A basketball lifer, Neal reunited with Miller
MBB: Murray State's newest assistant coach has known Ryan Miller for nearly 15 years
Long before Cullen Neal became an assistant coach on Ryan Miller’s first staff at Murray State, Neal was a teenager in New Mexico that loved basketball. From 2007-13, Neal’s dad, Craig, was the associate head coach at the University of New Mexico.
Also on that New Mexico staff during that timeframe: Ryan Miller.
“I've known Coach Miller for a long time,” Neal told Dave Winder on the Racer Report Podcast. (You can listen to the entire podcast here.) “He was able to watch me grow up as a person, a player, and now a coach because he was with me during my prime years. He was around when I was 13 through 18 while he was coaching with my father. We just continue to build that relationship. I knew, personally, how I felt about how he would be as a head coach, and I knew once he got the job at Murray State, I felt like it would be a great fit for me to work for him, and for me to learn from him.”
Neal grew up around the game, as his dad was an assistant coach for the Toronto Raptors from 2000-03, before moving to the college game and becoming an associate head coach at Iowa for three years before taking a job at New Mexico. With a dad that was working in the gym all the time, Neal found a way to be there with him as often as he could.
“I can't imagine a time where I didn't have the ball in my hands,” Neal said. “I played since I was a baby and I played all the way through. I was definitely in the gym every day. I was talking to Coach Miller the other day — I’m sure there were plenty of times I was probably in the gym too much. I was always in the practice facility and always in the arena, just shooting, doing whatever I could to get better.”
After a playing career that started at New Mexico, and then concluded with stops at Ole Miss and Saint Mary’s, Neal got into coaching. He spent the last five years on the coaching staffs at Nevada, Rice and Hawai’i. Now he’s at Murray State, and with just two weeks before next year’s roster arrives on campus, he’s ready to get started.
“Obviously, we have a brand new team,” Neal said. “We're ready to get to build the team chemistry, ready to get practices and workouts underway. Just ready to get all these new faces together — it's important. We need to build early chemistry with everybody, and make sure everybody's clicking on the right foot this summer, and then hopefully that will build into the fall and into the season. (I’m) super amped. We’re going to have a team that's long; we’re going to have a team that’s athletic; we’re going to have a team that can score the ball and can guard. I’m really excited to get everybody here.”