Stapler Named Assistant Men's Basketball Coach
10/25/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
CONWAY, S.C. -- Coastal Carolina University men's basketball has named Scott Stapler as an assistant coach, Head Coach Cliff Ellis announced today. Waller replaces Mike Boynton, Jr., who left CCU to be Associate Head Coach at Wofford College.
"Scott was with me at Auburn as a student manager and has always had a tremendous work ethic," Ellis said. "He is a coach's son so he has grown up around basketball. He is familiar with the league from his time as an assistant at Birmingham-Southern. He will be very instrumental with our defense, as well as all of our systems. I am excited to have him here. He has been a member of the family since my time with him at Auburn, and I believe he will bring a lot to the table for Coastal Carolina basketball."
No stranger to the Big South Conference, Stapler arrives at CCU after spending the last eight years as an assistant coach at Birmingham-Southern College, a former member of the Big South. There, Stapler assisted in all aspects of the program, including coordinating recruiting, on-court coaching, team defense coordination, individual development for post players and scouting. He helped the Panthers to a share of the Big South Regular Season championship in 2003-04 with a 12-4 mark in league play and 20-7 record overall and to an average of 18 wins a season in his tenure. He also directed the BSC Team Camps in the summer and worked to develop the Panthers’ basketball schedules. As part of his recruiting at BSC, Stapler went overseas and recruited players to the program from 10 different countries, including two-time All-Big South honoree Jakob Sigurdarson from Iceland.
A 1996 graduate of Auburn University, he earned a bachelor’s degree in physical education. While at AU, he served as a student assistant with the men’s program under Ellis from 1994-96. He also assisted with numerous operations functions, on-court workouts and the Cliff Ellis Basketball Camp. Following graduation from AU, he earned a master’s in physical education from Alabama A&M University in 1998.
Stapler also brings international coaching experience to the Chanticleer staff after having assisted in Nike’s Up Tempo semester clinics in Berlin, Germany, and Paris, France. In the summer of 2000 he served as a coach with an Athletes in Action tour in Lithuania. On the tour, the team competed against amateur and professional teams from Lithuania, Latvia, and Russia as well as the Bronze medal winning Lithuanian National Team. He followed that up this past May by again working with the organization in clinics in Bulgaria, Kosovo and Macedonia. He also has spent time assisting in clinics throughout Europe.
Stapler’s first full-time coaching position was from 1997-99, where he served two seasons as an assistant coach at Centenary College in Shreveport, La. He began his career at Alabama-Huntsville, where he served as a graduate assistant for the 1996-97 season.
A native of Huntsville, Stapler starred at Grissom High School under his father, Ronnie Stapler. Stapler helped lead the Tigers to the 1988 6A State Championship and the 1990 Final Four. He then played collegiately at Walker College (1990-91) and Northwestern (La.) State (1991-92).
Stapler and his wife, the former Amy Kyle, have one son, Elijah.
