From a little farm in Nanih Waiya to coaching Team USA to Olympic gold in women’s basketball in Athens, Greece,— that’s the Van Chancellor story. But that’s not nearly all. Chancellor also coached the Houston Comets to championships in the first three seasons of the WNBA, and he coached Ole Miss to the NCAA Tournament 14 times, and, get this, he won 638 games as a high school coach before fellow Hall of Famer Warner Alford hired him at Ole Miss when Chancellor was 34.
Photo courtesy of the Mississippi’s Greatest Athletes book
Chancellor is a winner — pure and simple. And he did all his winning with a folksy charm that won over fans and the media and also served him well behind a microphone as a TV analyst. Chancellor’s record as coach of Team USA? Try 38-0. Besides the 2004 Olympic gold medal, Chancellor coached Team USA to the FIBA World Championship gold medal in 2002. At Ole Miss, he was SEC Coach of the Year three times.
At Houston, he was WNBA Coach of the Year the first three years there was a WNBA. This will give you an idea of Chancellor’s homespun charm: In 1997, he was weighing an offer from the Comets against his comfortable job at Ole Miss. He went to his father, Winston B. Chancellor, who advised him to remember how many friends he had at Ole Miss and told him, “You don’t know nobody in Houston.” Van Chancellor said, “But what if they offer me a whole lot more
money in Houston? I mean a whole lot more.”
Said Van Chancellor’s daddy: “Just remember, son, you can always make new friends.”
Courtesy of Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Museum director Rick Cleveland, author of Mississippi’s Greatest Athletes. Cleveland can be reached at rcleveland@msfame.com.
