Missouri State head coach Paul Lusk has named a second assistant to his men’s basketball staff. He officially named John A. Logan College assistant Kyle Smithpeters to the post on Wednesday (April 6).
Smithpeters has spent the last four seasons at the Carterville, Ill., junior college and has been instrumental in helping the Vols’ collect an impressive roster of Division I-caliber talent. Logan won the Great Rivers Athletic Conference title in 2009-10 with Smithpeters’ first full recruiting class, which produced eight NCAA Division I players. John A. Logan won 16 straight league games a year ago and followed that effort with an impressive 18-10 campaign this winter.
“This is a fantastic opportunity for a guy my age to get a chance to work with a coach like Paul Lusk,” Smithpeters said. “He wants to win as much as I do, and I respect what he has done as a coach.”
All told, the Volunteers were 82-41 in Smithpeters’ four seasons at Logan, turning out 11 Division I players in all during that span with a pair of 20-win campaigns.
Like Lusk, Smithpeters is a product of Southern Illinois University (2006) where he walked on to the Salukis squad in 2004-05 and played two seasons as a reserve guard for coach Chris Lowery. He saw action in 15 games in two NCAA Tournament seasons at SIU after a successful junior college career at Southeastern Illinois College.