Kellie Harper will be the next head coach of the Missouri Tigers, multiple sources confirmed to SB Nation on Tuesday afternoon. Missouri is expected to make an official announcement this week.
Harper spent this past year working for the SEC Network as a studio analyst and color commentator, but will now be the head coach at her fifth different Division I program. Harper, 47, who won three national titles playing for Pat Summitt at Tennessee in the late 1990s, has previously been the head coach at Western Carolina, N.C. State, Missouri State and her alma mater, Tennessee.
As a head coach, Harper has a 393-260 win-loss record, giving her a winning percentage of 60.2. She’s been to the NCAA Tournament nine times in 20 seasons and has gone to the Sweet 16 three times – including an unlikely and impressive trip to the second weekend with Missouri State in 2019. However, at her previous two stops at Power 4 schools – where she has had to coach in the shadows of legends like Summitt and Kay Yow – Harper failed to meet lofty expectations. She was fired from N.C. State after missing the NCAA Tournament in three consecutive seasons and dismissed from Tennessee last spring after losing to the Wolfpack, and her friend and mentor Wes Moore, in the Round of 32.
But what Harper has accomplished across her career at various stops would be an upgrade to what Missouri has experienced recently in women’s basketball. The Tigers have missed the NCAA Tournament in each of the last six seasons. Former coach Robin Pingeton – who announced she would be retiring at the end of this season – took Mizzou to the Big Dance in four straight seasons from 2016 to 2019 with squads led on the court by Sophie Cunningham, who now plays in the WNBA. Outside of that four-year stretch, Pingeton never had a winning record in SEC play.
Missouri has been to the Sweet 16 just twice in their history as a program and never any further. The Tigers last trip to the second weekend of the tournament was in 2001.
Harper also has five conference championships as a head coach on her resume.
The details of Harper’s contract are still unclear, but Pingeton was the third-lowest paid coach in the SEC — excluding Vanderbilt, which is private — at $650,000 per year, according to USA Today’s database. In the 2023-24 season, her last at Tennessee, Harper was the 12th highest-paid coach in the sport among those at public universities, making $1.1 million annually.
In addition to Harper, Missouri – according to multiple sources in the sport – also interviewed Cal’s Charmin Smith, Kansas State’s Jeff Mittie, Missouri State’s Beth Cunningham and at least two other mid-major head coaches for the job. Mittie is a Missouri native and worked with Tigers’ athletic director Laird Veatch previously at Kansas State. Smith, who is from St. Louis, seemingly parlayed interest from the SEC program into a raise and extension with the Golden Bears, keeping her at Cal through 2030. Cunningham has posted three straight campaigns of 20 or more wins at Missouri State and won the regular season title in the Missouri Valley conference this season.
Because of his relationship with Veatch, Mittie was long viewed as the front-runner for this job. But Kansas State is a fifth-seed in the NCAA Tournament and could find themselves playing well into the second weekend. With the transfer portal opening next week, waiting on Mittie could have put Missouri behind in starting its rebuilding process. With Harper in the fold now, the Tigers can immediately start reshaping their roster.
Missouri was the first Power 4 head coaching job to open in this women’s basketball coaching cycle and is the first one to be filled. Openings still remain at Arkansas, Arizona State, Auburn, BYU, Houston, Wisconsin and at mid-major programs.
