A special dedicatory celebration will be held at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 22, when William Jewell College will name its new wood basketball court in honor of veteran men’s basketball coach Larry Holley.
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A special dedicatory celebration will be held at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 22, when William Jewell College will name its new wood basketball court in honor of veteran men’s basketball coach Larry Holley. The celebration is to be held at the Mabee Center for Physical Education on the Jewell campus in Liberty.
“We are pleased to provide this recognition for Coach Holley, who has played such a significant role in building and maintaining the winning tradition in basketball at William Jewell,” said Dr. Jim Redd, director of athletics at the college.
The dedication ceremony will occur between the women’s and men’s basketball matches against Missouri Valley College. The ceremony will include a prayer of thanks and celebration from college chaplain Dr. Andy Pratt and remarks from President David Sallee. Donor recognition events will also be a part of the program.
Holley has been the head men’s basketball coach at Williams Jewell College for the past 25 years. He has received 14 Coach of the Year awards, including the prestigious Sears/NABC NAIA National Coach the Year Award in 1996. He has also been selected to four basketball halls of fame. He has been named to the Greater Kansas City Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, the Missouri Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, the William Jewell College Athletic Hall of Fame and the NAIA Hall of Fame.
He has guided ten Jewell squads to HAAC conference titles and nine Cardinal teams to the NAIA National Tournament, with four reaching the Final Four and three reaching the Elite Eight. Holley’s teams have had two winning streaks that will be hard to top: a 43-game home court winning streak and a 45-game Heart of America Athletic Conference winning streak that included 21 road wins in a row.
Holley is the career leader in wins among HAAC basketball coaches. He has had eighteen 20-win seasons (eleven teams with 25 wins or more and three have won 30 or more). He ranks #2 among all NAIA Division II coaches with 657 wins, including 570 at William Jewell. He ranks #4 among all NAIA coaches and #16 among four-year college coaches (all divisions NCAA and NAIA). He is only the 47th NCAA or NAIA coach to win 600 or more games. He ranks #1 all-time in career wins among four-year college coaches at Missouri colleges/universities only.