By ,
Published November 20, 2014
Rick Ray, an assistant at Clemson the past two years, has been named the new head men's basketball coach at Mississippi State.
Ray takes over for Rick Stansbury, who announced in March that he was retiring after leading the program the last 14 years.
"Rick fits the model of head coach we have sought to bring into our program over the last several years," Mississippi State director of athletics Scott Stricklin said. "He is bright, enthusiastic, disciplined and is a man of integrity. He has served with some of the top head and assistant coaches in college basketball and will bring a piece of all of them to our head coaching position."
The 40-year-old Ray was associate head coach to Brad Brownell for the past two seasons and helped Clemson win 38 games in that span.
"Rick is a terrific coach in every sense of the word," Brownell said. "He is as consummate professional. He is a relentless recruiter, has worked with some of the best Xs and Os coaches in the business, and is unbelievably bright."
Ray was an assistant coach from 2006-10 under Matt Painter at Purdue and spent seven years (1997-2004) as an assistant at Indiana State and also worked at Northern Illinois from 2004-06.
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/ray-named-basketball-coach-at-mississippi-state