Preston Spradlin leaves Morehead State for James Madison

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Morehead State men’s basketball is now tasked with replacing the head coach who led the Eagles through a golden age of on-court success.

On Friday afternoon, James Madison announced it hired Spradlin to be the next head coach of the Dukes. According to a James Madison news release, Spradlin’s contract with the school (based in Harrisonburg, Va.) is for six years.

Morehead State set a school record for wins in a season during the 2023-24 campaign: The Eagles went 26-9 overall and won both the Ohio Valley Conference regular-season and tournament titles before losing to 3 seed Illinois in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Spradlin has been a longtime fixture of the basketball landscape in Kentucky.

A native of Pikeville, the 37-year-old Spradlin went to Betsy Layne High School in Floyd County, played college basketball at NAIA school Alice Lloyd College in Knott County and worked in several different capacities for John Calipari and the Kentucky men’s basketball program during the early days of his coaching career.

Ex-UK guard Sean Woods hired Spradlin to his Morehead State staff in 2014, and a 29-year-old Spradlin became the interim head coach in December 2016 after Woods resigned following an independent investigation into allegations by two players that he assaulted them.

Spradlin guided the Eagles to a second-place finish in the OVC as the interim head coach for the rest of that 2016-17 season, and he became Morehead State’s full-time head coach in March 2017.

In total, Spradlin went 140-109 (56.2%) at Morehead State, which includes a run of unprecedented success for the program: No NCAA Division I men’s college basketball program in Kentucky has won as many games as Morehead State has over the last four seasons.

This coincides with the first time in history that Morehead State has won at least 20 games in four straight seasons.

The Eagles have gone 94-40 (70.2%) since the start of the 2020-21 season, with trips to the 2021 and 2024 NCAA tournaments after securing the OVC’s automatic bid by winning the conference tournament. Additionally, Spradlin guided the Eagles to an outright OVC regular season title in the 2022-23 season (the first outright OVC regular-season championship for Morehead State in 39 years) and a share of the OVC regular-season championship this season.

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