New Southeast Missouri State coach Rick Ray ready for another shot at head coaching success

Rick Ray didn't seek out the coaching life. No, the thought didn't even cross his mind. It wasn't until 1993 as his playing career at Grand View College in Des Moines, Iowa, wound down that an opportunity arose.

Nick Nurse, who was then a Grand View assistant and is now an assistant with the Toronto Raptors, had a friend who was the head coach at a nearby high school and needed someone to lead his freshman squad.

It didn't take too much convincing from that head coach, current Indiana State coach Greg Lansing, to get Ray on board at Roosevelt High School in Des Moines where he remained for two seasons.

Ray spent his first season as a coach completing his student-teaching and got a job as a teacher in his second season.

Nurse encouraged Ray to continue coaching and urged him to take a graduate assistant position at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.

Ray took the position, thinking he might as well get his master's degree paid for, but without an intention of making it his career.

Somewhere along the line it clicked for him, and the small-time college basketball player who started out coaching freshmen in high school worked his way through the college ranks as an assistant until he got a shot at a Southeastern Conference school as the head coach at Mississippi State.

But that shot ended when he was fired three years into a daunting rebuilding job in favor of a coach with a more notable name.

While he didn't start out as someone who aspired to be a coach, he eventually turned into that man for reasons that extend beyond the basketball court.

Now, at Southeast Missouri State, he's got another shot.

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When Ray was accepted into and sent to school at the Sumner Academy of Arts and Science in Kansas City, Kansas, in eighth grade, he wasn't happy.

But now he credits his move to that school as the "biggest thing that ended up making a difference in my life."

Ray, who was born in California before moving with his family to Kansas City, Missouri, when he was 6 years old, yearned to attend Wyandotte High School instead.

"Wyandotte was where all the good basketball players went, won multiple state championships," Ray said. "Sumner was the nerd school. You had to test and get in there, and if you didn't go in in eighth grade, you could never go in there. So it started in my eighth-grade year."

Southeast Missouri State coach Rick Ray talks to his team during a timeout in the second half of an exhibition game against Missouri S&T on Saturday at the Show Me Center. (Fred Lynch)

He was the oldest of five children in a family that included few adults with an interest in basketball, but he started to "get the bug," when his uncle, Tony Walker, who played basketball, came to live with his family for a few years when he was young.

He credits Sumner with "paying huge dividends because it gave me a base to be successful in college academically," and it's also the first place he felt he was really taught the ins and outs of basketball.

Randy Springs, who won several state championships in Kansas between Topeka Highland Park High School and Wyandotte, took the reins at Sumner for Ray's senior year.

"He came over to Sumner, and it was a big deal because Wyandotte obviously was a juggernaut. And Sumner wasn't all that good because we were an academic institution," Ray said, "and so he came over there and he changed it around right away. And he was the first guy that really got into teaching you how to play basketball and giving you the freedom to go make plays."

He laughs when he explains the type of player he was, one that wasn't a fun player to coach.

When the team was simulating the opposing team's offense, he'd jump all the passes to get steals and disrupt the play because he knew exactly what was supposed to happen.

"I had a pretty good mind for basketball, but I didn't use it in the right manner," Ray said. "I would use it to kind of like piss off the coaching staff by doing things I knew I shouldn't be doing but knowing that I could end up getting a steal or something like that out of it.

"I actually really enjoyed the basketball part of it. I was one of those guys that I was a utility guy. I could play multiple positions. I always knew where to be, be in the right place, and was fundamentally sound and all that good stuff."

He also was passionate, which is one descriptor that both Lansing and Purdue coach Matt Painter used to sum up the Ray they coached alongside.

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Ray's passion for basketball and the camaraderie of being part of a team, as well as his competitive nature and a desire to make a difference in players' lives, are what he offers as the reasons he ended up as a coach.

Lansing saw all of that first-hand at Roosevelt and later when they were both assistants on the late Royce Waltman's staff at Indiana State.

"I don't think there's anybody more competitive than Rick, and I've been in practices with him. I've seen him when he's coached teams for the Roosevelt program. I've seen him when he's been an assistant in practices," Lansing said. "It's high energy. It's getting guys to really compete and play hard and know how hard you have to do that to win at a high level. He's been at the highest level. He's coached at every level.

"That's what I like about him. He hasn't just been a guy that got hired at a BCS level. He's had to work and work and work from a high school coach to a graduate assistant at Division II to a mid-major assistant and done those things, so people that are smart and are good coaches have seen how talented he is. I know he hates losing. I know he'll work like crazy for his team to be as much prepared as any team can possibly be, and he'll get the most out of his guys."

Some of Ray's players at Southeast have described him as "hard-nosed" and "intense." His expectations for them are high, and junior guard Antonius Cleveland said Ray challenges the players to meet those on a daily basis.

Painter, whose staff Ray was on at Purdue from 2006-10, and Ray both pointed out that the level of buy-in to his ways from the Redhawks will be seen when tough times set in.

"When adversity sets in, you know, are you on board and doing what you're supposed to do? That's a big piece of it," Painter said. "But anytime you have a coach like Rick that's passionate, and if the players are passionate as well, they're going to get along because there's that common bond, that common thread because everyone wants to win and it's important to everybody. When it gets tough, man, your passion has to come out, and that's what gets people to really bond together and form a team, and hopefully a championship team."

Ray was part of championship teams with Painter. The Boilermakers won a share of the Big 10 title in 2010 and advanced to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament each of his last two seasons.

