Women's Basketball
Harris, Johnnie
Johnnie Harris
- Title:
- Associate Head Coach
- Phone:
- 325-0198
Follow Johnnie Harris On Twitter
2018 WBCA Assistant Coach of the Year
When Vic Schaefer started assembling what he labels his “A” team, the first crucial piece of that squad was Johnnie Harris, who enters her eighth season in Starkville as the program’s associate head coach in 2019-20.
Harris’ reputation as one of the nation’s top recruiters showed as she has helped ink some of the top signing classes in program history early on in Starkville, including the 2013 class that wrapped its four seasons with 111 wins and the 2014 class that tallied a school-record 126 victories, four-straight NCAA Tournaments, an SEC title and back-to-back National Finalist finishes.
This past year, the Bulldogs landed the top signing class in program history, inking the No. 6 group in the nation by ESPN. Rickea Jackson, the fifth-ranked player in the country and State’s first McDonald’s All-American signee, highlighted the group.
Harris’ pupils in the post have been some of the program’s best, led by Teaira McCowan who she mentored during record-setting senior and junior campaigns in 2017-19. The 2019 SEC Player of the Year and consensus first-team All-American finished her career as Mississippi State’s leader in rebounds (1,502) and field-goal percentage (.597), while ranking second in blocks (271) and fourth in points (1,942) and field goals made (770).
McCowan, who was the 2019 Gillom Trophy winner as Mississippi’s top women’s college basketball player, is the all-time leading rebounder in NCAA Tournament history with 240 career boards. Her 544 rebounds as a junior in 2017-18 is the most ever by an SEC player in a single season and ranks second in NCAA history.
Defensively, McCowan was named the Defensive National Player of the Year by WBCA (2018-19) and Naismith (2017-18) and was a two-time SEC Defensive Player of the Year. In 2017-18, she was named to the All-Final Four Team and Co-MVP of the Kansas City Regional after pulling down an NCAA Tournament-record 109 rebounds and 18.2 average.
McCowan was named to the Oklahoma City All-Region squad after leading MSU to the 2017 Final Four with wins against Washington and Baylor. Before State’s historic NCAA Tournament showing, she earned the program’s first SEC Sixth Woman of the Year Award after helping the Bulldogs to a second-place league finish with a school-record 13 league wins.
The development McCowan showed during Mississippi State’s run to a second-straight national title game caught the attention of the coaching community, as she was tabbed the WBCA Assistant Coach of the Year for the 2017-18 season.
After transferring to State in 2018-19, Harris helped forward Anriel Howard combine with McCowan as one of the best front courts in the country. In her lone season with the Bulldogs, Howard earned first-team All-SEC recognition by the AP and league coaches after averaging 16.4 points and 8.4 rebounds per game. Both McCowan (No. 3, Indiana Fever) and Howard (No. 24, Seattle Storm) were selected in the 2019 WNBA Daft.
Another Harris product, Chinwe Okorie, was an integral part of the Bulldogs’ runs to the Final Four and 2016 Sweet 16 and finished her MSU career sixth in program annals in field goal percentage, shooting 52.1 percent over 109 games. She raised her scoring average and field goal percentage each season of her three-year career, knocking down career bests with 7.5 ppg on 56.4 percent shooting as a senior.
Another of Harris’ pupils, Martha Alwal, helped the Bulldogs make history in 2014-15 with their first NCAA Tournament berth since 2010.
Under her guidance, Alwal developed into one of the nation’s top centers, earning First Team All-SEC honors SEC Co-Defensive Player of the Year honors as a junior. She also claimed a pair of second team honors, three-straight SEC All-Defensive Team accolades and won the Gillom Trophy. Three seasons working with Harris helped Alwal become the second player in SEC history to lead the league in blocks four-straight years and just the third to claim 1,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 300 blocks for her career.
In addition to her work with the post players, Harris also serves as State’s special teams coach, coordinating the in-bounds, sideline and free throw plays, something she specialized in working alongside Schaefer for five seasons on the Texas A&M bench.
Schaefer knew Harris was instrumental to his Bulldog staff after seeing her help guide Texas A&M to four Sweet 16 appearances in her five seasons, including the program’s first national championship in 2010-11.
