It’s not official, but the Commercial Appeal is reporting that Vanderbilt has hired Whitehaven High School coach Faragi Phillips to be its third assistant coach, joining Adam Mazarei and David Grace on Jerry Stackhouse’s first staff. Phillips himself seemed to confirm his hiring via Twitter, though Vanderbilt hasn’t released anything:
We’ll try to piece together what we can about Phillips. He played college ball at Mississippi Valley State; his last year there was the 1998-99 season, when he averaged 20.9 ppg. He was the head coach at Memphis Mitchell from 2011-15 and won back-to-back state titles, and he’s been the head coach at Whitehaven for the last four seasons, where he finished as the state runner-up (to Memphis East and current Memphis head coach Penny Hardaway) in 2018, and the Tigers made it to the state semifinals in 2019.