After a nation-wide search, the Southern Arkansas University Department of Athletics has announced that it has reached an agreement with Adam Collins to be the new Head Women’s Basketball Coach. Finalization of Collins’ hire is pending final approval by the SAU Board of Trustees.
“Our search for our next head women’s basketball coach was extensively thorough and yielded a very strong candidate pool,” noted SAU Director of Athletics, Steve Browning. “With that, Adam Collins elevated to the top with his proven winning success as a head coach over his career, and most notably at the Division II level.”
“With his previous success, we are excited to see where Coach Collins will take our women’s basketball program, but in a personal regard, we are extremely excited to welcome his family; his wife Angela, their daughter Mia (13), and son JJ (20) to the Mulerider Athletics family.” added Browning.
Collins, who becomes the seventh head women’s basketball coach in program history at SAU, has won over 200 games, claimed three (3) Coach of the Year awards, and has guided three (3) of his teams to conference championships in his 12 years as a head coach. The last 10 years have seen Collins at the helm of a pair of Division II institutions with stints at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin (2008-09 – 2011-12), and most-recently at the University of Charleston (2012-13 – 2017-18).
“I am extremely excited to be new Head Women’s Basketball Coach at SAU,” remarked Collins. “I want to thank Dr. (Trey) Berry and Mr. (Steve) Browning for giving me the opportunity to build a championship program at such a great institution.”
Nearly half of his seasons as a head coach have yielded 20 or more victories as Collins has achieved the feat five times. Twice, Collins has led his teams to the NCAA National Tournament with his first appearance coming in just his third season at UTPB. That year, his Falcons, who were 2-50 in the two seasons prior to his arrival, won the Heartland Conference Tournament Championship and received an automatic bid to the South Central Region Tournament.
Three years later, and in just his second season at the University of Charleston, Collins’ Golden Eagles earned an at-large berth to the NCAA Tournament and the Atlantic Regional after posting a 19-8 regular season that was then followed up with a pair of wins in the Mountain East Conference (MEC) Tournament before falling short in the title game. A year after that, UC claimed a share of the MEC Regular Season title with a 17-5 league mark.
An undergraduate of Charleston Southern University (Charleston, S.C.) Collins began his coaching career at his alma mater, where he was the men’s graduate assistant in 1998-99. Collins then went on to coach men’s basketball as an assistant at Independence Community College (1999-2000), Howard College (200-01), and Indiana University (Pa.) (2001-03) before a successful two-year stint as head coach at Mercyhurst North East Junior College (2003-05).
Following that, Collins was a men’s assistant for a year at Great American Conference-rival Henderson State (2005-06), and then became the Director of Operations at UNC-Wilmington (2006-08).
In 2008, Collins began his career as a women’s basketball coach taking over at UTPB where he spent a total of four seasons. In his time at UTPB, Collins went 63-48 (.568) and was the 2011 Heartland Coach of the Year.
After a successful run at UTPB, Collins spent the next six years of his coaching career the University of Charleston where he had three-straight winning seasons and consecutive 20-plus win campaigns. Overall, Collins was 97-82 (.542) at UC.
A formal meet-and-greet with Coach Collins will be arranged with the date and time to be announced.
Tagged with: Adam Collins DII Great American Conference SAU
