Kansas, Missouri men’s basketball assistant coaches receive Hall of Fame honors

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - Six inductees were announced into the A STEP UP Assistant Coaches Hall of Fame in a ceremony on May 23 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Amongst those inducted include the Jayhawks’ Norm Roberts and Tigers’ Charlton “C.Y.” Young. Joining the local pair was Providence’s Jeff Battle, Iowa’s Jan Jensen, Michigan State’s Dean Lockwood, Stanford’s Kate Payne, and Arizona’s Jim Rosborough.

A STEP UP is a professional development for coaches with a mission to educate, connect, inspire and equip with the inaugural inductee class taking place in 2019. Coaches inducted represent each NCAA Division I, II, and III with criteria entailing respect among colleagues for high moral character and integrity made significant contributions to the game and/or teams coached. Inductees must also be a current college basketball assistant coach, or retired as an assistant coach, while also being a part of winning championship-caliber programs.

Norm Roberts has been on Bill Self’s staff on the Kansas sidelines for 12 seasons. In this time the Jayhawks won nine Big 12 regular season and four Big 12 tournament championships, made six Sweet 16 appearances, five Elite Eights and two Final Four appearances. He was a part of the KU coaching staff for the 2022 national championship. Roberts has worked with many NBA players out of Lawrence including Josh Jackson, Andrew Wiggins, Joel Embiid, Christian Braun, and more adding up to more than 30 Jayhawks that went on to play professionally.

Roberts has held positions at Kansas, Illinois, Tulsa, Oral Roberts, Florida and was the head coach at St. John’s for six seasons in New York since playing at Queens College in his hometown. The coach graduated from Queens in 1987 with a bachelor’s degree in health and physical education and is the school’s third all-time leading scorer, career leader in steals and second in assists.

Most recently he served as the interim head coach in the Big 12 Tournament and NCAA Tournament as Self missed time with a health issue.

Charlton “C.Y.” Young took the associate head coach position for Missouri men’s basketball in April of 2022 as the first official member of head coach Dennis Gates’ staff for the Tigers. Young has almost 30 years of coaching experience collected from positions at Auburn, Jacksonville, Northeastern, UT Chattanooga, Georgia Tech, as head coach at Georgia Southern and came to Columbia from Florida State after being an assistant coach from 2013 to 2022.

Young has been a part of eight NCAA Tournament teams, two regular-season conference titles, and coached 13 NBA Draft picks. At Florida State alone, the assistant coach led the Seminoles to three Sweet Sixteen appearances and the program’s first Elite Eight in 25 years.

Further, Young has made a significant impact on recruiting including helping Florida State land Top-10 recruiting classes in each of his first eight seasons. He has developed a total of seven NBA Draft first round picks including Scottie Barnes, Patrick Williams, Malik Beasley and Devin Vassell. He adds this honor to being named the No. 1 High-Major Division 1 Minority Assistant Coach by the Minority Coaches Association in 2021 and was a finalist for the Ben Jobe Award in 2012.

The Georgia Southern alumni and great is one of 14 all-time players to score over 1,500 career points and holds the school’s records for three-point field goal percentage and was inducted into the GSU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2008. His professional playing career included a stint in France in 1994 before he returned to finish a degree in broadcasting from Georgia Southern.

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