Six years after wrapping up one of the most decorated careers in Mississippi State sports history, Victoria Vivians is back in Starkville, joining head coach Sam Purcell’s staff as an assistant coach and director of scouting.
Vivians is in her first season as a shooting guard with the WNBA’s Seattle Storm after previously spending five years with the Indiana Fever, who drafted her eighth overall in 2018. As a player for the Bulldogs, she won the Gillom Trophy — presented annually to the best women’s college basketball player in the state of Mississippi — all four years and helped lead MSU to back-to-back national title game appearances.
“It is a dream come true to join Coach Purcell and the staff at Mississippi State,” Vivians said in a news release. “This place is special and always has been home to me. The support for women’s basketball in this community is unrivaled and it means the world to me to be able to represent this program, university and the state of Mississippi.”
This will be Vivians’ first opportunity as a coach, and she joins a staff that is almost entirely new to Starkville but hardly short on experience. Associate head coach Fred Castro was previously the head coach at Eastern Michigan, assistant Anita Howard was the head coach at Georgia Southern and Samantha Williams spent the last three years in the Southeastern Conference as an assistant coach at Tennessee.
Vivians will continue to play for the Storm through the end of the WNBA season before joining the MSU program in October. It’s a similar arrangement to Rhyne Howard’s situation at Florida — the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 WNBA Draft joined the Gators’ coaching staff last fall and continues to play for the Atlanta Dream.
“This is a home run hire to bring Victoria Vivians back home to be a part of our staff at Mississippi State,” Purcell said. “It has always been a priority of mine to surround our student-athletes with additions that will equip them to be successful both on and off the court. Victoria has shined throughout her entire career and is still excelling at the highest level in our sport.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 28 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
