Niland inducted into Erie Sports Hall of Fame

Dave Niland

Dave Niland

Credit: Penn State Behrend

Head men’s basketball coach Dave Niland was inducted into the Erie Sports Hall of Fame this year. Niland is in his twenty-eighth season at Behrend and has produced twenty-seven straight winning seasons to rank twentieth among the NCAA Division III’s winningest programs in the past decade.

The Behrend Lions have earned NCAA or ECAC postseason bids twenty-five times in the last twenty-six years. Niland has been named AMCC Coach of the Year a league-record seven times, with his teams winning eight AMCC regular season league titles and six conference tournament championships.

Niland is the all-time leader in Behrend basketball history wins with 534. His teams won twenty or more games seventeen times. His 1999-00 squad posted the most wins in school history (twenty-six) while advancing to the NCAA Elite Eight in the first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance.

As a student-athlete, Niland was a standout at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York.