A proven winner has been tapped to lead Bishop Canevin’s boys basketball program.
Tim Tyree Jr., who led Vincentian Academy to a pair of WPIAL championships – including one when he was just 27 years old – was announced Wednesday as the 17th head coach in program history.
Bishop Canevin President Brian Fernandes said in a statement that the school community is “blessed to welcome Coach Tyree into the Bishop Canevin family.”
“He possesses all the qualities necessary to help grow our boys into young men of faith and community.”
Tyree replaces Aaron McGee, who stepped down in the spring a little over a year after taking over for Damien Cornish, was dismissed with less than two weeks remaining in the 2023-24 regular season.
Tyree, who left Vincentian after the 2019-20 season when the school closed, spent the past five seasons as an assistant – one year at Chatham University and four years at North Allegheny.
He said the chance to jump back into the role of head coach, combined with his previous success in a private school environment, led to his interest in the Bishop Canevin job.
“The administration at Bishop Canevin is supportive of my vision of building the program and getting us to the level of success we want to be at,” he said Wednesday evening. “And it’s an opportunity to be back at the helm as the head coach. That’s an important factor.”
Tyree said serving as an assistant for five seasons gave him a different view of the game than the one he had as head man at Vincentian. He said he gained greater appreciation for the role that the assistant coaches play, and he’ll make the most of his assistants at Bishop Canevin.
“We’re still building the staff but they will be some people I respect a lot in my own inner circle,” he said. “It’s about the people I trust, and more importantly, people who are good basketball guys.”
Tyree said he’s already talked with Drew Allen, one of the standouts on last year’s Bishop Canevin team, and he’s looking forward to working with him and the rest of the squad.
“I think we can come in and get things rolling right away,” he said. “We’ll work to retain the players we had and develop the guys we’re bringing in.
“We’re excited.”
Tyree will be starting his second decade as a coach, as he started in 2013 as a skill development trainer and youth coach before becoming an assistant at Vincentian in 2016.
A Monessen High School graduate, he took over as the varsity coach at Vincentian in 2017 and led the team to three straight 20-win seasons. In 2018, he became the youngest coach to lead his team to a WPIAL title and the following year his team advanced to the PIAA championship game before losing.
Tyree graduated from California University of Pennsylvania – now PennWest – where he played basketball under coach Bill Brown. Tyree, his wife and their 5-month-old daughter reside in Mars.
McGee, a former Bishop Canevin assistant, had been working as an assistant to former Crusaders head coach Gino Palmosina at Moon when he was elevated to the Crusaders’ top spot late in the 2023-24 season.
McGee led Bishop Canevin to an unbeaten 10-0 record and a Class 3A Section 2 championship and a 15-12 overall mark last year. The Crusaders advanced to the WPIAL semifinals, where they lost to Aliquippa. McGee’s squad then fell to Mohawk in the third-place game and lost its first PIAA playoff game to Bishop Guilfoyle.
McGee said after resigning that several factors played a role in his decision to step down, including the fact that he has two young children, ages 4 and 2.
“It’s a big time commitment and with two kids, I felt like I couldn’t keep spending time away (coaching),” he said.
McGee also said that his vision for running the program didn’t necessarily align with the school administration’s vision. But he praised Dale Checketts, the school’s athletic director, saying that Checketts understood his reasons for stepping down.
“He knows I’m a family guy, and he knows what the game means to me, how seriously I take it and the time I put in,” he said.
Checketts characterized McGee at the time he resigned as a “young up and coming coach, but he also has a family.”
“Coaching is something you try to balance your time with your family, and with your team,” Checketts added. “Aaron did a great job with us. We couldn’t have asked for more out of him in that regard.”
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