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Dayton hires OKC assistant Anthony Grant as coach

Dayton has hired Oklahoma City Thunder assistant and former Alabama head coach Anthony Grant as head coach of the basketball team, the school announced.

Grant, 50, played for the Flyers from 1983 to 1987. He replaces Archie Miller, who left Dayton to take the head-coaching job at Indiana.

"Anthony Grant is a proven winner with the highest integrity," Dayton athletic director Neil Sullivan said in a statement. "He has successful experience in coaching, recruiting and playing basketball at an elite level. I welcome Anthony to our staff and look forward to partnering with him as we continue to aggressively pursue graduating student-athletes, winning conference championships and advancing in the NCAA tournament. He is absolutely the right coach."

Grant has spent the past two seasons as an assistant to coach Billy Donovan at Oklahoma City. He was also an assistant with Donovan at Florida before taking the head-coaching job at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2006.

Grant was with VCU from 2006 to 2009, and then was the head coach at Alabama from 2009 to 2015. In nine seasons as a head coach, Grant compiled a record of 193-110 and took his teams to three NCAA tournament appearances.

He was a three-year starter at Dayton and averaged 11.6 points and 6.7 rebounds in his career.

"I am honored and humbled to be the head coach at the University of Dayton," Grant said in a statement. "It's a great responsibility to take over at an institution that is so well-respected. Anyone you talk to in college basketball would say our program is a successful one, but the potential is here for so much more."