Preston Murphy hired as Alabama basketball assistant fresh off two-year show-cause

Alabama basketball coach Nate Oats has filled out his coaching staff, and Preston Murphy is the last addition.

The Crimson Tide has hired Murphy with the title of "special assistant," the school announced Monday. He will be an on-court coach and be involved in campus recruiting support.

Murphy joins Austin Claunch and Ryan Pannone as Oats' assistant coaches after Bryan Hodgson (Arkansas State), Charlie Henry (Georgia Southern) and Antoine Pettway (Kennesaw State) all left this offseason for head coaching jobs elsewhere.

Murphy was most recently an assistant coach at Creighton. He got hit with a two-year show-cause penalty in June 2021 by the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions because he "violated NCAA ethical conduct rules when he accepted a $6,000 payment from a business management company that intended to use coaches to influence student-athletes to retain the company and when he provided false or misleading information about his actions during the investigation," according to a report from the committee two years ago. The report also said the Creighton assistant coach provided "false or misleading information about his actions during the investigation."

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The infractions committee didn't name Murphy in the report, but he was named in a federal indictment in March 2019, according to USA TODAY. Murphy was accused of accepting the payment from an undercover FBI agent while in a 2017 meeting in Las Vegas with Christian Dawkins. An athlete advisor, Dawkins was among those arrested in the college basketball bribery scandal. A federal judge later found Dawkins guilty of bribery and conspiracy to commit bribery, per ESPN.

“I have known Preston for a long time," Oats said in a statement, "and I am excited about the many ways he can add tremendous value to what we do. I am always impressed with his energy, his humility, and his basketball acumen. His insight, experience and ability to connect with student-athletes will be a significant advantage for us. Additionally, Preston is a great person who is highly-regarded throughout the college basketball community. We have every expectation his hire will contribute to the continued success and high benchmarks of Alabama basketball.”

Murphy was not charged with a crime, per the Associated Press.

"I passed a lie detector test and provided the NCAA with proof about what really happened: I did not know about Christian's scheme, the money was never mine, I did not keep any of the money, no one asked me to do anything, I never agreed to do anything and I never even tried to arrange any sort of meeting or do anything wrong whatsoever," Murphy said in a statement to ESPN in 2021. "The truth is that I thought I was doing a favor for someone I thought was a friend by saying something that was true -- that I have known Christian since he was a child -- and to be handed money that belonged to Christian that I handed to him after the meeting. As the decision says, there is no evidence that I kept the money and I did not take any action. If I had known what was really going on, I never would have gone to the meeting."

Prior to Creighton, Murphy was an assistant coach at Boston College (2014-15). It was a return to Boston after he served as its director of operations before then from 2006-10.

Between the two, Murphy was an assistant for Rhode Island from 2010-14, the same place he played and attended for school. Murphy graduated in 1999 after four seasons at guard and 1,218 career points.

After professional playing experience in Holland and Belgium from 1999-2002, Murphy earned his first coaching gig at Woonsocket High School. He was the head coach at the Rhode Island school from 2003-06.

Alabama is fresh off winning the SEC regular-season title and SEC Tournament championship en route to the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Oats is entering his fifth season with the program, having made the NCAA Tournament in three of four seasons. The only season he didn't was his first in 2019-20 when the tournament was canceled.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Preston Murphy: Alabama basketball hires former Creighton assistant