Wow is he getting it done - how impressive - his resume is mind blowing and inspirational, all while doing it with 6 kids! Wow
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Coach Cunningham took over the University of the Incarnate Word men’s basketball program in April 2018. Through his first three seasons, Cunningham has worked to empower his student-athletes to be their best in competition, in the classroom, and in the community.
In 2020-21 Cunningham guided the Cardinals to new heights on the court, in the classroom, and in the community.
The team qualified for the Southland Conference tournament for the first time in school history, earning the 7-seed. UIW increased its overall winning percentage and conference winning percentage for the second straight year. The Cardinals also won half of their conference road games, best since 2015-16. En route, UIW men's hoops finished as the NCAA Division I 30th-best 3-point field goal percentage (37.4%), and the top overall 3-point shooting team among the conference.
Coach Cunningham continued to develop his student-athletes’ performances as well, highlighted by tying a program record 30.5% 3-point field goal defense and Keaston Willis earning All-Conference second team, All-Academic second team and NABC All-District first team accolades.
Coach Cunningham has also pushed the Cardinals in the classroom. In 2020-21, UIW men's hoops team continued to deliver eye-popping academic results, turning in a 3.37 Fall 2020 team GPA, among the nation’s finest. The team qualified a conference-best six players for Academic All-Conference consideration. The Cardinals continue to set the national standard for academic performance in Division I men's basketball.
Despite COVID limitations, the program finished the year with over 300 hours of community service, besting the team goal of 275 hours. UIW men’s basketball volunteered at the Headwaters nature preserve sanctuary at Incarnate Word, at the YMCA (virtually), at multiple UIW athletic events, and more.
During the 2019-20 season, the UIW men's basketball team took its conference win total from one (2018-19) to six (2019-20) in Cunningham’s second season. Those six wins doubled the number of conference wins for the two previous years combined. Additionally, UIW tied the number for most true road wins since the 2015-16 season. The Cardinals also won more games overall than the previous season for the first time since joining Division I.
Cunningham guided Keaston Willis through a solid freshman season, which led to Willis earning Southland Conference Freshman of the Year, a first in program history for the Cardinals. Fellow freshman Drew Lutz, who led the team in steals and assists while ranking second on the team in scoring, tied the school record for assists by a freshman in the DI era.
In the classroom, UIW continued to set the standard. The Cardinals achieved the first perfect (1,000) APR in UIW men's basketball history (for 2018-19), and the 2019-20 Cardinals turned in a record-setting 3.34 fall semester team GPA, likely a top GPA in the nation for DI men's basketball.
In the community, UIW is already approaching its full-year goal of 275 hours of community service, having given back at places like the San Antonio Children's Hospital, Habitat for Humanity, and the Village at Incarnate Word. During the school closings due to the COVID-19 pandemic, student-athletes also read to elementary students virtually.
In 2018-19, the Cardinals made huge strides in the classroom, taking a team GPA from the twos to a 3.232 (fall through summer), which is among the nation's finest team GPAs in NCAA D1 men's basketball.
In the community, the 2018-19 Cardinals completed over 250 hours of community service and it aims to complete over 275 hours in 2019-20. So far this year the team has dug fences for Habitat for Humanity, exercised with senior-living residents at The Village at Incarnate Word, visited the San Antonio Children's Hospital, and landscaped at a local garden for UIW's Meet the Mission.
While the youthful 2018-19 Cardinals did not get the competitive results it hoped for on the court, the team did lead NCAA D1 men's basketball in free throw shooting accuracy and was among the Southland Conference's leaders in effective field goal percentage, despite enduring a slew of injuries, including four season-ending ones.
One season prior to Dr. Carson Cunningham’s first collegiate coaching gig, Carroll College of Helena, Montana, won only two men’s basketball games. Then Cunningham accepted the Fighting Saints’ head coaching position. Five seasons later, his team was enjoying its third-straight appearance in the NAIA Division I men’s basketball tournament.
Winning is an important line item on the resume of Cunningham, who became the new men’s basketball head coach at the University of the Incarnate Word on March 22, 2018. But, with apologies to Vince Lombardi, winning is not the only thing. Carson and his players seek excellence in everything they do, on and off the basketball court.
In addition to developing and refining basketball skills, especially with regard to shooting, they strive for excellence in the classroom and in the community, and they win recognition for player performance and coaching achievement.
Winning, Studying and Serving
Of course, winning is a major goal. During his five years with Carroll College, Cunningham’s teams recorded a 107-52 (.673) record. He reached the 100-win plateau sooner than any other coach in school history, hitting that mark in just 150 games. His teams enjoyed four consecutive winning seasons, won two Frontier Conference regular season titles, two conference tournament championships, earned three NAIA National Tournament berths, and reached the Final Eight twice.
