Saturday, June 20, 2009

The last time Doug Marty was in Luxembourg coaching basketball was in 2005 with Black Star Mersch of Mersch. He led Black Star Mersch to the final four of the DBBL playoffs and had them playing at the highest level in decades. Known as a motivational leader and great teacher of the the game of basketball, Marty will replace Carsten Steiner as head coach of the FLBB's National team for men.

Marty, a graduate of Stanford University had recently been in New Zealand where he had enormous success as head coach of the Wellington Saints Saints in New Zealand's NBL. Before that he spend some time in Kuwait with Kazma Club(D1). Marty won the NBL Regular Season Championship with Wellington Saints in 2008 and was a finalist in the playoffs for the NBL title. Marty was the head coach at The North Charelston Lowgators of the NBDL(NBA DEvelopmental League)where they were runners up in 2004 and were semi-finalists in 2003 and 2004. Marty also had a short-lived stint in Contern as head coach in 2001-02 before leaving for a better offer in the U.S.A.

Douglas Marty had a terrific career as a player as he played at Stanford University(NCAA 1). Marty was a three-year starter as the point guard for Stanford (1979-82) and three times led the Cardinals in assists and minutes played. After serving as a graduate assistant coach at Stanford, Marty played professionally in Denmark (1984-87) where he led the National League in scoring at 31.2 ppg during his second season. He also played professionally in Norway in 1996-1997 with Bakklandet and in 1997-1998 with Baerums Verk before retiring as a player.

After completing his undergraduate work at Stanford, Marty earned a Masters Degree in International Studies from the University of Warwick in Coventry, England (1986) and a Masters Degree in Education from Harvard University (2000).

Eurobasket.com Luxembourg welcomes Coach Doug Marty back to Luxembourg, where he will be thrown right into the fire and will be busy now preparing the Luxembourg National Team for its summer games of the European Championship qualification Division B. Coach Marty is also going to be responsible for coaching the U20 National Team.

The U20 European Championship Men for Division B will be played in Skopje, FYR of Macedonia. Luxembourg will be in Group A where they will play Sweden in the first game on July 16th The qualification play will contine on thru the 26th of July. The other three teams included in Group A are: the Slovak Republic, Portugal and Georgia.

The Men National team will have also a tough row to hoe. They must face Georgia on the 15th of August 2009 in Tbilisi, Georgia. Then they will take on Ireland in Dublin on the 22nd of August and then the Slovak Republic on August 26th in Oberanven on Basketball Club Grengewald's home court. The final game of Division B Group C will be against Sweden on the 29th of August. The site is yet to be determined for that matchup.