BATON ROUGE — LSU Basketball Coach John Brady has announced that Jeff Clapacs has joined the men’s basketball staff as director of operations for the 2007-08 season.
Clapacs replaces Scott Soprych, who left LSU earlier this summer to take an assistant coaching position at Chicago State University.
Clapacs, who graduated from The College of Wooster (Ohio) in May of this year, has served as an assistant to the operations manager in the athletics department at Wooster since the fall of 2003 and also as a student assistant to the men’s basketball program at Wooster since 2005.
“We are extremely pleased that Jeff has decided to join our basketball staff here at LSU,” said Brady. “His knowledge of the game, his organizational skills, the expertise he brings to the breaking down of tapes are areas that will be beneficial to our program and its commitment to provide the best opportunities for our players continued development.”
In his job with the Wooster athletics department, he was responsible for game management setup for home games of nine different varsity programs and also served as a game official for football and volleyball and clock operator for soccer matches.
He played two years for the College of Wooster basketball team before becoming a student assistant coach for the highest-winning basketball program in Division III since 2000 with a winning percentage of .868 (210-32 record). As a student assistant, he helped coach the junior varsity team, was involved in video taping practices, assisting coaches with drills and overseeing setup of the gymnasium for practice.
He has also served as a counselor at several well-known summer basketball camps including here at LSU under Brady, Florida (Billy Donovan) and Duke (Mike Krzyzewski), along with camps conducted by the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Clapacs majored in communication studies and wrote his senior independent study on the subject of “Got Game? The Recruitment Rhetoric of Division III Head Basketball Coaches.”