Austin Peay State University rallied for a 90-86 Ohio Valley Conference victory over SIUE on Thursday night. The victory snapped a three-game Govs losing streak and improved them to 9-12 overall and 2-4 in the OVC. It also was Dave Loos’ 400th APSU coaching victory.
Loos, who is the OVC’s all-time wins leader, is in his 26th season at APSU. He also spent four years as the head coach at Christian Brothers (82-53), and has 482 overall wins.
Loos stepped down as APSU athletics director in April to concentrate soley on being the Governors head basketball coach. It ended an almost unheard of reign in today’s college athletics world of one person handling an athletics department’s two most demanding positions.
For more than 16 years, Loos helped APSU thrive as both its head basketball coach and the Athletics Director. His double duties aptly pointed out the respect Loos garnered both on and off campus. He applied the same common-sense approach to his athletics director’s duties that have been representative of his APSU basketball tenure.
What is even more remarkable is that Loos, who is in his 24th season as Govs head coach, owns the mark for APSU’s longest basketball coaching tenure–only 13 other Division I coaches have longer tenures at their respective schools–and is the program’s all-time wins leader, surpassing Dave Aaron in 2006-07. To honor such achievement, then-outgoing president, Dr. Sherry Hoppe, at the behest of several longtime basketball supporters, named the basketball floor Dave Loos Court.
In addition, Loos was inducted into the Austin Peay Athletics Hall of Fame in Feb. 2008.
On Dec. 12, 2009, Loos became the league’s all-time wins leader, passing Cal Luther (319) for most victories while coaching in the OVC. His achievement was honored with the establishment of the Dave Loos Scholarship, a graduate scholarship to be awarded to an aspiring coach.
Loos enters the season ranked 34th among active coaches for most victories.
