Morehead State head men’s basketball coach Preston Spradlin earned the OVC Coach of the Year award, as announced today bu the league. The award was voted on by league head coaches and communications directors.
Entering his fifth season on the MSU bench, Spradlin had led the Eagles to back-to-back OVC Tournament appearances, including a quarterfinal appearance in 2019. Entering this year the team was predicted eighth in the OVC preseason poll but far exceeded expectations, winning a school record 17 Conference games (the second-highest total in OVC history) and finishing second behind Belmont (one game back). MSU also has 20 overall wins, marking just the eighth time in program history the team has reached that mark (and first since 2015-16).
Along the way the team won 12-straight games, which tied the school record also held by the 1983-84 squad. At one stretch the team won seven-straight games by double digits, the first time that had happened since 1929-30. The team also completed a regular season sweep of in-state rival Murray State for first time since the 2002-03 season. When the Eagles played at Belmont on February 13, it marked just the 11th meeting in the past 25 years of Division I college basketball between teams with 12-game (or longer) winning streaks (Belmont entered having won 18-straight, Morehead State entered having won 12-straight), and just the fourth time that has happened in the regular season.
Entering the postseason Morehead State ranks 13th nationally in blocked shots (5.2/game), 30th in rebounding margin (+6.2/game) and 3-point defense (30.2%), 31st in scoring defense (63.4 points/game) and 37th in field goal defense (40.4%); each of those is tops in the OVC. Spradlin is the first Morehead State coach to win the honor since Donnie Tyndall in 2007-08. Other MSU coaches to win the award are Jack Schalow (1975-76), Wayne Martin (1981-82 and 1983-84) and Dick Fick (1994-95).
