Old Friend of Bubb’s Added to CSUN List

The five applicants who will be interviewed for Cal State Northridge’s basketball coaching position include a friend of Athletic Director Paul Bubb who was added to the search committee’s list of recommendations after Bubb rejected an initial list.

Joe O’Brien, who played basketball at Monmouth College in Illinois with Bubb and later coached for five seasons at Lincoln College, a junior college in Lincoln, Ill., has been selected as a finalist for the Northridge job, the school announced Friday.

The other four are Bobby Braswell, an assistant at Oregon; Percy Carr, coach at San Jose City College; Bobby Castagna, an assistant at UC Santa Barbara, and Mike Miller, coach at Los Angeles City College.

One interview will be held each day, starting Monday. The order of the interviews has not been determined. Bubb said he hopes to have a coach selected by May 1.

O’Brien is the most intriguing candidate on the list. He resigned from Lincoln a year ago and has been selling insurance in Kansas City.

He was not on an initial list of recommendations forwarded to Bubb by the search committee last week, sources said.

“I have no idea what list that is,” Bubb said Friday, explaining that he wouldn’t characterize the committee’s initial report as complete.

Upon receiving that report, in which the committee listed eight or nine top candidates, Bubb asked the committee to reconsider because of some late applications.

O’Brien’s application was not one of those that came in late. O’Brien said he applied around April 1; the committee’s initial report was written April 12.

O’Brien was an assistant at Southwest Louisiana and Central Missouri State before accepting his first college head-coaching position, at Lincoln. In five seasons, he averaged 20 victories.

O’Brien, 41, said he left Lincoln because the school was downgrading from Division I to Division II junior college status. He said he applied for several other coaching positions, but was not offered any so he took the insurance job about seven months ago.

The Northridge vacancy was created when the school decided last month not to renew Pete Cassidy’s contract for a 26th season at the school.