Former Baylor assistant tapped for women's job

A few hours after Rick Ray was announced as the Southeast Missouri State men's basketball coach Monday night he was tasked with another job.

While Ray and his wife, Breyana, were out to dinner with Southeast athletic director Mark Alnutt and his wife, Kate, he was put on the phone to make a two-minute "hard sales pitch" to Rekha Patterson, according to Alnutt.

The tactic helped solidify Patterson's decision to accept the Southeast women's basketball coaching position and she was introduced as the eighth head coach in program history at a news conference Wednesday morning at the Show Me Center.

"You know what's funny? That night, after his press conference, Mark gave me a call and said, 'Hey, I've got somebody I want you to talk to,' and so it was Rick," Patterson said. "I said, 'Are you guys putting the full-court press on me?' He said, 'We're putting a box-and-one, whatever it is we need to do,' so I got a chance to meet with him, his family. I'm excited about both of us coming in, obviously he has some experience that I can learn from, and our offices are sort of right next to each other, so I'm definitely going to be using his experience to help us."

Patterson will earn a base salary of $94,000 along with a $10,000 annuity. Her contract is expected to be for four years with additional incentives, but the details of the agreement have not been finalized.

It's the first head coaching position for the 36-year-old Patterson, who was the associate head coach at Ball State the past two seasons. The Cardinals competed in the Women's National Invitational Tournament both seasons and reached the Mid-American Conference tournament championship game in her first season on the staff.

The five seasons prior to that she worked under Kim Mulkey at Baylor University. She was the coordinator of basketball operations from 2008 to 2011 before being promoted to associate coach her final two seasons, during which the Bears were 74-2, including a perfect 40-0 season culminating with the 2012 NCAA National Championship.

Southeast Missouri State University Athletic Director, Mark Alnutt introduces Rekha Patterson during a press conference Wednesday, April 15, 2015, naming Patterson has the new head women's basketball coach at Southeast. (Laura Simon)

Patterson played collegiately at North Carolina A&T and received her bachelor's degree in public relations in 2001. She served as a graduate assistant at Baylor from 2002 to 2004. She made stops as an assistant coach at Eastern Illinois, Ball State and Creighton before returning to the Bears in 2008.

"The biggest thing is setting expectations," Patterson said of what she learned as an assistant. "I truly believe that if you set your expectations high and you push and motivate those young ladies, they will reach their expectations. I think to win you have to do it in practice every day, and as I mentioned to you earlier we're going to learn how to win. Those coaches are all very successful, and it's because they do what works best for them. As you guys can tell I'm energetic and I'm passionate, and I'm going to give that to my young ladies."

Patterson met with the 10 returning Redhawks from last year's team that went 10-19 and 3-13 in the Ohio Valley Conference on Wednesday morning. She said they seemed nervous at first, which she expected.

"I walked in and I told them, 'Guys, I know exactly what you're feeling. My sophomore year in college we had a coaching change, so you're sitting there thinking, 'Does she want me? Does she like me? Is she going to care about me? Oh, Lord, is she going to be crazy?'" Patterson said. "You know, all those things, so I wanted to assure them that I am here for them. I want them to be the best that they can be, and I'm going to work to make them the best that they can be. They're not always going to like everything, but at the end of the day they're going to walk away with a degree and hopefully we can walk away with some championships."

Patterson planned to reach out to the four players that signed to play for Southeast during the early signing period in November shortly after her news conference, and "would love to keep them as Redhawks." She also already has some potential recruits in mind to contact as the monthlong spring signing period began Wednesday.

Patterson plans to sit down with the three remaining assistants from former coach Ty Margenthaler's staff -- Heather Ezell, Cameron Tucker and Lavesa Glover -- and reach out to other coaching contacts as she tries to piece together her staff.

Margenthaler resigned March 23 after four seasons. The Redhawks were 37-78 and 18-46 in the OVC during his tenure and never reached the conference tournament.

The program is also under an NCAA investigation stemming from recruiting violations made by a former assistant, which Patterson was informed of by Alnutt and senior associate athletic director and senior woman administrator Cindy Gannon when she was one of nine candidates interviewed in Tampa, Florida, during the Final Four weekend.

"They feel like they've done exactly what they were supposed to do as administration, so I feel confident in that. Whatever it is, it is, and we're going to work with it," Patterson said. "There are things that I can't control, I'm not going to worry about them. I'm going to work on my team, make sure they are good young women, they go to class, they graduate and we win."

Patterson is the first female coach since the program moved to Division I and takes over a program that hasn't had a winning season since 2008-2009.

"From this moment forward our program will work to be our best every day -- in the classroom, in the community and on the court," Patterson said during her introductory news conference. "We will learn how to win the moment, win the possession, win the game and win the day. We will teach our players how to fight back from adversity with hard work, discipline, resiliency and commitment. It is my goal, and my mission, frankly, to prepare these young women and to instill in them the confidence that they can do whatever their heart truly desires."