Green Bay, Wis. (NBC 26) -- Former De Pere basketball star Brandon Pritzl is coming home. The Redbirds legend is expected to join the UW-Green Bay basketball coaching staff as an assistant coach.
Pritzl has spent the last four seasons as an assistant coach at his alma mater, Division II Hillsdale College in Michigan. Prior to that he worked with new UW-Green Bay coach Will Ryan while he was a graduate assistant at Ohio University during the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons.
Pritzl returned an email but cannot formally comment until an official announcement is made next week.
His former head coach, Brian Winchester, said Pritzl gave him the news over the weekend.
"I couldn't be more excited for him, both him and his family," Winchester, who coached Pritzl at De Pere from 2007-2010, said. "There's limited opportunities to coach, especially at the Division 1 level. And when you get to do it in your hometown... that's a really cool opportunity so I'm really excited for Brandon and I'm really excited for his family."
Pritzl's younger brother, Brevin, recently graduated from UW-Madison after starring on the Badgers basketball team. His father, Brian is an assistant basketball coach at De Pere High School.
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Pritzl had a highly successful high school career, culminating with an FRCC Player of the Year honor, before going on to play college ball at Hillsdale. Winchester said he knew Pritzl would make a good coach even back when he was still in high school.
"He was very intelligent player," Winchester said. "He always saw the game through a coach's eyes as a player.
"He was always a really easy player to coach," Winchester added. "He was a really good leader. He could engage any one of his teammates in different ways. All of that lends itself well to coaching. And he's going do a really good job at UWGB with all of those things."
Winchester believes one of Pritzl's strength is as a recruiter, because he's a great people person and communicator.
UW-Green Bay is expected to announce the entire men's basketball coaching staff next week.
