WKU Basketball: Tops Add Cunningham And Grant As New Stansbury Assistants

In an announcement on Monday morning, Western Kentucky said that Phil Cunningham and Marcus Grant will be joining as assistants for the upcoming season.

Cunningham comes to the Hill with the title of Associate Head Coach. For the past six seasons, the Campbellsville native has been the head coach at Troy University. There, he compiled a 80–111 record that included a birth into the 2017 NCAA Tournament.

The 52-year-old Cunningham worked under Rick Stansbury for 12 years at Mississippi State and spent one season as an assistant at WKU during the 2012–13 season.

Marcus Grant also comes to Bowling Green from Troy. He spent the past six seasons on Cunningham’s staff with the last four being as the Associate Head Coach.

Grant also has experience with Stansbury as he spent eight years working with the WKU head coach in Starkville. He also played for Stansbury before moving to the sidelines in a coaching position.

The addition of these two coaches do officially close the book on the tenures of Nikita Johnson and Mark Hsu. Johnson was recently announced as an assistant coach at Austin Peay while Hsu is reportedly leaving the program to “explore new opportunities.”

Cunningham and Grant will join Hennssy Auriantal as assistants for Stansbury’s fourth season on the Hill.

It is safe to say that Stansbury will hope that this will add a sense of continuity to a coaching staff that has had changes every single year. With the addition of two coaches that he is familiar with, we can only hope that this will help the staff get even closer.

Adding a former head coach in Cunningham can also only help in all aspects of the game especially one with experience with both Stansbury and WKU.