Former Reading High basketball star Stu Jackson appointed to NCAA Tournament selection committee

Former Reading High basketball star Stu Jackson will serve on the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee until 2028. (Reading Eagle)

Former Reading High star Stu Jackson has been appointed to the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee, the NCAA announced Friday.

Jackson, who’s in his second season as commissioner of the West Coast Conference, will complete the term of Santa Clara athletic director Renee Baumgartner on the committee. Baumgartner recently announced she is resigning her position at the end of June.

Jackson’s appointment will begin immediately and will run through the 2028 NCAA Tournament.

“I am honored,” Jackson said in a statement released by the West Coast Conference. “I appreciate Renee Baumgartner’s service and am humbled to be appointed to complete her term with this esteemed group.

“I am anxiously looking forward to the opportunity to work with the existing committee members and the NCAA staff under Dan Gavitt’s stellar leadership on basketball’s premier event.”

The committee determines the at-large teams and the brackets for the NCAA Tournament.

The 68-year-old Jackson led Reading High to its first appearance in a PIAA championship game. He scored 38 points in a 63-62 loss to General Braddock in the 1973 Class A final and finished his career with 1,563 points.

He went on to play college basketball at Oregon and Seattle and later went into coaching. He was an assistant at Oregon, Washington State and Providence and in the NBA with the New York Knicks.

He later became head coach at Wisconsin and in the NBA with the Knicks and Vancouver Grizzlies, where he also served as general manager.

Jackson also worked in the NBA office as executive vice president of basketball operations before returning to collegiate athletics as an executive with the Big East for nine years.