Pat Sullivan - Director of Recruiting - Men's Basketball Support Staff

Photo by: Maggie Hobson

Pat Sullivan

Title:
Director of Recruiting
Email:
psullivan@unc.edu
Phone:
919-962-1154

Pat Sullivan is in his 13th season as a Tar Heel, including five as a player (1990-95) and eight in two different stints on Dean Smith’s, Bill Guthridge’s and Hubert Davis’ staffs.

In his first four seasons in his second stint as a member of the UNC coaching staff the Tar Heels have won 101 games, including 56-24 in ACC play, earned a Final Four berth, an ACC regular-season championship and a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

The 2022 Final Four was Pat Sullivan’s seventh as a Tar Heel. He played in 1991, 1993 and 1995, was on Smith’s staff in 1997, an assistant coach in 1998 and 2000 and the 2022 Final Four capped his first season on staff with Davis, a former UNC teammate.

Sullivan played for Smith at Carolina from 1990-93 and 1994-95 (he requested to red-shirt the 1993-94 season) and was part of Bill Guthridge’s staff with Phil Ford and Dave Hanners that won NCAA regional titles and advanced to the Final Four in 1998 and 2000. Carolina won the 1993 NCAA championship in Sullivan’s junior season.

He has played in more NCAA Tournament games (19) and more NCAA Tournament wins (17) than any Tar Heel in history and is one of seven Tar Heels who have played in three Final Fours.

Sullivan was a member of Hall of Famer Larry Brown’s staff with the Detroit Pistons when they won the NBA championship in 2003-04. He served as assistant coach with the Pistons in 2004-05, with the New Jersey Nets from 2005-08, the Pistons again from 2008-11, the Washington Wizards from 2012-16, the Los Angeles Clippers from 2016-18 and the New York Knicks from 2018-20. In 2020-21, he was a player development and defensive assistant with the Minnesota Timberwolves.

As an NBA assistant coach, Sullivan worked for numerous head coaches, including Brown, Doc Rivers, Lawrence Frank and Randy Wittman, and helped coach a number of former Tar Heel standouts and other NBA stars, including: Bradley Beal, Chauncey Billups, Reggie Bullock, Vince Carter, Ed Davis, Wayne El-lington, Raymond Felton, Blake Griffin, Richard Hamilton, Richard Jefferson, Allen Iverson, Jason Kidd, Tracy McGrady, Chris Paul, Paul Pierce, Julius Randle, D’Angelo Russell, Karl-Anthony Towns, John Wall, Ben Wallace and Rasheed Wallace.

The Bogota, N.J., native (buh-GO-tuh) scored 478 points in 118 games as a Tar Heel, netting a career-high 18 points against Old Dominion on 12/1/92, one of 12 games in which he scored in double figures. He famously made the front end of a 1-and-1 with 20 seconds to play in the 1993 NCAA title game against Michigan to give UNC a two-point lead, a game the Tar Heels went on to win, 77-71.

Sullivan averaged a career-best 6.4 points as a junior, when the Tar Heels went 34-4 en route to the national title. The Tar Heels advanced to the ACC Tournament championship game in each of his five seasons as a player, winning the title in 1991 and 1994.

He was a college teammate with Davis from 1990-92 and was on the Pistons’ staff in 2003 when Davis played in Detroit for half a season.

He won UNC’s Butch Bennett Award as a freshman for dedication, sportsmanship and sacrifice for the good of the team; was the recipient of the 1993-94 Rick Sharp Award, given to the player who contributed the most in practice and behind the scenes; and was a team captain and the Most Inspirational Player in 1994-95.

Prior to joining the Carolina coaching staff in October 1997, Sullivan was the head coach at Hale High School in Raleigh in 1995-96 and spent a season on Coach Smith’s staff as an administrative assistant and assistant video coordinator.

He and his wife, Sara, have a son, Collin, and daughter, Olivia.