In 2017-18, Cunningham’s last season at Carroll, he won conference coach of the year, helped guide the Fighting Saints to conference regular-season and tournament championships and to the NAIA DI tournament for the third consecutive year. Also, for the third year in a row, his team led the NAIA DI in field goal and free throw percentage. Three of his players won all-conference awards, including NAIA DI National Player of the Year Ryan Imhoff, who is now a graduate manager on the UIW staff.
One year earlier, in 2016-17, on the way to their second Final Eight berth, the Saints produced an NAIA DI first-team All-American, Zach Taylor. That team also generated two academic All-Americans, Imhoff and Oliver Carr, and earned a team GPA of 3.2, a top three NAIA DI men’s basketball team GPA nationally.
In the preceding year, 2015-16, the team made its first Final Eight appearance. It also compiled a 3.4 overall GPA, again among the top three nationally, and performed over 300 hours of community service.
Scholarship and service are indeed key components in Cunningham’s program.
Carson maintains an abiding interest in his players’ classroom performance, and recruits only those prospects who demonstrate an academic work ethic. When he describes a newly recruited student-athlete, Cunningham frequently comments on the young man’s academic prowess in addition to his basketball skills.
During their first summer under Cunningham’s tutelage, UIW basketball helped build a Habitat for Humanity house for a deserving family. Several months later, they visited The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, staging a “game day” to entertain the young patients. UIW requires its undergraduates to perform 45 hours of community service prior to graduation. Cunningham’s Cardinals will exceed that quota by a wide margin.
A Boilermaker in the Hoosier State
Cunningham’s success began in that crucible of high school basketball, Indiana, where he earned regional player of the year honors and first team all-state recognition. After graduation, he matriculated at Oregon State University, where he was the starting point guard as a true freshman, earned freshman All-America honors and broke Gary Payton’s OSU freshman scoring record.
Then Cunningham came back home, joining Gene Keady’s Purdue Boilermakers. He became a three-year starter and helped lead Purdue to a pair of Sweet Sixteen appearances and a spot in the Elite Eight. In his three seasons, Cunningham approached the 1000-point scoring mark, registered slightly fewer than 400 assists and had 163 rebounds. For his classroom efforts, he earned academic All-America honors twice, becoming, at that time, one of only three players to do so at Purdue.
According to Randy Roberts, a distinguished professor of history at Purdue, Cunningham saw more than basketball in his future and took advantage of everything the university offered. “This is a guy who came here to play basketball and to get an education,” Roberts said. “Sometimes you see athletes who come here just to play their sport and the education is secondary. But with Carson, education was never secondary. I’ve never known a student to balance academics and athletics the way Carson did.”
That attitude provided Cunningham with a future that included basketball but went beyond the hardwood.
Professional Athlete, Scholar, Author and Coach
After earning his master’s degree in history from Purdue in 2001, Cunningham spent three seasons playing professional basketball. He played for the Continental Basketball Association’s Gary Steelheads and the Rockford Lightning. He also played in Estonia and Australia.
During that time, he continued to pursue graduate studies in history through Purdue. He earned his Ph.D. in American history in 2006 and soon after embarked upon a career as a history professor, taking a position at the nation’s largest Catholic university, DePaul in Chicago. He was an instructor in the history department and then the department of cinema and digital media at DePaul from 2006-13.
Concurrently, for five seasons beginning in 2007-08, he coached the varsity boys’ basketball team at his alma mater, Andrean, a Catholic high school in Merrillville, Indiana, where he guided the 59ers to 43 wins in their final 50 games.
While teaching at DePaul and coaching at Andrean, Cunningham continued to pursue graduate studies. He graduated from DePaul with a Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) in 2013.
He also published books. Cunningham is the author or co-author of five books, three of which are peer reviewed academic monographs published by well-regarded university presses:
American Hoops: U.S. Men’s Olympic Basketball from Berlin to Beijing (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska, 2010)
Randy Roberts and Carson Cunningham, Before the Curse: the Chicago Cubs’ Glory Years,1870-1945 (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois, 2012)
Underbelly Hoops: Adventures in the CBA a.k.a. the Crazy Basketball Association (New York: Diversion, 2013)
21st Century Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (2014)
Fallen Stars: Five American Athletes Who Died in Military Service (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2017)
Marriage and Family
When Cunningham and his wife, Christy, a former volleyball letterwinner at Purdue, arrived in San Antonio, they did so with six children in tow: daughters Caroline, Catie Joy, and Mabeline Lucille, and sons Case, Indiana, and Bennet.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<<~~<<<<
Coach Cunningham took over the University of the Incarnate Word men’s basketball program in April 2018. Through his first three seasons, Cunningham has worked to empower his student-athletes to be their best in competition, in the classroom, and in the community.
