The National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) announced former Wabash College coach
Mac Petty and former Blackburn College coach Dr. Ira Zeff as the head coaches for the 2015
Reese's Division III College All-Star game, which will be played as part of the 2015 NCAA
® Division III Men's Basketball Championship.
Reese's brand is the official candy partner of the NCAA.
The
Reese's Division III College All-Star game will be played on Saturday, March 21, at 12:30 p.m. (EDT), prior to the NCAA Division III championship game, which begins at 3:00 p.m. at the Salem Civic Center in Salem, VA. The teams are composed of two senior student-athletes from each of the eight regions in Division III along with two seniors selected by online voting on D3hoops.com.
The game features a pair of outstanding former coaches who have both been recipients of the NABC Division III Distinguished Service Award. Petty will coach the East team and Zeff will guide the West team.
Petty, who retired as head basketball coach after the 2010-11 season, is the winningest coach in Wabash history. In 35 years at the helm of the Little Giants basketball team, Petty recorded an overall record of 497-389. He was named the 1997 District coach of the year by the NABC, marking the second time in his career (1982) that he received that honor. Petty also earned NCAC coach of the year honors in 2010, the same year the NABC honored him with the Guardians of the Game Award for Advocacy. He led the Little Giants to the NCAA Division III national title in 1982 and was enshrined in the Wabash Athletics Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Montgomery County Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007. Petty was inducted into the Greater Akron Baseball Hall of Fame in October of 2004, celebrating his outstanding baseball career during his high school and early collegiate days.
"I'm overwhelmed and honored with this appointment," Petty said. "I figured once I retired my basketball coaching days were done. Now I get to coach the East All-Star team at the Division III National Championship site with my good friend Ira Zeff who will coach the West team.
"I went to the Division III championship game in 1999 and took one of my great players, Chad Tabor, with me. There was no All-Star game then. We went to be involved in a kids' clinic and to see the games. This Reese's All-Star game is a small way to recognize some of the finest D-III basketball players in the country. It will be an honor to be with them and to put on a show for the fans in attendance. I'll also be involved in a coaches' clinic. I haven't coached for three years and they're asking me to be a clinic speaker. The game has changed some in these three years. I don't know if I'll have anything worth mentioning to the coaches in attendance. But I'll try. Maybe some old ideas still mean something. I'm looking forward to the experience."
Zeff served as the director of athletics and head basketball coach at Blackburn, where his teams won three St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championships. Now in his 15th year as director of athletics at Nebraska Wesleyan University, NWU has claimed its conference all-sports trophy six times under Zeff, who has served as the chair of the NCAA Division III Championships Committee after being elected in January 2009. In addition, Zeff served as chair of the NCAA Division III Men's Basketball Committee for two years and was chair of the West Region Advisory Committee for four years. He is an active member of NACDA and past vice president for the Association of Division III Independents.