Orange Caravan stop in Nashville that the open spot on his staff had already been taken care of. 

“Rod was great,” Barnes said, “but you know what? We feel we’ve got that position covered … We’ve got it covered because there’s a lot of people that would obviously love to be at the University of Tennessee … we are excited about the direction that we are going and we’ve got it pretty much filled.”

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