Maryland men’s basketball officially hires Bruce Shingler as assistant coach

Maryland men’s basketball officially hired former South Carolina assistant coach Bruce Shingler as an assistant coach on June 7, per release.

On June 5, a source confirmed to Testudo Times that Shingler was expected to be hired by the program and the move was first reported by InsideMDSports.

Shingler earned a communications degree from and played basketball at St. Augustine’s College from 2001-05.

Although Shingler is making the move from Columbia, South Carolina, the coach has deep roots in Maryland.

Before he made the transition to college coaching, Shingler moved to Maryland where he grew up and coached the Bladensburg High School boys basketball team. He spent one year in Bladensburg where he led the Mustangs to an 18-5 record.

Shingler also coached for DC Assault U17, the area’s prominent AAU program, where he helped develop over 40 players who went onto Division I schools such as Michael Beasly, Wally Judge and Quinn Cook, according to his official biography on the South Carolina athletics website.

Shingler worked as an assistant coach at Morgan State and worked as an administrative assistant under Frank Martin, the current South Carolina head coach, at Kansas State. He was with each program for one year before he was hired as an assistant coach at Towson ahead of the 2012-13 season.

In four seasons with the Tigers, Shingler helped the program excel to new heights. During the 2011-12 season, the Tigers had just one win that did not come until late January— a 66-61 victory over UNC Wilmington at home. However, the next season, Towson went 18-13, won 13 conference matchups, took home wins from nine out of eight away games and went 3-0 at neutral sites.

The success continued as in Shingler’s final two seasons at Towson, the Tigers advanced to the postseason which led to South Carolina, where Martin was now working, to hire him ahead of the 2016-17 season.

With the Gamecocks, Shingler continued to see success. South Carolina had its best season in program history in 2016-17 winning 26 games and earning a spot in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2004. That year, the Gamecocks advanced to the Final Four.

However, this season, the Gamecock’s had a bit of a different experience winning just six games, losing 15 and securing just four conference wins. South Carolina had eight games canceled or postponed this season due to coronavirus protocols.

On Jan. 16, Martin had to sit out of the LSU after testing positive for the coronavirus. He and two other coaches did not travel to Baton Rouge and Shingler stepped in as acting head coach. Although South Carolina outscored LSU in the first half, it could not hold on as it fell to the Tigers, 85-80.

In 2016, Martin told The State, a newspaper out of Columbia, South Carolina, “When I hired [Shingler] at K-State, he was in that pocket,” Martin said describing the places Shingler built connections up I-95 such as Florida, Washington DC, Baltimore as well as New York and New Jersey.

“Now having gone back to Towson and spending the last four years recruiting that area, not only does he have some lifelong relationships because that’s his home, but now he also has some experience as a Division I assistant coach recruiting the area, which are two different animals.”

Familiarity with the area will prove to be beneficial to head coach Mark Turgeon, the rest of the men’s basketball staff and the team as Shingler’s hiring comes after former assistant coach Bino Ranson left the program to take a spot at DePaul. Ranson’s specialty was recruiting, specifically in the DMV as he was responsible for bringing five-stars such as Diamond Stone and Jalen Smith into the program along with four-stars such as Darryl Morsell and James Graham III.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that Shingler has been officially hired by the program with an updated timeline of his career.