Head men’s basketball coach Brent Owen has announced the addition of Daven Vo to his staff as the head assistant coach. 

Vo will join the Eastern New Mexico men’s basketball coaching staff following a three-year tenure as the lead assistant at Butler Community College in El Dorado, Kansas and has accumulated 14 years of coaching experience at the NJCAA and NCAA levels. Vo served as the head basketball coach on both the men’s and women’s side at South Mountain Community College prior to his time at Butler Community College and was recently named a “Top 50 Most Impactful” junior college coach in the country.

“When I was hired as the head basketball coach at Eastern I knew that my most vital task would be to identify and hire a great assistant coach.” Coach Owen said, “I wanted to find someone that understood that our biggest purpose is to build great men, someone who has recruiting ties both locally and nationally and had a reputation of being a “grinder” on the recruiting trail with a history of success. Coach Vo checked all of those boxes and as a first year head coach I knew it would be wise to look for an assistant who had also run their own program, which coach Vo has experience with as well.”

Vo began his coaching career at the University of Oklahoma as a graduate assistant under head coach Jeff Capel before heading out west to the state of Arizona as an assistant coach on the staff at South Mountain Community College in 2007-08. Vo left South Mountain for a season to join the staff at Grand Canyon University before returning to the bench at South Mountain in 2009-10. 

South Mountain captured the ACCAC Regular Season Championship in Vo’s second season upon returning to the program in 2010-11 after posting a record of 27-5 for the year, the highest single-season win total in program history. Vo had a hand in the transfer of 16 student-athletes to four-year universities during that time frame and was a key piece in the development of five All-Conference student-athletes, three All-Americans and one Player of the Year.

His success as an assistant on the men’s side led to his first tenure as a head coach on the women’s side at South Mountain in which he led the program to a Regional Semifinals appearance after being named the head coach of the team in December, midway through the season. Vo led the program to a school record 17 wins the following season before making the move back over to the men’s side in 2013, beginning a four-season tenure as the head men’s basketball coach. 

“Daven is a high-energy, high-integrity guy who our players and the Eastern New Mexico family will love.” Coach Owen said, “I’m excited to get to work with him and look forward to watching the Portales community wrap their arms around him, his wife Laura, and their three beautiful children Kora, Lennix and Henry.”

Vo led South Mountain to a pair of 20-plus win seasons in 2014-15 and 2015-16 and was named the Region I Coach of the Year after guiding the team to a final national ranking of no. 8 with a record of 22-14. He has served as the lead assistant at Butler Community College for the past three seasons, signing 30 student-athletes during those three recruiting periods while helping Butler to a record of 25-8 in 2019-20, and served as the program’s Interim Head Coach during the final few weeks of the 2018-19 season. 

Vo graduated with a degree in Informational Systems from St. Gregory’s University in Shawnee, Okla. during which time he was named as an Academic All-Conference performer. 

https://goeasternathletics.com/news/2020/6/8/daven-vo-named-assistant-mens-basketball-coach.aspx