Chris Carr will enter his third year on the Drury basketball coaching staff in 2023-24 as he joined the staff in head coach Chris Foster’s first season.
Carr played six seasons in the National Basketball Association and played professionally for two years overseas. He was a second round draft pick of the Phoenix Suns in 1995 and saw time with the Suns, Timberwolves, Nets, Warriors, Bulls, and Celtics. While playing for Minnesota in 1997, he was the NBA Slam Dunk Contest runner-up as Kobe Bryant won the event that year in Cleveland, Ohio.
Carr joined the Panthers from Kansas State, where he served as an assistant coach for the Wildcats women's basketball team for five years. He oversaw academics, skill development, player evaluation of recruits, and coordinated game analytics and spent time as the program’s Director of Student-Athlete Devlopment as well as an assistant coach under head coach Jeff Mittie. During Carr's five years at K-State, the Wildcats went 62-37, reached the NCAA Tournament in 2016-17, and advanced to the quarterfinals of the WNIT in 2017-18.
He played collegiately at Southern Illinois and was the Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year in 1995, in addition to being named the MVP of the conference tournament in the same season. Carr finished his collegiate career with 1,251 career points, helped SIU to three NCAA Tournament appearances, and was inducted into the Saluki Hall of Fame in 2006.
Before his stint at Kansas State, Carr was the women's varsity basketball coach at Eden Prairie High School in Minnesota from 2010-15, where he posted a record of 106-34, was the 4A state runner-up in 2011, had a third-place finish in 2014, and had 10 players advance to the collegiate level including three NCAA-I players. Carr also served as a coach and was the founder and president of 43 Hoops, LLC, an elite AAU program based in Hopkins, Minnesota, that oversaw 20 boys and girls AAU teams.
Originally from Ironton, Missouri, Carr is from the same hometown as head coach Chris Foster. He and his wife, Tanya, have five children, Tayler, Tamika, Chrissy, Nadja, and Cameron. His daughter Chrissy finished her collegiate career in 2022-23 at Arkansas, while his son Cameron attended Link Academy in Branson during the last two years and will play for Tennessee in 2023-24.
