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Rick Ray College coach

Rick Ray (born May 8, 1970) is the head basketball coach at Mississippi State. He was hired on April 1, 2012, to succeed Rick Stansbury, who retired on March 15, 2012. Ray was born in Compton, California, but his family moved to Kansas City when Ray was 6 years old. He was an All-American Scholar Athlete basketball player at Grand View College, majoring in Applied Mathematics and Secondary Education. After graduation, Ray worked as an actuary in Chicago, but soon realized that he wanted to be a basketball coach, so he quit his actuary job and became a coach and teacher at a high school in Des Moines, Iowa. After 1 1/2 years, he left to become a graduate assistant coach at Nebraska-Omaha. While at Nebraska-Omaha, he also earned a Master's degree in Sports Administration. From there, Ray was an assistant coach at Indiana State, Northern Illinois, Purdue, and Clemson, before being hired by Mississippi State. Upon hiring Ray, Mississippi State Athletics Director Scott Stricklin said, “Rick fits the model of head coach we have sought to bring into our program over the last several years. He is bright, enthusiastic, disciplined and is a man of integrity. He has served with some of the top head and assistant coaches in college basketball and will bring a piece of all of them to our head coaching position.”