Ray Harper has resigned as Oklahoma City University’s basketball coach, after guiding the Stars to consecutive NAIA titles and three straight national championship games.
Sources said Harper, 46, will be hired as an assistant coach at Western Kentucky, an NCAA Division I program that finished 29-7 and in the Sweet 16 this year. He also is one of two finalists for the head coaching job at Western Illinois, which has lost 104 of 144 games in the five seasons since former Oklahoma assistant Jim Kerwin left that school.
“Oklahoma City was a great place to work for three years,” said Harper, who was 95-17 at OCU and 2008 NAIA Coach of the Year. “You couldn’t ask for a better administration and better people to work with. It couldn’t have been better. There are great people at the university and Oklahoma City’s just a great place to live with a lot of things going on.”
But Kentucky is home. Harper is a Bremen, Ky., native and he came to OCU after coaching at Kentucky Wesleyan for nine seasons. Last Sunday, Western Kentucky hired Texas assistant Ken McDonald as its head coach after Darrin Horn left for South Carolina.
“I believe Ray could take you and me and three other guys and be very competitive,” OCU athletic director Jim Abbott said. “He’s the best coach I’ve ever seen.”
Harper very nearly won a national championship in all three of his seasons at OCU. The Stars lost the 2006 title game on a last-second 3-point basket. Harper’s overall head coaching record is 342-63 – and four national titles in nine national title games – in 12 years.
Harper’s assistant coach the past nine seasons, Tommy Wade, has been named interim coach of the Stars.
“I’m going to miss Ray because we’ve been like brothers,” Wade said. “I’ve learned from one of the best in Ray. But I am ready to be a head coach. I’m been preparing for this day for a long time and hopefully it will come true. I’m ready for the challenge.”
Wade, 50, is widely regarded as an outstanding recruiter. The Stars lost 10 players from their 2007 national championship team but still repeated as NAIA champs.
“I think it’s a no-brainer,” Harper said of OCU hiring Wade as his successor. “He’s the guy. He’s the right man for the job. With him, the system’s in the place and the ball just keeps rollin’.”
In Wade’s only season as a head coach he took Hopkinsville University Heights Academy to a 1990 Kentucky state high school championship. He’s spent the past 17 seasons as a college assistant at Murray State, St. Catharine, Missouri State, South Alabama, Kentucky Wesleyan and OCU.
“Tommy’s definitely a candidate,” Abbott said. “Tommy’s been a key part of what we’ve done here. Tommy’s pretty active in every element of the program and certainly as responsible for our successes as Ray has been. He’s expressed to us a definite interest and he’s somebody we’ll look at very closely.”
