Ground-breaking Former Alcorn State Coach Whitney Dies

LORMAN, Miss. ― Former Alcorn State basketball coach Davey Whitney has died. He was 85.

The school and the Southwestern Athletic Conference confirmed Whitney’s death Sunday. No cause of death was given.

Whitney spent nearly three decades at Alcorn State over two stints from 1969 to ’89 and again from 1996 to 2003.

Whitney won 12 SWAC championships and led the Braves to a win over South Alabama in the first round of the 1980 NCAA Tournament, which was the first tournament win for a historically Black university. Alcorn State also beat Mississippi State in the 1979 National Invitation Tournament.

Whitney was induced into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010. He was inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in 1991.