The newest member of the Missouri Tiger coaching fraternity took a year away before coming to Columbia.
After spending more than two decades watching the game from her spot on the bench as a coach, and five years before that spent on the court as a player, Kellie Harper spent a season getting a view she hadn’t had before.
The view of a broadcaster.
After being let go by Tennessee following the 2022-23 season, Harper joined SEC network and spent parts of the past year working from the studio and helping on the broadcast for the SEC Tournament last month.
“I loved it, I thought it was great work,” Harper said. “... It was a way for me to stay involved in SEC basketball in particular and to put a coaching lens on the game. But it’s not the same."
The time away allowed Harper to realize why she had devoted so much of her life to being along the bench.
“I want to be there in the gym one-on-one with our players,” Harper said. “Because that’s a big piece of who I am, I know that there are still players out there that I can have a positive impact on and I knew if I had the right opportunity, then I wanted to get back into coaching and I wanted to be able to make that impact.”
That year away came with some benefits. Harper said she will never forget the extra time she and her husband, former assistant coach Jon Harper, got to spend with their children Jackson and Kiley, but the desire to get back to coaching and working with players was too strong to ignore.
She said that pull wasn’t quite enough to get her back though, the right opportunity had to pop up and there was a long checklist of things the job had to have for her to consider it.
“When Missouri called, I knew really, really quickly that this was the perfect, perfect fit for me,” Harper said.
“Every box kept getting checked for me,” Harper added. “... I’m just so happy. I feel like I’m walking around and, like, I’m just cheesing, you know, because I just feel really good about what I know we’re going to be able to do here. And sometimes it’s hard to put into words, when you know it’s right, it’s just right.”
There was also an advantage for athletic director Laird Veatch and the team the university had put together for the search committee. Many candidates who are currently head coaches were still involved in the NCAA Tournament until after the transfer portal opened.
There were questions about the value of waiting for one of those candidates versus going out to find someone who could come in quickly and get to work.
And the Tigers went the latter route, officially announcing Harper on March 18, just ahead of the opening of the transfer portal on March 25. Harper got to Columbia that day and immediately got to work.
“She has an incredible passion for coaching,” Veatch said. “That became very clear from the first conversation. She’s ready to jump back in, get after it. And she has a real passion for developing young ...
