Courtesy of GoGriffs.com
Canisius head men’s basketball coach Reggie Witherspoon announced today (June 22) that Eddie Shannon has joined the Golden Griffin men’s basketball coaching staff for the 2017-18 season. Shannon comes to Canisius after spending the two previous seasons on staff at Chattanooga, including the 2015-16 campaign where he worked with Witherspoon, when the pair were a part of former Mocs’ head coach Matt McCall’s staff.
“I am excited to have Eddie join our program here, and I believe he will be a great addition to the Canisius community and the Western New York community as well,” Witherspoon said. “I had the pleasure to work with Eddie at Chattanooga, and I think his experience as a player and as a coach, along with his make-up as a man, will be a tremendous benefit to our student-athletes.”
Shannon was elevated to an assistant coaching position at Chattanooga prior to the start of the 2016-17 season by McCall after the Palm Beach, Fla., native spent the 2015-16 season as the program’s director of basketball operations. In his two years at Chattanooga, Shannon was a part of 48 wins, with 25 of those victories coming in Southern Conference play. The 2015-16 team posted a school-record 29 wins and went to the 2016 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament, the program’s first NCAA Tournament berth since 2009.
Prior to joining the Mocs’ staff, Shannon spent three seasons on staff as an assistant coach at Palm Beach Atlantic, an NCAA Division II institution in West Palm Beach, Fla. Shannon joined the staff at Palm Beach Atlantic after he ended his professional playing career, which spanned 10 years, with stops in stops in Australia, Croatia, Cypress, France, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Russia and Sweden. In 2002, he earned Swedish League Guard of the Year and finals MVP accolades after leading the league in scoring. Another scoring title came a year later in the Russian Superleague, where he also earned first-team all-league honors.
Shannon was a four-year starter for the University of Florida, where he helped usher in the Billy Donovan era in Gainesville. He earned the 1999 Frontier Most Courageous Player award from the NCAA. A childhood injury led to him playing his entire career with only one eye. It did not limit his impact as he averaged 10.1 points, 2.9 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.7 steals per game over his four years, culminating in the 1999 NCAA Sweet 16 appearance. He graduated from Florida with 1,168 career points scored.
Scholastically, he starred at Cardinal Newman High School in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was a three-time Sun-Sentinel Player of the Year, two-time Palm Beach Post Player of the Year, and he was named the Class 3A State Player of the Year in 1994 and 1995.
Shannon joins a Canisius program that returns two starters and eight letterwinners from a team that went 18-16 overall and 10-10 in MAAC play in 2016-17. The Griffs saw their season end with a CIT first-round loss at Samford, the program’s fourth national postseason appearance in the last five years.
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