Chapman Chooses Bokosky : Basketball: Titan assistant, who has had no previous head coaching experience, accepts one-year contract.

Chapman University, which has had three consecutive losing seasons in men’s basketball, Wednesday hired Cal State Fullerton assistant Mike Bokosky as its coach.

Bokosky, who also was a candidate to remain at Fullerton as an assistant to newly hired Coach Brad Holland, accepted a one-year contract for an undisclosed salary and a multi-year commitment, Athletic Director Dave Currey said.

It will be Bokosky’s first head coaching position, but Currey said Bokosky’s experience separated him from the other candidates.

Bokosky was an assistant to Bill Mulligan at UC Irvine for 11 seasons before moving to Fullerton when Mulligan resigned after the 1991 season.

Bokosky was Irvine’s main recruiter during most of his tenure and helped to sign current NBA players Scott Brooks and Tod Murphy of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Tom Tolbert of the Golden State Warriors and Bob Thornton of the Utah Jazz. He also was acting head coach for the season opener during the 1984-85 season after Mulligan suffered a stroke.

“I think he brings a wealth of experience,” Currey said. “As you look around the country for excellence, Duke is a fine example, and now we have our own Coach K.”

Well, not exactly. Bokosky said he goes by “Coach Bo,” but he would like to be known as a thinking person’s coach.

The hiring comes at a transitional point for Chapman, which announced last month that it would be moving from NCAA Division II to Division III and eliminating athletic scholarships after next season.

Bokosky said the impending switch in divisions was one of the job’s attractions.

“The major thing that attracted me was the change going from Division II to Division III--the opportunity to work with student athletes who are going to balance athletics with academics,” Bokosky said. “That by itself appealed to me, that I would get to work with student athletes who share my values.”

Currey declined to name the other five candidates whom he interviewed for the position. But three of them--Santa Ana Valley Coach Rich Prospero, Chapman assistant Jerry DeBusk and Cal State Long Beach assistant Bob Thate--confirmed that they had been interviewed.

Prospero, a sentimental favorite on campus, was Chapman’s interim coach in the 1988-89 season, leading the Panthers to a 17-12 record and their last appearance in the conference tournament. DeBusk, a former coach at Newport Harbor High, was Boyd’s top assistant. Thate was previously an assistant at UC Irvine.

Bokosky replaces Bob Boyd, who had a 30-50 record in three seasons at Chapman. During that span, the Panthers won only seven of their 40 California Collegiate Athletic Assn. games and finished in last place each season. Boyd was told March 1, the day after the season ended with a 67-54 loss to Cal State Dominguez Hills, that his three-year contract would not be renewed.

Bokosky faces the immediate problem of finding a post player. The team’s only three players at the position, Rog Middleton, Frantz Reyes and Alan Schlines, used up their eligibility last season.

Bokosky said the fact that he won’t have scholarships to offer will not be an insurmountable obstacle. Chapman hopes to join such schools as Whittier, Redlands and Occidental in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference in the 1994-95 season and Bokosky said he will be competing with those teams for recruits “not UCLA and Notre Dame.”

Next season, however, Bokosky admits the Panthers might be overmatched in their final CCAA season.

“It’s definitely going to be a year in transition but it’s not going to be a lost year. We’re going to continue to improve and get better,” he said. “We’re going to go on the court prepared. If we’re going against a center who is 6-9 and 225 pounds, we’re going to guard him just as hard as we would anybody else.”

Bokosky has had Orange County connections for a long time. He was a basketball standout at Santa Ana Valley High and played at Riverside and Saddleback community colleges under Mulligan. He finished his playing career at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., where he started on a team that advanced to the district playoffs of the National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics.

After graduating from Fort Lewis in 1978, he returned to Santa Ana Valley as a social science teacher and assistant basketball coach. He was hired by Mulligan at Irvine in 1980.

Bokosky lives in Irvine with his wife, Neddie, and Tara, their 2 1/2-month-old daughter.