John Linehan, a 1996 graduate of Chester High School and the NCAA’s all-time steals leader in Division I, will now coach college basketball in the same city where he excelled as a college player.

Linehan, whose 385 career steals at Providence remain the gold standard in college basketball, has been named an assistant men’s basketball coach at Brown University, located in Rhode Island’s capital.

The 38-year-old Linehan once played in the NBA Development League and for more than a decade overseas. Scholastically, his battles with Lower Merion’s Kobe Bryant in the mid-1990s were epic.

Kobe even paid tribute to Linehan well into his Hall of Fame career by telling reporters the toughest defender he’d ever faced was the Providence point guard.

“I don’t know where I’d be without basketball,” Linehan said. “It’s taken me all over the world, places I never would have gone to. Basketball has done wonders for me.”

“Linehan had made himself into a great college player, no insignificant thing when you are 5-foot-9 in a basketball world where the cheerleaders were 5-foot-8,” writes Bill Reynolds of the Providence Journal.

“To see him play defense back then was like watching some new basketball art form. To see big-time players who wanted no part of him was one of the little joys of watching a college basketball game back then.”

The Brown Bears were 8-20 overall last season and 3-11 in the Ivy League.