A man with 17 years of experience as a head coach, Jeff Price was tabbed South Alabama’s interim head coach after Ronnie Arrow announced his retirement on Dec. 19.
Price joined the staff at USA in August 2011 as the associate head coach.
Price, who was an assistant at South Alabama from 1989-93 under Arrow, spent the 2010-11 season as head coach at West Virginia Wesleyan where he led the Bobcats to a 19-11 record and a trip to the NCAA Division II National Tournament.
Prior to his one-year stint at the Buckhannon, W.Va. school, Price was a scout for the Los Angeles Clippers organization.
An accomplished collegiate head coach, Price has a 293-186 overall record in 17 seasons, which includes seven 20-win campaigns, eight trips to the postseason and two coach-of-the-year honors.
Five of those 20-win seasons came in a six-year stretch at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., where he led the Fighting Knights to a .764 win percentage—the highest in the state of Florida over that span—and six national postseason appearances. In 1997 he was named NCAA Division II National Coach of the Year after Lynn rolled to a 28-3 mark, becoming the first school in NCAA history to reach the national semifinals in their first season of NCAA competition.
He moved to Georgia Southern and was named the Southern Conference’s Coach of the Year his first season in charge. In his 10 years in Statesboro, Price totaled 138 wins, third-most in school history. He won 20 or more twice in his final six seasons at the helm and guided the program to the 2006 National Invitation Tournament.
In his one season at West Virginia Wesleyan, Price led the program to its second-ever trip to the NCAA Tournament and the second-largest turnaround in the nation. The Bobcats were 8-21 the year before and 38-105 in the previous five.
Price orchestrated another revival at Georgia Southern. The Eagles were in the midst of six straight non-winning seasons and a combined 29-61 (.322) record in league play before his arrival. It took one year to transform Georgia Southern into a winning team as Price and the Eagles went 16-12 overall and 10-6 in the Southern Conference in 1999-2000. The second-place division finish was enough to earn Price the Southern Conference Coach of the Year Award.
In 2007-08 Price earned the Whack Hyder Coach of the Year honor, given to the top college coach in the state of Georgia.
Ten different players earned All-Southern Conference distinction under Price’s watch, including 2006 Player of the Year and All-American Elton Nesbitt.
Price’s appointment at Georgia Southern ended a six-year stay as head basketball coach at Lynn, where he led the Fighting Knights to an overall record of 136-42 and six consecutive—three NAIA and three NCAA Division II—national postseason tournament appearances.
After accepting an offer to start the Lynn program from scratch in March 1993, Price successfully built one of the top collegiate programs in the nation.
Price averaged nearly 23 wins per season while at the helm of the Lynn program, guiding his teams to 23-7 (1993-94), 20-10 (1994-95), 16-11 (1995-96), 28-3 (1996-97), 22-7 (1997-98) and 25-6 (1998-99) records.
During the 1996-97 season, Lynn put together a 20-game winning streak, the longest in the nation, and had the best overall record in Division II.
As an assistant and recruiting coordinator under Arrow at South Alabama from 1989-93, the Jaguars claimed the 1991 Sun Belt Conference championship and earned a trip to the NCAA Tournament.
He also served as assistant coach at his alma mater, Pikeville (Ky.) College (1981-82), Georgia Southern (1982-83, 1986-87), Union (Ky.) College (1983-85) and Washington (1985-86, 1987-89).
Price earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from Pikeville College in 1981.
