Steve Donahue has added Mark Vershaw to his coaching staff after top assistant Izzi Metz left for the Hobart head coaching job this past April. Vershaw is listed in the Cornell’s online staff directory and was quoted as a Cornell assistant in an article in Sunday’s Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. He comes to Cornell after an 18-month stint as the team manager and de facto big man coach at Washington State under his college coach, Dick Bennett. Prior to that, Vershaw broke into the coaching ranks as an assistant at Illinois Central College, before leaving mid-season in January 2005 to join Bennett at Washington State. As a college player at Wisconsin, Vershaw scored 1,066 points and was the leading scorer on the Badgers’ 2000 Final Four team.

Slant: No formal announcement of the hire has been made by Cornell, but it’s safe to assume Vershaw will be working with the Big Red frontcourt as he did at Washington State. While Vershaw’s only official coaching experience came in his short stint at ICC, not many Ivy coaching staffs can boast a former starter on a Final Four team. He could turn out to be a big boost to the school’s recruiting in the Midwest, which Donahue appears to recognize, juding from the fact he sent Vershaw to the camp in Indiana.