Tommy Amaker

Tommy Amaker

Harold Tommy Amaker Jr. is an American college basketball coach and the head coach of the Harvard University men’s basketball team. Amaker played point guard for the University of Michigan and Seton Hall University. He also served as an assistant coach at Duke University under Mike Krzyzewski. As a college basketball player, he set most of the assists records and many steals records for Duke basketball.

About Tommy Amaker in brief

Summary Tommy AmakerHarold Tommy Amaker Jr. is an American college basketball coach and the head coach of the Harvard University men’s basketball team. Amaker played point guard for the University of Michigan and Seton Hall University. He also served as an assistant coach at Duke University under Mike Krzyzewski. As a college basketball player, he set most of the assists records and many steals records for Duke basketball. He was the first winner of the NABC Defensive Player of the Year, and he was a third team All-American. He became the winningest coach in school history in 2016. He is the father of two daughters, Tami Amaker and Lucas Amaker. The Amaker family moved to Falls Church, Virginia, when Amaker was 10 years old. He attended W. T. Woodson High School in Fairfax, Virginia. His mother, Alma Amaker, was a high school English teacher in Fairfax County. She chose Woodson because the school’s basketball coach, Red Jenkins, had been impressed with Amaker’s performances at his youth summer league since he was 10. He went to Maryland because his sister Tami went to the Terrapins and Amaker idolized Maryland star guard Lucas Lucas. He played on the 1983 McDonald’s All- American team and was also named to the Parade All-Americans team. He won the National Invitation Tournament the year after a probationary ban from postseason play, and had the three highest single-season win totals in the history of Harvard basketball. In the summer of 2010, the NCAA ruled that Amaker had committed a recruiting violation, resulting in NCAA-mandated recruiting restrictions.

The 2010–11 team became the first Harvard men’sbasketball team to clinch a share of the Ivy League championship and surpassed the prior season win total. The 2012–13 team gave Harvard its first NCAA tournament victory. The 2013–14 team posted a record 27 wins. In his third year there, he also coached the 2009–10 Harvard Crimson men’s basketball team into the postseason. The 2011–12 team became the first in schoolhistory to appear in the Associated Press and Coaches Polls and, for the third year in a row, established a new school record for wins. The 2014–15 teams repeated as Ivy League champions. Amakers is married to former U.S. basketball player and college coach Joanne Amaker; the couple have two children. The couple have a son and a daughter, both of whom are active members of the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. The family has lived in Falls Church since the early 1990s. They moved to Fairfax because Amaker wanted to play for the Maryland College Park Terps, where he was an all-star basketball player in the 1980s and 1990s, and his sister wanted to go to Maryland University. They also live in Maryland because of the county’s strict rules regarding where their children could send their children to school due to their mother’s work as a teacher.