Bill Walker, a former player for the Miners during the 1980s, returned to campus as the head men's basketball coach and is currently in his sixth season in that role.
Walker, who became the 15th head coach in the history of the Miner program on April 1, 2019, spent the five previous seasons as the head coach at the University of Illinois Springfield – who competes in the Great Lakes Valley Conference along with Missouri S&T – and returned to the place where he played his collegiate basketball from 1984-87 under Billy Key.
"I want to express my thanks to (former S&T director of athletics) Mark Mullin for letting me come back to Rolla to guide my alma mater," Walker said. "I always loved my time at the university and no matter where I've been, I have followed the program closely and have been rooting for it from afar. It is a great honor to come back and occupy the seat that was held by Billy Key and Dale Martin, which they held so honorably during my time there as a student-athlete.
Â
"I have seen that gym rocking in the past, both when I played and during the years when Coach Martin had some of his really good teams," Walker added. "I know this is a program with a lot of potential. Missouri S&T itself has done a number of things that are trending in the right direction, including improving the facilities and growing the enrollment and my goal is to bring the men's basketball program back to that past level of excitement."
Missouri S&T has gone 37-65 in Walker's first four seasons at the helm, but is coming off back-to-back winning seasons. After going 25 years without finishing over the .500 mark, S&T went 16-12 during the 2022-23 season and 15-12 in 2023-24. The 16 wins in 2022-23 also included a victory over a Missouri-St. Louis team that advanced to the NCAA Division II Elite Eight. All five of S&T's primary starters during the year earned recognition from the GLVC -- three to the All-GLVC team, one to the league's all-defensive team and one to the all-freshman squad.
Last year, the Miners posted a victory over NCAA Midwest Regional finalist Northern Michigan during the season and had one All-GLVC performer in Ikenna Okeke.
Since completing his playing career, Walker – who graduated from Missouri S&T in 1987 with a bachelor's degree in history – went into the coaching ranks as a graduate assistant under legendary coach Gene Bartow at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. In his last season at UAB, the Blazers finished third in the National Invitational Tournament.
He moved on to become a full-time assistant at two institutions that the Miners were competing against at the time in the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association, first for seven seasons at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and then for three years at the University of Central Missouri in his hometown of Warrensburg, Mo.
After his time at UCM, Walker moved up to the NCAA Division I ranks as he spent eight years as an assistant coach at the University of Minnesota, where the Golden Gophers recorded five winning seasons and an NCAA Tournament berth in 2005, along with four appearances in the National Invitational Tournament.  While at Minnesota, he helped recruit Big Ten "Freshmen of the Year" Rick Rickert in 2002 and Kris Humphries in 2005, as well as bringing in a recruiting class in 2001 rated as one of the top 10 in the nation that year.
Walker left Minnesota following the 2006-07 season to join the staff at Texas A&M University, where he spent the next four seasons and helped the Aggies to four consecutive trips to the NCAA Tournament; three of those teams advanced to the second round of the tournament. Texas A&M had a record of 97-40 during those four seasons when Walker was a member of its staff.
Following the time at Texas A&M, Walker worked for two seasons as a professional scout for the New Orleans Hornets of the National Basketball Association before returning to the coaching ranks in 2013 as an assistant coach at Drake University.  Following one season at Drake, Walker was named as the head coach at UIS, where he took the Prairie Stars to back-to-back 14-win seasons after they had finished below the .500 mark in seven of their first eight years as a member of the GLVC.
Athletics run deep in the Walker family. His father, Floyd, served as the director of athletics at Central Missouri and is a member of the National Association of Collegiate Director of Athletics Hall of Fame, while his sister, Barbara, recently retired from her position as the deputy athletic director and senior woman administrator at Wake Forest University. Walker's son, Vince, played for him at UIS and is currently the director of basketball operations at Abilene Christian University.
