| | UNDER THE BANNER What's Going On In and Around Black College Sports  BACK IN THE SADDLE: The coaching odyssey of Ben Jobe has taken another twist. Southern University announced last week that the 68-year-old successful former head basketball coach will return to Baton Rouge to reassume the reins of the Jaguars hoop fortunes. Jobe, who abruptly left Southern in 1996 after a ten-year stint with two years left on his contract and saying that he was giving up coaching, then surprised everyone by becoming the head coach at Tuskegee University. He spent four years at TU compiling a 37-70 mark including the only three losing seasons in his coaching career. He was out of coaching last season. He was replaced at Southern by his former assistant Tommy Green, who was let go this season after five years at the helm during which he posted a 74-64 record. In his ten-year stint at Southern, Jobe compiled a 193-101 record that included no losing seasons, three Southwestern Athletic Conference regular season titles, four SWAC tournament championships, four NCAA Tournament appearances and one spot in the National Invitational Tournament (NIT). Perhaps the biggest moment in Jobe's career came in 1993 when his Jaguars upset heavily-favored Georgia Tech, 93-78 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in Tuscon, Arizona. A Nashville native and 1956 graduate of Fisk University, Jobe was a two-time all-Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference hoopster while in college. He also earned a master's degree at Tennessee State University. He began his coaching career in the high school ranks in Nashville in 1959 and after going overseas to coach in Sierra Leone he took his first college head coaching job at Talladega College in 1963. He also had head coaching jobs at Alabama State and South Carolina State before taking a spot as an assistant at the University of South Carolina under legendary head coach Frank McGuire. He then spent two years as the head coach at the University of Denver before joining the NBA's Denver Nuggets as as an assistant coach and director of player personnel. Before taking the job at Southern in 1986, Jobe was an assistant at Georgia Tech and spent five years as head coach at Alabama A&M. His career coaching mark of 506-297 (63%) is among the ten best all-time in black college basketball. © 2001 Azeez Communications, Inc.
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