In 2020-21 Cunningham guided the Cardinals to new heights on the court, in the classroom, and in the community.
The team qualified for the Southland Conference tournament for the first time in school history, earning the 7-seed. UIW increased its overall winning percentage and conference winning percentage for the second straight year. The Cardinals also won half of their conference road games, best since 2015-16. En route, UIW men's hoops finished as the NCAA Division I 30th-best 3-point field goal percentage (37.4%), and the top overall 3-point shooting team among the conference.
Coach Cunningham continued to develop his student-athletes’ performances as well, highlighted by tying a program record 30.5% 3-point field goal defense and Keaston Willis earning All-Conference second team, All-Academic second team and NABC All-District first team accolades.
Coach Cunningham has also pushed the Cardinals in the classroom. In 2020-21, UIW men's hoops team continued to deliver eye-popping academic results, turning in a 3.37 Fall 2020 team GPA, among the nation’s finest. The team qualified a conference-best six players for Academic All-Conference consideration. The Cardinals continue to set the national standard for academic performance in Division I men's basketball.
Despite COVID limitations, the program finished the year with over 300 hours of community service, besting the team goal of 275 hours. UIW men’s basketball volunteered at the Headwaters nature preserve sanctuary at Incarnate Word, at the YMCA (virtually), at multiple UIW athletic events, and more.
During the 2019-20 season, the UIW men's basketball team took its conference win total from one (2018-19) to six (2019-20) in Cunningham’s second season. Those six wins doubled the number of conference wins for the two previous years combined. Additionally, UIW tied the number for most true road wins since the 2015-16 season. The Cardinals also won more games overall than the previous season for the first time since joining Division I.
Cunningham guided Keaston Willis through a solid freshman season, which led to Willis earning Southland Conference Freshman of the Year, a first in program history for the Cardinals. Fellow freshman Drew Lutz, who led the team in steals and assists while ranking second on the team in scoring, tied the school record for assists by a freshman in the DI era.
In the classroom, UIW continued to set the standard. The Cardinals achieved the first perfect (1,000) APR in UIW men's basketball history (for 2018-19), and the 2019-20 Cardinals turned in a record-setting 3.34 fall semester team GPA, likely a top GPA in the nation for DI men's basketball.
In the community, UIW is already approaching its full-year goal of 275 hours of community service, having given back at places like the San Antonio Children's Hospital, Habitat for Humanity, and the Village at Incarnate Word. During the school closings due to the COVID-19 pandemic, student-athletes also read to elementary students virtually.
In 2018-19, the Cardinals made huge strides in the classroom, taking a team GPA from the twos to a 3.232 (fall through summer), which is among the nation's finest team GPAs in NCAA D1 men's basketball.
In the community, the 2018-19 Cardinals completed over 250 hours of community service and it aims to complete over 275 hours in 2019-20. So far this year the team has dug fences for Habitat for Humanity, exercised with senior-living residents at The Village at Incarnate Word, visited the San Antonio Children's Hospital, and landscaped at a local garden for UIW's Meet the Mission.
While the youthful 2018-19 Cardinals did not get the competitive results it hoped for on the court, the team did lead NCAA D1 men's basketball in free throw shooting accuracy and was among the Southland Conference's leaders in effective field goal percentage, despite enduring a slew of injuries, including four season-ending ones.
One season prior to Dr. Carson Cunningham’s first collegiate coaching gig, Carroll College of Helena, Montana, won only two men’s basketball games. Then Cunningham accepted the Fighting Saints’ head coaching position. Five seasons later, his team was enjoying its third-straight appearance in the NAIA Division I men’s basketball tournament.
Winning is an important line item on the resume of Cunningham, who became the new men’s basketball head coach at the University of the Incarnate Word on March 22, 2018. But, with apologies to Vince Lombardi, winning is not the only thing. Carson and his players seek excellence in everything they do, on and off the basketball court.
In addition to developing and refining basketball skills, especially with regard to shooting, they strive for excellence in the classroom and in the community, and they win recognition for player performance and coaching achievement.
Winning, Studying and Serving
Of course, winning is a major goal. During his five years with Carroll College, Cunningham’s teams recorded a 107-52 (.673) record. He reached the 100-win plateau sooner than any other coach in school history, hitting that mark in just 150 games. His teams enjoyed four consecutive winning seasons, won two Frontier Conference regular season titles, two conference tournament championships, earned three NAIA National Tournament berths, and reached the Final Eight twice.
