By GARY LEE
Cascia Hall announced last week that Lee Mayberry will head the Commandos’ boys’ basketball program. Mayberry has done it all in basketball including playing in the NBA and the NCAA Final Four. Mayberry will also serve as Cascia’s dean of students.
“This was not just a basketball hire, this was a leadership hire that can positively impact every student on our campus and that was exciting,” Cascia Hall athletic director Dave Reiter said.
Mayberry was an Oral Roberts University women’s basketball assistant the past four seasons after a one-year stint as assistant coach at Watson Chapel High School Wildcats in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Before coaching the Wildcats, he was part of Tulsa alum Mike Anderson’s basketball coaching staff at the University of Arkansas.
Mayberry succeeds Danny Hightower, who is retiring.
“You always want to run your own program,” Mayberry told the Tulsa World. “This is an opportunity to do that. I’m very excited to see where we can go at Cascia Hall.”
Mayberry is married to his high school sweetheart, Marla, and together they have five daughters: Taleya, Kaylan, Maya, Wyvette and Rhyian. Taleya is a former graduate assistant at ORU and an assistant University of Tulsa, where she played (2009-13); Kaylan played for Oral Roberts from 2013-17; Maya played for the Golden Eagles from 2017-19 and is a senior at Tulsa; Wyvette played the past two seasons at Tulsa, where she earned all-American Athletic Conference in both seasons and has transferred to play at the University of Kansas; and a younger sister, Rhyian, who is a freshman and plays at Booker T. Washington High School.
Mayberry’s name is seen in the record book for the Razorbacks as he leads the program in all-time career steals with 291. He ranks second in assists with 729 and third in points with 1,940. He helped the University of Arkansas transition from the Southwest Conference to the Southeastern Conference by winning three straight SWC titles with a combined 42-6 record before making the jump to the SEC and winning a SEC title with a 13-3 record in the 1991-1992 season.
Selected in the first round of the 1992 NBA draft as the 23rd pick, Mayberry spent his first four years in the NBA with the Milwaukee Bucks and played in 328 consecutive games to begin his illustrious career. He then went to the Vancouver Grizzlies to play his final three years and accumulated more than 2,500 points and more than 1,700 assists in his pro career.
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