Ricky Leonard Stokes (born March 29, 1962) is an American athletics administrator and former men's

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 who is currently the associate commissioner of men's basketball for the

Mid-American Conference The Mid-American Conference (MAC) is a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) NCAA Division I, Division I collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference with a membership base in the Great Lakes region (North America), Great L ...

Player

Stokes played at

Highland Springs High School Highland Springs High School is a public high school located in the East End of Henrico County, Virginia. It was one of the first high schools established in the Greater Richmond Region. Replacement school After 70 years in its Oak Avenue fa ...

for Coach George Lancaster before committing to Coach

Terry Holland Michael Terrence Holland (born April 2, 1942) is an American college athletics administrator and former basketball player and coach. He is currently the emeritus director of athletics and special assistant to Chancellor Steve Ballard at East Caro ...

. As a point guard for the Virginia Cavaliers, Stokes set the record for career games played with 134, a record that he still holds. The Cavaliers made the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship each year that Stokes was with the team and during the three years that Stokes played along the legendary

Ralph Sampson Ralph Lee Sampson Jr. (born July 7, 1960) is an American former professional basketball player. He is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. A phenom, three-time college national player of the year, and first overall selec ...

, the team earned a #1 seed.

Coach

Stokes was hired in 1999 by Jim Weaver, the new director of athletics at

Virginia Tech Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also has educational facilities in six re ...

, to replace the fired Bobby Hussey. In his first year as coach, Stokes brought the Hokies their first winning season since the departure of Bill Foster but that year would be his high water mark in Blacksburg. Beginning with the 2000–01 season, the Hokies departed the Atlantic 10 Conference and joined the much tougher

Big East The Big East Conference is a collegiate athletic conference that competes in NCAA Division I in ten men's sports and twelve women's sports. Headquartered in New York City, the eleven full-member schools are primarily located in Northeast and ...

. Stokes was unable to recruit Big East level talent to Virginia Tech and the team's record suffered accordingly. The highlight of his four seasons at Tech were blowout wins over #18

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

and rival

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

his final year. Stokes was dismissed after a third straight losing season and a 10–38 overall record in the Big East. In none of these three years in the Big East was Virginia Tech able to qualify for the conference post-season tournament under Stokes. After two years as an assistant coach at the University of South Carolina, Stokes was hired as the head men's basketball coach at East Carolina University after the 2004–2005 season. After compiling a 14–44 record in two seasons, Stokes chose to resign rather than accept an administrative position within the ECU athletic department. The

named Stokes the associate commissioner for men's basketball in 2010.

Head coaching record

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stokes, Ricky 1962 births Living people American men's basketball coaches American men's basketball players Basketball coaches from Virginia Basketball players from Richmond, Virginia Bowling Green Falcons men's basketball coaches East Carolina Pirates men's basketball coaches Point guards South Carolina Gamecocks men's basketball coaches Texas Longhorns men's basketball coaches Virginia Cavaliers men's basketball coaches Virginia Cavaliers men's basketball players Virginia Tech Hokies men's basketball coaches Wake Forest Demon Deacons men's basketball coaches