Hamilton to Head Miami Program : Basketball: Oklahoma State and Marshall must look for new coaches. North Carolina State may not be far behind.

Leonard Hamilton, lured from Oklahoma State by what he described as unlimited potential at the University of Miami, became the Hurricanes’ new basketball coach Monday.

Hamilton, 41, inherits a Miami program that averaged just 2,000 fans for home games and has yet to earn an NCAA tournament berth since the school resumed basketball in 1985 after a 15-year interruption.

Hamilton had a 56-63 record in four years with the Cowboys. They were 17-14 last season, with seven losses to top-10 teams, and reached the second round of the NIT.

Hamilton succeeds Bill Foster, who resurrected the Miami program and announced last fall that he would resign after the season. The Hurricanes were 78-71 under Foster, 13-15 this season.

Dana Altman, Marshall basketball coach, was hired as coach at Kansas State, where he was an assistant for three years.

Altman will replace Lon Kruger, with whom he served as assistant before taking the Marshall job last April. Kruger is leaving Manhattan, Kan., after four years to become coach at the University of Florida.

Altman went to Marshall last April, after the Thundering Herd forced Rick Huckabay to resign because of NCAA violations. Altman led the Herd to a 15-13 record and a second-place finish in the Southern Conference this season.

Last month, Marshall was put on two years’ probation by the NCAA for violations committed under Huckabay.

North Carolina State was given permission by the UNC Board of Governors to file suit, if necessary, to force basketball coach Jim Valvano’s resignation.

Valvano was unavailable for comment, but his attorney, Woody Webb of Raleigh, N.C., said: “I think it’s without precedent for a university to sue its coach. We will continue to negotiate in good faith, as we have up to now.”

School trustees voted, 9-3, earlier this month to instruct their attorneys to seek the termination of Valvano’s contract.