After winning MWC Coach of the Year honors a year ago for his role in leading the U men’s basketball team to a share of the conference championship, despite the absence of Rick Majerus, it was widely speculated that Dick Hunsaker would be leaving to take a full time head coaching position elsewhere.
One year later, those rumors have finally become the truth.
Hunsaker announced Thursday that, after four years at the U, he was leaving to accept the head job at Utah Valley State College.
As UVSC attempts to make a transition to NCAA Division I status, it tabbed Hunsaker and his wealth of hoops experience to get it there.
During the 2000-01 season, he led the Utes to a 19-10 record and guided Utah to a share of the Mountain West Conference championship with a 10-4 record, despite playing a schedule that placed 39th in the national RPI rankings, and having only one returning starter and three lettermen from the previous season.
After going through myriad coaching positions on both the collegiate level and in the Continental Basketball Association, Hunsaker came to the U in 1998 to serve as the school’s Director of Basketball Operations.
One year later, he was an assistant on a Majerus-led staff for the second time in his career. The first go-round was in 1987 to ’89, when he served as Majerus’s associate head coach at Ball State.
When Majerus left to become the U’s head coach, Hunsaker took over at Ball State, and served as head coach from ’89 to ’93.
The Harlem, Mont., native later earned head coaching jobs in the CBA for the Hartford and Grand Rapids franchises. He followed that up with a move back to the collegiate level, where he became the head man at Manchester College from 1995 to ’98.
Overall, as a collegiate head coach, Hunsaker has amassed a 166-71 record.