Kelly Sopak has finalized his first staff with the Nevada women’s basketball team.<\/p>\n
Joining Naj\u00e9 Murray as assistant coaches are Tyler Ellis, Jesse Clark and Brittany Aikens, who returns to Nevada following a previous stint with the program. Remaining on staff are Lavaris Duncan, an assistant coach and director of player development, and Shea Mead, the director of basketball operations.<\/p>\n
Ellis comes to Nevada from UC Irvine where she spent eight seasons. She will be a senior assistant coach. Ellis helped lead the Anteaters to five straight 20-win campaigns, including last year’s 26-7 record and Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament berth. Ellis played four years at New Mexico State (2013-17), leading the Aggies to three consecutive WAC regular-season and tournament titles. <\/p>\n
Clark joins the Wolf Pack staff as a senior assistant coach who has more than 25 years of coaching experience across multiple levels, working at Division I, Division II and the NAIA levels with extensive experience across several roles. He was the head coach at D-II Academy of Art before briefly being added to the Long Beach State staff. Clark has also worked for UC San Diego, Point Loma, San Diego State. Saint Mary’s, Stanford, San Francisco and Cal State Bakersfield in a variety of roles.<\/p>\n
Aikens returns to Nevada following stints at Cal State Fullerton, Army and Seattle University. She will be a senior assistant coach. Aikens began her coaching career with the Wolf Pack from 2018-20, first as a graduate assistant while earning her master’s degree and then as director of player development. Aikens played for Fresno State from 2013-16, helping lead the Bulldogs to an NCAA Tournament appearance and WNIT bid. She began her college career at Howard College.<\/p>\n
Duncan returns to the Wolf Pack for his fourth season on staff. In his time at Nevada, Duncan has helped develop post players and assist on defense. Mead also remains on staff and is entering his 12th season under three different head coaches. He will hold the title of senior director of basketball strategy and operations.<\/p>\n
Wolf Pack coaching staff<\/p>\n
Head coach: Kelly Sopak<\/p>\n
Assistant coach: Naj\u00e9 Murray<\/p>\n
Senior assistant coach: Jesse Clark<\/p>\n
Senior assistant coach: Tyler Ellis<\/p>\n
Senior assistant coach\/director of player personnel: Brittany Aikens<\/p>\n
Assistant coach\/director of player development: Lavaris Duncan<\/p>\n
Senior director of basketball strategy and operations: Shea Mead<\/p>\n
Assistant director for strength and conditioning: Gracie Frazier<\/p>\n
Assistant athletic trainer: Alyson Rippingham<\/p>\n
Coaching Consultant: Steven Nicholas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kelly Sopak has finalized his first staff with the Nevada women’s basketball team. Joining Naj\u00e9 Murray as assistant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-696845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}