Ronald Eugene Hunter (born April 7, 1964) is an American

college basketball In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athleti ...

coach and the current men's basketball head coach of the

Tulane University Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into a comprehensive pu ...

Green Wave. His son,

R. J. Hunter Ronald Jordan Hunter (born October 24, 1993) is an American professional basketball player who last played for the Sydney Kings of the Australian National Basketball League (NBL). Hunter played college basketball for the Georgia State Panthers un ...

, was a first-round draft pick for the

Boston Celtics The Boston Celtics ( ) are an American professional basketball team based in Boston. The Celtics compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Atlantic Division. Founded in 1946 as one of ...

High school

Hunter attended and played for Chaminade-Julienne High School in

Dayton Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater Da ...

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

from 1978 to 1982.

Coaching career

IUPUI

From 1994 to 2011, Hunter served as the head coach at IUPUI.Ron Hunter leaves IUPUI to be coach at Georgia State - ESPN
/ref> Under his direction, the team advanced from an NAIA program to

NCAA Division I NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athleti ...

. In its third season as a Division I program, Hunter led IUPUI to its first, and thus far only, NCAA tournament appearance in

2003 File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, disintegrated during reentry into Atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an 2002– ...

. On January 24, 2008, Hunter coached a game against Oakland University while barefoot. He did this to benefit

Samaritan's Feet Samaritan's Feet, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that "shares a message of hope and love through washing the feet of impoverished children around the world and adorning them with new shoes." Founded by E ...

, a foundation that works to provide hope and love to impoverished children around the world by washing their feet and giving them a new pair of shoes. His goal was to collect 40,000 shoes, however, before tip-off, over 110,000 pairs of shoes had been donated.

Georgia State

On March 21, 2011, it was announced Hunter would replace Rod Barnes as the Georgia State Panthers' men's basketball head coach. During his first season at GSU, Georgia State won 22 games, the fourth most in school history. Hunter captured national attention for a moment that occurred in the

2015 NCAA tournament The 2015 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament involved 68 teams playing in a single-elimination tournament to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division I college basketball. The 77th edition of the tournament began on March ...

. After tearing his

Achilles In Greek mythology, Achilles ( ) or Achilleus ( grc-gre, Ἀχιλλεύς) was a hero of the Trojan War, the greatest of all the Greek warriors, and the central character of Homer's '' Iliad''. He was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Pe ...

celebrating the Panthers' Sun Belt Conference tournament championship, he was forced to coach their subsequent NCAA appearance while sitting on a rolling stool due to his injury. In their second-round game against the three-seed, Baylor, Hunter's son R.J. hit a deep, game-winning three with seconds left on the clock. When the shot went in, Hunter's stool slipped out from underneath him while exuberantly celebrating, sending him tumbling to the floor while continuing to display his jubilation. The moment spurred a torrent of media attention and resulted in multiple features, interviews, and a spot in 'One Shining Moment' at the conclusion of the tournament. On November 20, 2017, in a win over Eastern Washington, Hunter earned his 400th career win. Ron Hunter has played a key role in the ongoing transformation of the athletics culture at Georgia State, particularly with the basketball program and their continuing ascension from being one of the most unsuccessful programs in NCAA Division I history to being one of the premier Mid-Major programs in the nation. Some of Ron Hunter's most notable wins as head of coach of Georgia State are: VCU (2011), #16 Baylor (2015), Georgia (2018) and Alabama (2018). Hunter also notched a win against crosstown foe, Georgia Tech, in a 2017 charity exhibition known as the 'A-Town Showdown for Hurricane Relief'.

Tulane

On March 24, 2019, Hunter was named the head coach at Tulane, replacing Mike Dunleavy.

Head coaching record

*18 wins (including 8 conference wins) vacated by NCAA.2014-15 IUPUI Record Book, p. 6.
/ref>

Personal life

Hunter and his wife, Amy, have two children: Jasmine and

References

External links

Georgia State bioIUPUI bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hunter, Ron 1964 births Living people 20th-century African-American sportspeople 21st-century African-American people African-American basketball coaches American men's basketball coaches American men's basketball players Basketball coaches from Ohio Basketball players from Dayton, Ohio College men's basketball head coaches in the United States Georgia State Panthers men's basketball coaches IUPUI Jaguars men's basketball coaches Miami RedHawks men's basketball coaches Miami RedHawks men's basketball players Milwaukee Panthers men's basketball coaches Sportspeople from Dayton, Ohio Tulane Green Wave men's basketball coaches