Van Chancellor

Van Winston Chancellor (born September 27, 1943) is an American former college and professional basketball coach.

He coached University of Mississippi women's basketball, Louisiana State University women's basketball, and the professional Houston Comets.

They were the first basketball team to win four straight league titles since the Boston Celtics in the late 1960s and the first four-peat since the 1980-1983 New York Islanders.

Chancellor played two years of basketball at East Central Junior College in Decatur, Mississippi, before transferring to Mississippi State University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics & physical education in 1965.

During his senior year at Mississippi State, he served as head coach of the boys' basketball team at Noxapater High School.

Chancellor went on to coach boys' and girls' basketball at Horn Lake High School and Harrison Central High School in Mississippi.

He received his master's degree in physical education from the University of Mississippi in 1973.

Chancellor spent 19 seasons (1978–1997) as the head coach of the University of Mississippi Rebels, compiling an overall record of 439–154 (.740).

Chancellor's teams won at least 20 games 15 times, including a school-record 31 wins in 1978–1979.

As the Ole Miss head coach, Chancellor guided the Rebels to the NCAA tournament 14 times, including 11 consecutive appearances from 1982 to 1992.

However, he was hired by the Comets (as owned by Leslie Alexander, part of the plan for certain teams to be operated by NBA owners), to coach the team, and he believed that the team would be special from the very get go due to the talents of Cynthia Cooper (who had led USA to a gold medal in the 1988 Olympics and silver in 1992 while playing in European leagues) in practice.

He also led the Rebels to top 20 final rankings 13 times, with top 10 finishes four times (#5 in 1992, #6 in 1985, #8 in 1987, and #10 in 1984).

Chancellor led Ole Miss to the Elite Eight at the NCAA tournament four times, while his teams made the Sweet 16 on three other occasions.

Chancellor was named the Southeastern Conference Coach of the Year three times, including the 1992 season when the Rebels were 29–3 overall and claimed the SEC regular season title with a perfect 11–0 mark.

He was also named the 1992 National Women's Basketball Coach of the Year by the Women's Basketball News Service.

Houston was bolstered by fellow player allocation Sheryl Swoopes (who had led Texas Tech to the 1993 NCAA title) and WNBA draft pick Tina Thompson to make a Big Three trio, all of whom would be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

When the Women's National Basketball Association started with eight expansion teams in 1997, Chancellor had applied for six of the teams with doubt that he would be hired.

The 1997 season did not go without hitches, as Thompson and Cooper wanted less rigid patterns from Chancellor when it came to offensive sets, which they responded by setting ball screens on the perimeter; Swoopes did not play until the second half of the season due to her pregnancy.

They won four of their first seven games before closing out the season on a 14-7 run to finish 18-10, the best record of the eight teams; in the four-team playoff, they won both games (including a 65-51 victory over the New York Liberty, who had beaten Houston three out of four times in the regular season) to win the inaugural WNBA championship.

To build chemistry, he set up a three-player committee composed of a young player, a mid-level player, and an older player.

Chancellor cited the help of NBA coach Rudy Tomjanovich in asserting the importance of training camp and the nature of motivating college players.

In the 1998 WNBA Championship, now a best-of-three series, the Comets lost a nail-biting Game 1 to the Phoenix Mercury.

In Game 2, the Comets trailed by 12 with seven minutes remaining, and Chancellor called time-out.

Trying to get the words out, point guard Kim Perrot (considered the "stick of dynamite" of the team) took over to speak to the team, with Cooper and Thompson later citing her rallying speech as the moment that got the team back on track.

The Comets rallied to force overtime before winning the game.

In Game 3, they won by nine to clinch their second title.

The 1999 season, wracked with emotional turmoil due to the diagnosis of lung cancer for Perrot (which led to her passing on August 19), saw them go 26-6 before they rolled to a third straight title with four playoff wins to two losses.

2000 was their most dominant playoff run, despite the fact that a 27-5 record was not enough to be first in the league.

They swept their first-round opponent to have a key matchup with the Los Angeles Sparks, who had only lost four games all year.

They swept the Sparks in two games to meet up against New York.

In the 2000 WNBA Championship, they beat the Liberty 59–52 and 79–73 (overtime) to clinch their fourth league championship.

Cooper retired after the 2000 season ended, and Swoopes missed the 2000 season with an Anterior cruciate ligament injury.

They won one postseason series after the 2000 season ended.

In 2001, Chancellor was elected to the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, located in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Their playoff dominance ended with their first playoff loss (in a straight two-game sweep) to the Sparks in 2001.

Cooper briefly returned in 2003.

They lost in the first round two more times before they missed the playoffs in 2004 with a 13-21 record, Chancellor's only losing season as coach.

He was named head coach of the Lady Tigers on April 11, 2007, replacing Pokey Chatman.

He was enshrined as a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in September 2007.

Chancellor currently serves as an analyst for Southland Conference games on ESPN3.