NEW YORK (AP) Jim O’Connell, the longtime college basketball writer for The Associated Press and a member of the Hall of Fame, has died. He was 64.
O’Connell’s family said he died Monday after a series of ailments.
Known to nearly everyone as Oc (ock), O’Connell was a former president of the United States Basketball Writers Association. He entered that organization’s Hall of Fame in 2002, the same year he earned the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame’s Curt Gowdy Award for his coverage of the sport.
O’Connell served as the AP’s national college hoops writer since 1987 and was a fixture at major events from the Final Four to the Big East Tournament to the Maui Invitational. In his four decades at the AP, he also covered the Olympics and worked as a desk supervisor, overseeing the entire sports operation for the world’s largest news-gathering organization.
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