“One of my mantras is ‘past performance is usually the best indicator of future results,’” WSU athletic director Bob Grant said. “When you look at Scott, especially the last five years, his success just leaps off the page at you.
“Then we brought him on campus and he hit a home run,” Grant added. “As impressive as he was on paper, he was better in person. Besides all the basketball accolades, everyone I talked to who had any knowledge of Scott Nagy says he’s a great coach but a better man and his student-athlete’s experience is second to none. That’s ultra important to us and our culture and what we’re trying to do.”
A 1988 graduate of Delta State with a degree in business administration, Nagy began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Illinois under head coach Lou Henson and alongside Nagy’s father Dick, a longtime Illini assistant, and was part of the coaching staff that took Illinois to the Final Four in 1989.
After earning his master’s degree in physical education from Illinois in 1990, Nagy returned to SDSU as an assistant coach from 1990-93. He then spent two years as an assistant at Southern Illinois-Edwardsville before returning to SDSU as head coach at the age of 29.
Nagy won four North Central Conference championships and five NCC Coach of the Year awards in addition to guiding the Jackrabbits to the Division II Elite 8 in 1997 before leading the program’s transition to Division I in 2004.
At the time, he was second among active D2 coaches with a .781 winning percentage.
“My family and I are extremely excited for the next chapter in our lives,” Nagy said. “It was clear to me at every step of the interview process that Wright State University has everything in place to have a successful men’s college basketball program. I’m so grateful for the opportunity that President David Hopkins and Athletic Director Bob Grant have given us.”
Nagy will be formally introduced at a press conference Tuesday morning at the Nutter Center.
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