After spending more than a month on a leave of absence, Jared Grasso has officially resigned his position as head men’s basketball coach at Bryant. Details are still scarce, but Grasso’s leave started in late September and was unrelated to a hit-and-run arrest that happened near the start of October (charges have since been dropped).
Grasso had this to say in a statement on social media:
It is with mixed emotions that I announce my resignation as the Head Men’s Basketball Coach at Bryant University. My role as a father and husband is everything to me. The rigors of a coach’s lifestyle and 3 young children can make that extremely challenging. My mental and physical health must come first at this time.
For the last 25 years I have chased this game relentlessly with a results-oriented mindset. My obsession and discipline with work, competition and winning championships is in my blood. But for now my mental health and surgically repaired back need to be tended to.
In five years at the helm, Grasso went 79-67 overall and built the program up from 10-20 in his first season to 22 wins in his fourth. That 2021-22 team became the first in program history to win the NEC regular season and Tournament titles and the first to reach the D-I NCAA Tournament, pushing Grasso into the spotlight and making him a popular name on the coaching carousel. The program moved to the America East prior to last season and went 17-13 (8-8) in the more competitive league.
Phil Martelli Jr, who had been on Grasso’s staff since 2018 and served as associate head coach from 2020-23, has been the Bulldogs’ acting head coach since September. He is the son of long-time collegiate coach Phil Martelli, who spent 24 years as the head coach at Saint Joseph’s (1995-2019) and now works on the Michigan staff where he is coincidentally also serving as interim head coach while Juwan Howard recovers from offseason heart surgery.
The team is off to a 1-2 start after falling to Rutgers over the weekend and will next be in action on Thursday when they visit Boston U.
credit to Eric Rueb/The Providence Journal for image
