Per Duke Comms:
DURHAM, N.C. – Duke men’s basketball assistant coach Emanuel Dildy has been selected to participate in the 2024 TopConnect Basketball Symposium taking place on the campus of University of Nevada, Las Vegas, on Monday, June 10, presented by Teamworks and VanWagner.
TopConnect, developed by ETSU Athletics Director Dr. Richard Sander, identifies the top assistant basketball coaches in the country and connects them with Athletics Directors, providing tremendous networking and leadership development opportunities.
In its seventh year, TopConnect develops educational programming that allows the chosen top assistant coaches to hear from a variety of successful leaders and speakers. The 2024 symposium is headlined by Kristi Dosh of College Sports Solutions and Dan Poneman of Poneman & Naiditch Representation.
Panel Discussions:
• First- and Second-Year Head Coaches
• Looking Back: If I Knew Then What I Know Now
• New Realities of College Athletics: NIL
• Athletic Directors: Who, why, how, and what
• Search Firms
Breakout Session Topics:
• Managing up
• NIL & Collectives
• Creating and Maintaining Culture
• Roster management / staff management
Prior to joining Duke in August of 2023, Dildy had a two-year stint as assistant/associate head coach for Porter Moser at Oklahoma. Regarded in the coaching ranks as one of the nation’s top recruiters, Dildy spent three years as an assistant coach under Chris Collins at Northwestern from 2018-21.
The Chicago native has also served as an assistant coach at Valparaiso (2017-18), Missouri (2016-17), Loyola Chicago (2013-16) and Eastern Illinois (2012-13). Dildy began his coaching career at Kennedy-King College in Chicago, serving as an assistant from 2008-10 and then as head coach from 2010-12.
Dildy played for two seasons at New Mexico State before transferring to Eastern Illinois, where he was an All-Ohio Valley Conference selection as a senior. After earning his bachelor’s degree in communications from EIU in 2005, he played professionally in Germany for two years and stateside for one season in the International Basketball League before embarking on his coaching career.
