Rodney Crawford is entering his fifth year under head coach Richie Riley and his third year as Associate Head Coach at South Alabama. Crawford was crucial part of the Jags run to the Sun Belt Conference regular-season title, its first since 2008.
Picked to finish 11th in the 2024-25 Sun Belt Conference Preseason poll, the Jags squad defied expectations by posting a 21-11 overall record, the most wins in a season under Crawford's guidance and the most regular-season victories by any Jaguar team since 2008. South Alabama also earned four wins over teams ranked in the top 150 of the NCAA NET rankings.
The 2024–25 Jaguars were one of the most efficient and defensively sound teams in the nation, ranking sixth nationally in field-goal percentage defense (.384), 17th in scoring defense (64.3 points per game) and 15th in steals per game (9.3). The Jaguars also ranked in the top 10 nationally in several key categories: seventh in fouls per game (13.3), sixth in turnover margin (+4.9), seventh in turnovers per game (9.2) and 17th in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.59). South Alabama led the Sun Belt in each of those categories and won four league games by 25 points or more which the most in a single season since 1998–99.
During the 2023-24 campaign, Crawford took the reins of the program for two games after Coach Riley missed time after the loss of his mother. After an up-and-down start to the campaign, South Alabama won six out of its’ last eight games and secured the eighth seed in the Sun Belt Tournament for the second season in a row. Crawford was heavily involved in the development of career 1,000 point scorer Samuel Tabe and sharp shooter Julian Margrave. Tabe was the only Jaguar named Sun Belt Player of the Week this year after a dominant final stretch of the season. He scored the most points by any player in Sun Belt Conference this season with 35 points against Arkansas State on Feb.24. Margrave ranked seventh in the Sun Belt Conference in three-pointers made (51).
In the 2022-23 season, Crawford helped coach Kevin Samuel to the Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year award, the first Jaguar to win since the conference began awarding the honor in 1996.
In 2021, with Crawford on staff, the Jaguars increased their win total by four, while tallying an impressive 15-3 record at home.
Crawford, who has gained experience as both a head and assistant coach over the past 15 years, joined the program after serving as director of player personnel at Cincinnati the previous two seasons.
In his first season with the Bearcats, he was part of a staff that helped UC record a 20-10 overall mark while going 13-5 in the American Athletic Conference, with the team sharing the league’s regular season championship to earn the top seed in the postseason tournament that was cancelled due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
In 2020-21, his efforts helped the Bearcats advance to the title game of the AAC Tournament on the way to a 12-11 finish.
Crawford was on the staff at Fordham for four years prior to moving to Cincinnati, including serving as associate head coach his last three seasons at the school.
In his first season with the Rams, he helped the school make its first postseason appearance since 1992 after earning an invitation to the CollegeInsider.com Tournament, with the program finishing among the national leaders in both steals and turnovers forced each of his first two years on the bench.
He was an assistant coach at Eastern Kentucky for three seasons from 2013-15, during which time the team won 70 games — the most during any three-year period in program history — highlighted by a school-record 25 victories his first year on the staff. The Colonels recorded 24 victories and won the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament to earn a berth in the NCAA Tournament the following season while ranking among the best in the country in steals and turnover margin each of his three years with the program.
Crawford began his coaching career in 2004-05 as head coach at Harmony (Ohio) Community School, where he coached more than 20 future NCAA Division I players in a four-year span. After serving as head coach at Mountain State (W.Va.)
A two-year letterwinner at Cincinnati, Crawford played on teams that went a combined 56-14 while advancing to the NCAA Tournament each season; that included helping the Bearcats go 31-4 while reaching as high as fifth in the Associated Press poll when he was a senior. A 2002 graduate of Cincinnati, Crawford and his wife Tracy have two daughters, Jocelyn and Jordyn, and a son, Rodney, Jr
