T.J. Sorrentine is a big fan of new Brown coach Jesse Agel.

AP / Frank Franklin II

Talk about a tough act to follow.

Unlike Providence College’s new basketball coach, Keno Davis, who takes over a program that won only one conference tournament game in the past decade, and has all of its best players returning, Jesse Agel inherits a program at Brown that graduated two first-team all-Ivy players from a squad that won a school-record 19 games, swept Penn and Princeton for the first time in school history, and finished second in the Ivies at 11-3, winning 10 of its last 11 league games.

Not only that, but Agel’s brother-in-law, David McHarg, is not a candidate for president of the United States.

“He works at a museum in Utica,” said Agel’s very pleasant wife, Theresa.

“And he’s a volunteer fireman,” chimed in her sons, Zachary and Nicholas.

It didn’t hurt the Brown basketball program that Agel’s predecessor, Craig Robinson, is the brother-in-law of Barack Obama. The Democratic presidential nominee is married to Robinson’s sister, Michelle, who, like her brother, is a graduate of Princeton, where Craig twice was Ivy League player of the year.

Agel didn’t play college basketball.

So, where it should be relatively easy for Davis to look good in his first year coaching the Friars, Agel may suffer compared with Robinson and what he accomplished in his two years at Brown.

The fact is, however, that one of Robinson’s most significant accomplishments was adding Agel to his staff.

“We need to say ‘thank you’ to Craig Robinson,” said Brown’s director of athletics, Mike Goldberger, “because he was the one who brought Jesse to campus.”

By all rights, instead of being hired by Robinson a year ago, Agel should have been on the campus of the University of Vermont, his alma mater, as head coach of the Catamounts.

When the immensely popular and highly successful Tom Brennan stepped down as head coach at UVM three years ago, after the Catamounts’ third straight America East championship and a stunning first-round upset of Syracuse in the NCAA tournament, everyone expected Agel would get the job.

Everyone who played for him thought Agel should have gotten the job.

“It’s a tragedy he didn’t,” said T.J. Sorrentine, the former St. Raphael Academy star who was recruited by Agel to come to Vermont, where he was conference player of the year in 2005 and made the 3-point shot in the waning seconds that defeated the Orange. “I can’t really explain it,” Sorrentine said. “I’ve talked with the guys I played with, and none of us can figure it out.”

That’s because as far as Sorrentine is concerned, no one can figure out a game plan better than Agel, who was Brennan’s assistant at Vermont for 17 seasons, the last eight as associate head coach.

“Every game plan we had,” Sorrentine said, “he put in. He made a lot happen for us. He was essential to our success. During timeouts, he’d be the one saying what play we’d run next. He didn’t do the substitutions, put he pretty much did everything else.”

Agel said, appreciatively, that Brennan gave him “a lot of leeway to make decisions and formulate game plans.”

“He’s relentless,” Sorrentine said. “He’s the ultimate competitor. He truly loves the game. And he certainly knows the game.”

Agel certainly was relentless in his recruitment of Sorrentine.

“Every place I played,” Sorrentine said, “he was there.”

Sorrentine has spent the last three seasons playing in Europe, bouncing from Italy, to Portugal, to Slovenia. But wherever he’s been, he’s always kept in touch with Agel.

“We talk all the time,” Sorrentine said. “I love coach. I owe him a lot. He’s my guy.”

Now, Agel is Brown’s guy.

He thought he would — should — have been the Catamounts’ guy three years ago, but he’s delighted to be with the Bears now, finally getting his long-overdue, and well-deserved, chance at being a head coach.

“When it didn’t happen (at Vermont), I was disappointed,” Agel said. “But, when one door closes, another one opens.

“Craig did a great job here. I’m inheriting a team on the rise. I want to be in a situation where people have high expectations. My goal now is to put the icing on the cake and win a championship. I’ve prepared all my life for this.”

There was one thing, during the interview process, Agel wasn’t quite prepared for.

“I got a little nervous,” he said with a chuckle, “when they started looking into who my brother-in-law was.”

jdonalds@projo.com