Pitt alum Gilbert Brown joins Panthers coaching staff

Former Pitt guard Gilbert Brown retired from professional basketball last year and entered the coaching profession, joining the South Kent School in Connecticut as an assistant coach. On Monday, that career move led him back to his alma mater, as Pitt head coach Jeff Capel hired Brown to fill a position on his staff that was vacated by Pitt alum Ronald Ramon.

Brown, who attended Pitt from 2006 to 2011, will join the Pitt staff as the director of player and alumni development. The position was held by Ramon from 2019 until last month, when he accepted an assistant coach position on Kyle Neptune's staff at Fordham.

“Gil is an outstanding Pitt man with a great deal of passion for the game of basketball and the University of Pittsburgh,” Capel said. “We connected immediately over basketball when I first started here at Pitt and he was rehabbing an injury and extending his playing career. I look forward to watching Gil continue to build great relationships with past, present, and future Pitt basketball players and their families.”

During his time as a player at Pitt, the native of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, helped the Panthers achieve a 111-30 record and win two Big East championships. All told, Brown finished his college career at Pitt with 1,048 points, 438 rebounds, 234 assists and 67 steals in 129 games. And in his five years on campus, Pitt made the NCAA tournament every season.

After his graduation from Pitt, Brown went on to play professional basketball with stops in the NBA D League and overseas in the Dominican Republic, Germany, Israel, Italy, Puerto Rico, Turkey and Venezuela. He played for 10 years and averaged 10 points per game or more every season from 2011 to 2017, and in 2016, he was named an All-Star in Israel.

Brown last played for Team Hines in The Basketball Tournament in 2020 before joining the staff of his former high school coach, Raphael Chillious, at South Kent, the high school he graduated from in 2006. In his new position at Pitt, Brown will assist in sorting out the logistics of recruiting visits and work to improve engagement among alumni.