Men's Basketball
Matheny, Matt
Matt Matheny
- Title:
- Associate Head Coach
- Email:
- mamatheny@davidson.edu
- Phone:
- 2383
After one of Davidson’s 29 victories in a championship season last year, coach Bob McKillop was analyzing the game on his post-game radio show when he said, “I want to emphasize how much Coach Matheny contributed to our winning tonight. His excellent scouting and the way he communicated the information to our players were invaluable.”
It’s not an uncommon sentiment around Davidson over the last 15 years.
A 1992 Davidson graduate and former Wildcat football and basketball captain, Matheny has been an assistant coach on McKillop’s staff since Aug. 1, 1993. Davidson has won 283 games during their stint together on the bench, averaged 19 wins a season, won five SoCon tournament championships and played in four NCAA tournaments.
Now the program’s associate head coach, Matheny has been involved in more victories than any assistant coach in Davidson’s history. He’s been by McKillop’s side as the Wildcats have won Southern Conference division championships in nine of the last 13 years, and now are considered the team to beat from year to year.
“Coach Matheny is a symbol of what our program tries to represent,” Coach McKillop says. “He’s smart, hard working and team oriented. And, he wears Davidson on his heart.”
Matheny loves preparing for games: the scouting of the opponent, drafting a plan for the players, and then relaying that plan to the team in video sessions and on the court. He excels in all those areas. His rapport with the players is so strong that a visitor could hear a pin drop when he imparts scouting information to them in pre-game meetings.
Although he now excels in his chosen profession, coaching was not always Matheny’s goal. He grew up in Statesville about 20 miles from the Davidson campus. He was a star student and football, basketball and tennis standout at North Iredell High School. He had intentions of going to Wake Forest or Duke, but those plans changed when Davidson recruited him as a football player. He had never seen the Davidson campus until he visited as a high school senior, liked it, and enrolled as a student-athlete. He was a quarterback and wide receiver on the football team, a point guard on the basketball team.
After graduation in the spring of 1993, Matheny went to Germany to play a summer of American football. McKillop contacted him there and offered him a job as an assistant coach on the Davidson staff. Matheny accepted and joined Steve Shurina and Larry Garloch on McKillop’s staff.
The detour in career plans even surprised Matheny. He graduated from Davidson with the full intentions of going to law school. But even though he was recruited to Davidson to play football, and joined the basketball team as a walk-on, basketball was always his first love. If he were going to coach, he knew basketball would be his sport. But even when he joined the coaching staff, he thought the job would be a stopover between coaching and law school.
“The more I coached, the more I grew to love it,” Matheny says. “A coach can play an influential role in the life of a college athlete.”
Matheny’s goal is to become a head coach of his own program. McKillop has prepared him well, allowing Matheny to become immersed in every single area of college coaching. He is the point man for Davidson’s scheduling, works extensively with recruiting, excels at public relations, and is superb as an on-the-court teacher.
“Coach McKillop has allowed me to work in all areas,” Matheny says, “and I’ve learned so much from him, in the way he has built a leading program with high integrity.”
A highly-competitive person, Matheny says losing is tougher on him now than it was earlier in his coaching career, because he has so much invested now. “When we lose, it makes me want to work harder,” he says. “That’s another thing I learned from Coach McKillop.”
Matheny and the former Jennifer Collins were married in June 2001. They are parents of Brock, born in April 2004, who is now a popular figure at Davidson’s home games. Jennifer is a licensed Real Estate Broker. The Matheny family lives in Davidson and is expecting their second child this Spring.
It’s not an uncommon sentiment around Davidson over the last 15 years.
A 1992 Davidson graduate and former Wildcat football and basketball captain, Matheny has been an assistant coach on McKillop’s staff since Aug. 1, 1993. Davidson has won 283 games during their stint together on the bench, averaged 19 wins a season, won five SoCon tournament championships and played in four NCAA tournaments.
Now the program’s associate head coach, Matheny has been involved in more victories than any assistant coach in Davidson’s history. He’s been by McKillop’s side as the Wildcats have won Southern Conference division championships in nine of the last 13 years, and now are considered the team to beat from year to year.
“Coach Matheny is a symbol of what our program tries to represent,” Coach McKillop says. “He’s smart, hard working and team oriented. And, he wears Davidson on his heart.”
Matheny loves preparing for games: the scouting of the opponent, drafting a plan for the players, and then relaying that plan to the team in video sessions and on the court. He excels in all those areas. His rapport with the players is so strong that a visitor could hear a pin drop when he imparts scouting information to them in pre-game meetings.
Although he now excels in his chosen profession, coaching was not always Matheny’s goal. He grew up in Statesville about 20 miles from the Davidson campus. He was a star student and football, basketball and tennis standout at North Iredell High School. He had intentions of going to Wake Forest or Duke, but those plans changed when Davidson recruited him as a football player. He had never seen the Davidson campus until he visited as a high school senior, liked it, and enrolled as a student-athlete. He was a quarterback and wide receiver on the football team, a point guard on the basketball team.
After graduation in the spring of 1993, Matheny went to Germany to play a summer of American football. McKillop contacted him there and offered him a job as an assistant coach on the Davidson staff. Matheny accepted and joined Steve Shurina and Larry Garloch on McKillop’s staff.
The detour in career plans even surprised Matheny. He graduated from Davidson with the full intentions of going to law school. But even though he was recruited to Davidson to play football, and joined the basketball team as a walk-on, basketball was always his first love. If he were going to coach, he knew basketball would be his sport. But even when he joined the coaching staff, he thought the job would be a stopover between coaching and law school.
“The more I coached, the more I grew to love it,” Matheny says. “A coach can play an influential role in the life of a college athlete.”
Matheny’s goal is to become a head coach of his own program. McKillop has prepared him well, allowing Matheny to become immersed in every single area of college coaching. He is the point man for Davidson’s scheduling, works extensively with recruiting, excels at public relations, and is superb as an on-the-court teacher.
“Coach McKillop has allowed me to work in all areas,” Matheny says, “and I’ve learned so much from him, in the way he has built a leading program with high integrity.”
A highly-competitive person, Matheny says losing is tougher on him now than it was earlier in his coaching career, because he has so much invested now. “When we lose, it makes me want to work harder,” he says. “That’s another thing I learned from Coach McKillop.”
Matheny and the former Jennifer Collins were married in June 2001. They are parents of Brock, born in April 2004, who is now a popular figure at Davidson’s home games. Jennifer is a licensed Real Estate Broker. The Matheny family lives in Davidson and is expecting their second child this Spring.
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