BATON ROUGE — LSU volleyball head coach Fran Flory announced Thursday that she has hired Darrell McLean to join her staff as assistant coach for the coming season.
McLean replaces Tonya Johnson, who recently left to take an assistant’s position at the University of Texas.
McLean, the top assistant at Cincinnati since 1998, is well known for his innovative and creative coaching techniques that have helped the Bearcats to four NCAA Tournaments and at least 21 wins in each of his five years. He has also been instrumental in signing three of the last four C-USA Freshmen of the Year and members of UC’s recruiting classes during his time garnered eight first team All-Conference nods.
“Darrell will be tremendous asset to our program as our recruiting coordinator,” said LSU’s Flory. “He is a proven recruiter who has extensive experience recruiting outstanding student-athletes capable of competing on the highest level nationally. Our program has been on a steady climb back in the national rankings. Adding Darrell is another step in that direction.”
Prior to joining the Bearcat staff, McLean spent two seasons as an assistant at Xavier and six years as the head coach at Thomas More College.
The 59-year-old McLean’s years at Thomas More showed his ability to build a perennial national power from scratch. His teams qualified for five consecutive NCAA tournaments, winning 205 matches in six seasons. He was named the 1991 and 1992 American Volleyball Coaches Association South Region’s Coach of the Year.
“His professionalism, experience and expertise will have an immediate impact on not only our recruiting, but on the current student-athletes in our program,” Flory said. “We are very fortunate to have a coach of his caliber join our program and our University.”
McLean is married to Veda with one son, Dennis. He retired to get into volleyball coaching about 24 years as a Cincinnati firefighter.