In 2017-18, Cunningham’s last season at Carroll, he won conference coach of the year, helped guide the Fighting Saints to conference regular-season and tournament championships and to the NAIA DI tournament for the third consecutive year. Also, for the third year in a row, his team led the NAIA DI in field goal and free throw percentage. Three of his players won all-conference awards, including NAIA DI National Player of the Year Ryan Imhoff, who is now a graduate manager on the UIW staff.
One year earlier, in 2016-17, on the way to their second Final Eight berth, the Saints produced an NAIA DI first-team All-American, Zach Taylor. That team also generated two academic All-Americans, Imhoff and Oliver Carr, and earned a team GPA of 3.2, a top three NAIA DI men’s basketball team GPA nationally.
In the preceding year, 2015-16, the team made its first Final Eight appearance. It also compiled a 3.4 overall GPA, again among the top three nationally, and performed over 300 hours of community service.
Scholarship and service are indeed key components in Cunningham’s program.
Carson maintains an abiding interest in his players’ classroom performance, and recruits only those prospects who demonstrate an academic work ethic. When he describes a newly recruited student-athlete, Cunningham frequently comments on the young man’s academic prowess in addition to his basketball skills.
During their first summer under Cunningham’s tutelage, UIW basketball helped build a Habitat for Humanity house for a deserving family. Several months later, they visited The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio, staging a “game day” to entertain the young patients. UIW requires its undergraduates to perform 45 hours of community service prior to graduation. Cunningham’s Cardinals will exceed that quota by a wide margin.
A Boilermaker in the Hoosier State
Cunningham’s success began in that crucible of high school basketball, Indiana, where he earned regional player of the year honors and first team all-state recognition. After graduation, he matriculated at Oregon State University, where he was the starting point guard as a true freshman, earned freshman All-America honors and broke Gary Payton’s OSU freshman scoring record.
Then Cunningham came back home, joining Gene Keady’s Purdue Boilermakers. He became a three-year starter and helped lead Purdue to a pair of Sweet Sixteen appearances and a spot in the Elite Eight. In his three seasons, Cunningham approached the 1000-point scoring mark, registered slightly fewer than 400 assists and had 163 rebounds. For his classroom efforts, he earned academic All-America honors twice, becoming, at that time, one of only three players to do so at Purdue.
According to Randy Roberts, a distinguished professor of history at Purdue, Cunningham saw more than basketball in his future and took advantage of everything the university offered. “This is a guy who came here to play basketball and to get an education,” Roberts said. “Sometimes you see athletes who come here just to play their sport and the education is secondary. But with Carson, education was never secondary. I’ve never known a student to balance academics and athletics the way Carson did.”
That attitude provided Cunningham with a future that included basketball but went beyond the hardwood.
Professional Athlete, Scholar, Author and Coach
After earning his master’s degree in history from Purdue in 2001, Cunningham spent three seasons playing professional basketball. He played for the Continental Basketball Association’s Gary Steelheads and the Rockford Lightning. He also played in Estonia and Australia.
During that time, he continued to pursue graduate studies in history through Purdue. He earned his Ph.D. in American history in 2006 and soon after embarked upon a career as a history professor, taking a position at the nation’s largest Catholic university, DePaul in Chicago. He was an instructor in the history department and then the department of cinema and digital media at DePaul from 2006-13.
Concurrently, for five seasons beginning in 2007-08, he coached the varsity boys’ basketball team at his alma mater, Andrean, a Catholic high school in Merrillville, Indiana, where he guided the 59ers to 43 wins in their final 50 games.
While teaching at DePaul and coaching at Andrean, Cunningham continued to pursue graduate studies. He graduated from DePaul with a Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) in 2013.
He also published books. Cunningham is the author or co-author of five books, three of which are peer reviewed academic monographs published by well-regarded university presses:
American Hoops: U.S. Men’s Olympic Basketball from Berlin to Beijing (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska, 2010)
Randy Roberts and Carson Cunningham, Before the Curse: the Chicago Cubs’ Glory Years,1870-1945 (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois, 2012)
Underbelly Hoops: Adventures in the CBA a.k.a. the Crazy Basketball Association (New York: Diversion, 2013)
21st Century Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (2014)
Fallen Stars: Five American Athletes Who Died in Military Service (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2017)
Marriage and Family
When Cunningham and his wife, Christy, a former volleyball letterwinner at Purdue, arrived in San Antonio, they did so with six children in tow: daughters Caroline, Catie Joy, and Mabeline Lucille, and sons Case, Indiana, and Bennet.