During her tenure with the Aggies, Harris helped sign and mentor junior college All-Americans Danielle Adams and Tanisha Smith. Adams earned MVP of the 2011 Final Four before going on to be drafted 20thby the San Antonio Silver Stars of the WNBA. Adams was tabbed to the league’s all-star game in her inaugural season.
With Harris’ guidance, Smith earned Big 12 Newcomer of the Year and conference all-tournament honors in 2009. The Seattle Storm selected Smith with the 22nd pick in the 2010 WNBA Draft.
Not only was it her on-court coaching ability that put her atop Schaefer’s list of coaches, but it was her reputation as one of the nation’s premier recruiters. Harris’ recruiting ability was crucial in building the Aggies into an annual championship contender, as she helped Texas A&M in signing classes that have annually rated in the top 20 nationally.
She helped the Aggies land the nation’s No. 2 class in her final season in College Station. That class included a pair of McDonald’s All-Americans in Jordan Jones and Courtney Williams. TAMU’s 2010 class, which included McDonald’s All-American and the nation’s top post player, Karla Gilbert, rated third nationally. The two years prior she helped notch the nation’s fifth- and sixth-rated classes.
Harris played a key role in signing the major players in Texas A&M’s national championship team that claimed a school-best 33 victories.
Prior to her stop in College Station, Harris spent three seasons at Arkansas, helping land some of the Lady Razorbacks’ top recruiting classes. She signed Laura Ervin, a junior college All-American who went on to garner Second Team All-SEC accolades, as well as Freshman All-SEC selection Donica Cosby.
In 2007, she inked Gatorade players of the year Whitney Zachariason (Arkansas) and Morgan Boyd (Kansas) as Arkansas finished with one of the nation’s top-40 classes. Harris also recruited one of the top five point guards in the nation in Shanita Arnold.
Harris has had the opportunity to learn from some of the game’s top coaches, including Hall of Famer Kay Yow at N.C. State. She joined the program in the 2003-04 season and immediately helped the squad to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in two years.
Harris and her fellow coaches helped the Wolfpack sign JUCO player of the year Tiffany Stansbury, who went on to play with the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks and Minnesota Lynx.
Her first recruiting class in Raleigh was rated as one of the best in the nation. She also garnered a commitment from Gillian Goring, the nation’s No. 1 post player who went on to play for the Washington Mystics.
Prior to jumping to the Division I level, Harris made her mark on the junior college level as an assistant coach at Arkansas-Fort Smith, where she helped bring in key players who led the school to the NJCAA Final Four in 2004. In two seasons coaching under the legendary Louis Whorton, she inked the nation’s No. 1 class and helped the Lady Lions to a 34-8 record. UAFS’s 2002-03 team went 26-2 and won a share of the Bi-State Conference championship.
The Arkansas-Fort Smith position kept the Pine Bluff native in her home state after she started her coaching career as a graduate assistant at Arkansas-Little Rock. Her hard work at UALR earned her a promotion to full-time assistant in 2000.
Harris, a 2014 inductee in the Watson’s Chapel High School Hall of Fame, also coached AAU hoops with the Arkansas Kamikaze. She began her playing career at Arkansas-Pine Bluff before transferring to Arkansas Baptist for her final two seasons.
She is the mother of two children, Marcus and Kiera, and the legal guardian of Lily. She also has a grandchildren named Samarah and Kaiden.
PERSONAL
Hometown: Pine Bluff, Ark.
Alma Mater: Arkansas Baptist (1996)
Children: Son, Marcus and Daughter, Kiera
Grandchildren: Samarah and Kaiden
COACHING HISTORY
2012-: Mississippi State University (7 seasons - Associate Head Coach)
2007-12: Texas A&M University (5 seasons - Assistant Coach)
2004-07: University of Arkansas (3 seasons - Assistant Coach)
2003-04: North Carolina State University (1 season - Assistant Coach)
2001-03: University of Arkansas-Fort Smith (2 seasons - Assistant Coach)
2000-01: University of Arkansas-Little Rock (1 season - Assistant Coach)
1998-00: University of Arkansas-Little Rock (2 seasons - Graduate Assistant Coach)
PLAYING EXPERIENCE
1987-89: Arkansas Baptist College
1984-86: University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff
2018 WBCA Assistant Coach of the Year
When Vic Schaefer started assembling what he labels his “A” team, the first crucial piece of that squad was Johnnie Harris, who enters her eighth season in Starkville as the program’s associate head coach in 2019-20.
