Missouri Women’s Basketball Has Big 12 Coach as Primary Target

The Missouri Athletic Department has chosen a sitting Big 12 coach as the main focus in its search for a new women’s basketball coach.

The coach in question is Kansas State’s Jeff Mittie, who has been with the Wildcats since the 2014-15 season.

 

“I’m told that Missouri has made Jeff Mittie their top target,” SB Nation’s Mitchell Northam wrote. “Mizzou’s AD previously worked at (and is a graduate of) Kansas State.”

Mittie started his head coaching career at Western Missouri from 1992-95 before stops at Arkansas State and TCU. He joined Kansas State in 2014 after 15 seasons with the Horned Frogs. In his K-State career, Mittie has led the Cats to an overall record of 216-142 and a conference record of 97-101.

To say that Missouri Athletic Director Laird Veatch has a connection to K-State might be an understatement at this point, as the Tigers AD is all about Kansas State University. He was born in Manhattan, Kansas, attended Manhattan High, and even played football for the Wildcats under Bill Snyder from 1990-1994.

Veatch commented on the type of coach he plans on hiring in the coaching carousel a few days prior to the Mittie report, saying, “I’d like a proven winner, with multiple head coaching stops at varying levels. Someone that has shown they can recruit in the transfer portal era.”

In addition to his early life with the Wildcats, Veatch spent time as K-State’s associate athletics director, deputy athletic director, and interim athletic director from 2010-2017 until the group hired North Dakota State’s Gene Taylor.

While Mittie has built quite an impressive program in the Little Apple, his role in the Missouri vacancy is going to add some pressure in the coming days for Gene Taylor and the K-State Athletic Department.