It became official Tuesday afternoon: Mizzou has found its next head coach for women’s basketball.
And the new hire is a name that is more than familiar with what it looks like to have her program as a perennial mainstay in the NCAA Tournament field.
Mizzou has officially named Kellie Harper as the next head coach of Mizzou women’s basketball.
Harper, 47, served as head coach of an SEC powerhouse from 2019 to 2024, leading that same Tennessee program for which she suited up as a player during her collegiate days. Harper has also made stops at Western Carolina, NC State and Missouri State during her head-coaching career.
Harper’s Tennessee teams made the NCAA Tournament in four consecutive years from 2021 to 2024, advancing to the Sweet 16 twice while falling out of the bracket in the second round in the other two tournaments.
Harper fell victim to the extremely lofty expectations in Knoxville and was fired from her alma mater after the 2024 season.
Missouri clearly believes that one SEC program’s loss is another SEC program’s gain, as Harper is set to follow Robin Pingeton’s lengthy tenure in Columbia, aiming to bring fresh energy to a program that has fallen out of favor in the SEC standings in recent seasons.
After being let go from Tennessee, Harper spent the past year out of coaching as an analyst for SEC Network, waiting for the right opportunity to emerge.
It appears Mizzou is that opportunity.
When Missouri AD Laird Veatch met with reporters a couple weeks ago to lay out the blueprint for what the athletic department sought in identifying the next leader of the Missouri women’s basketball program, he highlighted a number of characteristics embodied by Harper.
Harper’s career is littered with NCAA Tournament appearances and she’s recruited at the sport’s highest level, obviously familiar with the terrain of the Southeastern Conference.
The degree to which she embraces the transfer portal will be a critical element of her tenure to monitor—but the other side of that coin is the reality that the athletic department will have to devote the resources necessary toward putting Harper in position to succeed in that area of recruiting and program building.
Other names on the proverbial coaching hot board during this cycle—such as Molly Miller, Jeff Mittie and Jacie Hoyt—are all still coaching in the NCAA Tournament with their current programs. The incentive to moving Harper’s name to the top of the list ensured Mizzou Athletics came away from this cycle with a proven leader for its women’s hoops program.
Rather than risk being spurned by the coaching carousel, Mizzou got out in front of the cycle and landed a quality, experienced coach—and one who ostensibly carries some extra motivation when it comes to future battles with a particular program of prominence in the conference.
For Mizzou, Harper checks a lot of the boxes and has the mark of a coach that can bring the Tigers back to relevance in one of the nation’s most daunting leagues.