Harris’ reputation as one of the nation’s top recruiters showed as she has helped ink some of the top signing classes in program history early on in Starkville, including the 2013 class that wrapped its four seasons with 111 wins and the 2014 class that tallied a school-record 126 victories, four-straight NCAA Tournaments, an SEC title and back-to-back National Finalist finishes.
This past year, the Bulldogs landed the top signing class in program history, inking the No. 6 group in the nation by ESPN. Rickea Jackson, the fifth-ranked player in the country and State’s first McDonald’s All-American signee, highlighted the group.
Harris’ pupils in the post have been some of the program’s best, led by Teaira McCowan who she mentored during record-setting senior and junior campaigns in 2017-19. The 2019 SEC Player of the Year and consensus first-team All-American finished her career as Mississippi State’s leader in rebounds (1,502) and field-goal percentage (.597), while ranking second in blocks (271) and fourth in points (1,942) and field goals made (770).
McCowan, who was the 2019 Gillom Trophy winner as Mississippi’s top women’s college basketball player, is the all-time leading rebounder in NCAA Tournament history with 240 career boards. Her 544 rebounds as a junior in 2017-18 is the most ever by an SEC player in a single season and ranks second in NCAA history.
Defensively, McCowan was named the Defensive National Player of the Year by WBCA (2018-19) and Naismith (2017-18) and was a two-time SEC Defensive Player of the Year. In 2017-18, she was named to the All-Final Four Team and Co-MVP of the Kansas City Regional after pulling down an NCAA Tournament-record 109 rebounds and 18.2 average.
McCowan was named to the Oklahoma City All-Region squad after leading MSU to the 2017 Final Four with wins against Washington and Baylor. Before State’s historic NCAA Tournament showing, she earned the program’s first SEC Sixth Woman of the Year Award after helping the Bulldogs to a second-place league finish with a school-record 13 league wins.
The development McCowan showed during Mississippi State’s run to a second-straight national title game caught the attention of the coaching community, as she was tabbed the WBCA Assistant Coach of the Year for the 2017-18 season.
After transferring to State in 2018-19, Harris helped forward Anriel Howard combine with McCowan as one of the best front courts in the country. In her lone season with the Bulldogs, Howard earned first-team All-SEC recognition by the AP and league coaches after averaging 16.4 points and 8.4 rebounds per game. Both McCowan (No. 3, Indiana Fever) and Howard (No. 24, Seattle Storm) were selected in the 2019 WNBA Daft.
Another Harris product, Chinwe Okorie, was an integral part of the Bulldogs’ runs to the Final Four and 2016 Sweet 16 and finished her MSU career sixth in program annals in field goal percentage, shooting 52.1 percent over 109 games. She raised her scoring average and field goal percentage each season of her three-year career, knocking down career bests with 7.5 ppg on 56.4 percent shooting as a senior.
Another of Harris’ pupils, Martha Alwal, helped the Bulldogs make history in 2014-15 with their first NCAA Tournament berth since 2010.
Under her guidance, Alwal developed into one of the nation’s top centers, earning First Team All-SEC honors SEC Co-Defensive Player of the Year honors as a junior. She also claimed a pair of second team honors, three-straight SEC All-Defensive Team accolades and won the Gillom Trophy. Three seasons working with Harris helped Alwal become the second player in SEC history to lead the league in blocks four-straight years and just the third to claim 1,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 300 blocks for her career.
In addition to her work with the post players, Harris also serves as State’s special teams coach, coordinating the in-bounds, sideline and free throw plays, something she specialized in working alongside Schaefer for five seasons on the Texas A&M bench.
Schaefer knew Harris was instrumental to his Bulldog staff after seeing her help guide Texas A&M to four Sweet 16 appearances in her five seasons, including the program’s first national championship in 2010-11.