While at ISU with Waltman, the Sycamores won the Missouri Valley Conference regular-season title in 2000 and the MVC tournament title the next year.

"I've really been fortunate to work for guys that let you be coaches," Ray said. "I think a lot of times in this profession, especially an African-American assistant, you get pigeon-holed into being just a recruiter. 'Go get me some players. Go get me some players.' But I was really fortunate to work for guys like Royce Waltman, Brad Brownell, Matt Painter, who let you be coaches, too."

He learned something different from each, too. He learned most of what he believes in from Waltman during his first assistant job at the Division I level from 1997-2004. That's when Ray said he "started to understand that having the freedom to make decisions and make plays really empowered your team."

Painter's lesson was a disciplined defense. As far as Brad Brownell at Clemson, Ray said he was the "best I've ever been around as far as developing your skill level."

It was a difficult decision for him to leave Purdue and join Brownell's staff after the two Sweet 16 trips, but his trust for Brownell and the title of associate head coach beckoned him.

He knew the move south would open up more opportunities and keep him from being labeled a "Midwest guy."

A few opportunities opened up after his first season at Clemson, but not the right ones.

Following the 2011 season, more jobs became available to him, including at Mississippi State.

Ray said he "felt like obviously that was a no-brainer for a first-time head coach to be a head coach in a Power 5 conference. It was really kind of unprecedented without having that pedigree. I didn't work for Mike Kryzewski at Duke, or I didn't work for Roy Williams at North Carolina."

Three challenging seasons later, the opportunity to turn around the Bulldogs' program was abruptly taken away from him when he was fired March 21.

That day a fire arose in him to get back to coaching and prove he could be successful.

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Lansing saw Ray's desire to prove himself in his first season with Ray at ISU during the Missouri Valley Conference tournament.

Ray was responsible for scouting the Sycamores' first-round opponent, and they lost.

Ray was so upset that he left Waltman's suite at the hotel to walk around town and blow off steam.

Southeast Missouri State Men's basketball coach Rick Ray (Glenn Landberg)

"He wanted to do so well for the guys he's worked for," Lansing said. "He pushes himself. He demands a lot for himself. And it was just the disappointment and, 'I just need to get out of here and walk around and clear my head.' That's just the type of guy he is."

He's since taken the lessons he learned at MSU, where he went 37-60 in three seasons, and changed his focus with his new project.

He's tuned in to the health of the Redhawks after dealing with several injuries to Bulldogs players, and he plans to recruit different types of players, guys who are skilled and will mesh well with the motion offense he learned from Waltman years ago.

"I think it's safe to say those first couple years there at Mississippi State, it was trial by fire," Ray said. "I don't think there's been any head coach that was thrust into that situation as a first-time head coach that had to deal with so many different issues, whether it be off the court or on the court. I just think that it made me grow really fast, so instead of me really having three years of coaching experience, those are probably dog years. So I've probably got about 21 years of coaching experience."

In April 2012, he was hired at MSU to replace Rick Stansbury, who retired after 14 seasons with plans to remain at the university in some capacity, although it was widely reported that Stansbury likely wouldn't have been retained. Stansbury has since joined the Texas A&M men's basketball staff where he's the associate head coach.

Ray was tasked with turning around an MSU program that finished 21-12 the year before and lost in the the first round of the NIT. The team also struggled with issues away from the court, including a fight between teammates Renardo Sidney and Elgin Bailey in the stands during a tournament in December 2010 and players criticizing coaches on Twitter.

Ray was left with little in his first season, with the team's starters either exhausting their eligibility or moving on to the NBA. Other players transferred while Ray dismissed two for violating team rules repeatedly. Injuries and suspensions left just a handful of scholarship players remaining.

After three seasons, his first head coaching gig ended when he was fired. Two days later, former UCLA coach Ben Howland was announced as Ray's replacement.

"Even though publicly they're saying that it wasn't scripted, I think it was all scripted," ESPN.com senior writer and reporter Andy Katz said in an interview in April. "I don't think there's any way they fire Rick Ray, and then are going to go through some search because Mississippi State is not an easy job. You need someone who's willing to take a chance on it, and Ben obviously has a good track record in terms of what he accomplished at UCLA."

Ray's next head coaching experience officially begins Friday night when the Redhawks travel to Ohio to take on Dayton in their season opener.

He's tasked with taking a program that hasn't achieved sustained success since it moved to Division I and shaping it into to a program that competes for Ohio Valley Conference championships year in and year out, and as he said in his introductory press conference in April, there's no one more hungry than him to produce a winner.

"I know that he was wronged at Mississippi State," Lansing said. "I know given time -- he took over a mess there and he would've turned that thing around, but sometimes that happens in this profession. But he's as good a man and as hard working person and as good a guy as you ever wanted to be around, and he knows basketball."

It remains to be seen how much time it will take for Ray to bring in the types of players he wants to fit his system and lead the Redhawks past just respectability.

The situation he finds himself in now is not the mess he took over at MSU. He returns talented players from a program that reached the OVC tournament the last five years, and he's added his own recruits since he was hired in April.

His challenge is to take the Redhawks to the next level, a stage he never reached as a head coach.

"I think Year 4 and 5 [at MSU] would've been great years for him there, and it was too bad that the administration didn't follow through with their original plan," Painter said. "Now for him to get this opportunity, it's great because head coaching jobs are hard to come by, and I think he'll do a really good job there. I think he was going to do a really good job at Mississippi State, so I think they got a steal there at SEMO."