During her tenure with the Aggies, Harris helped sign and mentor junior college All-Americans Danielle Adams and Tanisha Smith. Adams earned MVP of the 2011 Final Four before going on to be drafted 20thby the San Antonio Silver Stars of the WNBA. Adams was tabbed to the league’s all-star game in her inaugural season.
With Harris’ guidance, Smith earned Big 12 Newcomer of the Year and conference all-tournament honors in 2009. The Seattle Storm selected Smith with the 22nd pick in the 2010 WNBA Draft.
Not only was it her on-court coaching ability that put her atop Schaefer’s list of coaches, but it was her reputation as one of the nation’s premier recruiters. Harris’ recruiting ability was crucial in building the Aggies into an annual championship contender, as she helped Texas A&M in signing classes that have annually rated in the top 20 nationally.
She helped the Aggies land the nation’s No. 2 class in her final season in College Station. That class included a pair of McDonald’s All-Americans in Jordan Jones and Courtney Williams. TAMU’s 2010 class, which included McDonald’s All-American and the nation’s top post player, Karla Gilbert, rated third nationally. The two years prior she helped notch the nation’s fifth- and sixth-rated classes.
Harris played a key role in signing the major players in Texas A&M’s national championship team that claimed a school-best 33 victories.
Prior to her stop in College Station, Harris spent three seasons at Arkansas, helping land some of the Lady Razorbacks’ top recruiting classes. She signed Laura Ervin, a junior college All-American who went on to garner Second Team All-SEC accolades, as well as Freshman All-SEC selection Donica Cosby.
In 2007, she inked Gatorade players of the year Whitney Zachariason (Arkansas) and Morgan Boyd (Kansas) as Arkansas finished with one of the nation’s top-40 classes. Harris also recruited one of the top five point guards in the nation in Shanita Arnold.
Harris has had the opportunity to learn from some of the game’s top coaches, including Hall of Famer Kay Yow at N.C. State. She joined the program in the 2003-04 season and immediately helped the squad to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in two years.
Harris and her fellow coaches helped the Wolfpack sign JUCO player of the year Tiffany Stansbury, who went on to play with the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks and Minnesota Lynx.
Her first recruiting class in Raleigh was rated as one of the best in the nation. She also garnered a commitment from Gillian Goring, the nation’s No. 1 post player who went on to play for the Washington Mystics.
Prior to jumping to the Division I level, Harris made her mark on the junior college level as an assistant coach at Arkansas-Fort Smith, where she helped bring in key players who led the school to the NJCAA Final Four in 2004. In two seasons coaching under the legendary Louis Whorton, she inked the nation’s No. 1 class and helped the Lady Lions to a 34-8 record. UAFS’s 2002-03 team went 26-2 and won a share of the Bi-State Conference championship.
The Arkansas-Fort Smith position kept the Pine Bluff native in her home state after she started her coaching career as a graduate assistant at Arkansas-Little Rock. Her hard work at UALR earned her a promotion to full-time assistant in 2000.
Harris, a 2014 inductee in the Watson’s Chapel High School Hall of Fame, also coached AAU hoops with the Arkansas Kamikaze. She began her playing career at Arkansas-Pine Bluff before transferring to Arkansas Baptist for her final two seasons.
She is the mother of two children, Marcus and Kiera, and the legal guardian of Lily. She also has a grandchildren named Samarah and Kaiden.
PERSONAL
Hometown: Pine Bluff, Ark.
Alma Mater: Arkansas Baptist (1996)
Children: Son, Marcus and Daughter, Kiera
Grandchildren: Samarah and Kaiden
COACHING HISTORY
2012-: Mississippi State University (7 seasons - Associate Head Coach)
2007-12: Texas A&M University (5 seasons - Assistant Coach)
2004-07: University of Arkansas (3 seasons - Assistant Coach)
2003-04: North Carolina State University (1 season - Assistant Coach)
2001-03: University of Arkansas-Fort Smith (2 seasons - Assistant Coach)
2000-01: University of Arkansas-Little Rock (1 season - Assistant Coach)
1998-00: University of Arkansas-Little Rock (2 seasons - Graduate Assistant Coach)
PLAYING EXPERIENCE
1987-89: Arkansas Baptist College
1984-86: University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff
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