While playing point guard for Lonoke’s Jackrabbits, Bradley Spencer considered Central Arkansas Christian to be a big rival.
Now, at 25, Spencer is the Mustangs’ new head coach.
After spending last year as an assistant, the 2008 Lonoke graduate was elevated to the top position at the end of the season.
“My buddies back home, they still congratulate me for getting the job, but they say, ‘Man, you’re on the other side now,’” Spencer said, chuckling. “I’m a Mustang, but at least it’s still purple.”
Spencer was a standout player at Lonoke and Harding, and he stayed involved with the game while spending two years in the corporate world, using his degree in management information systems at Acxiom while working camps, officiating games and working with Conway Boys and Girls Club teams on the side.
In the spring of 2015, his friend Matt Hall, another former Harding player, called and wanted Spencer to join him at Mustang Mountain as his assistant coach.
“I always knew I wanted to go back and coach; I just didn’t know when,” said Spencer who, after the phone call, went on to pass the required Praxis test and be accepted into Southern Arkansas University’s online Master of Arts in Teaching program.
He started at Mustang Mountain on June 1, 2015 — a couple of weeks before Hall got an unexpected opportunity to go to Russellville. With the late opening, CAC’s girls coach, Steve Quattlebaum, took the reins of both programs for last season, and Spencer served as assistant for the boys team.
“Even with Matt, I wanted to come in and bring this ball of energy, the same way I played, bring a passion for the game,” Spencer said. “I just wanted to work my tail off and do whatever I needed to do.
“With Coach Quattlebaum, the mindset I used was, ‘Don’t panic; you’re here for a reason; keep doing your job and something will work out.”
And it did.
Spencer said he was blessed to be able to work under Quattlebaum, one of the state’s most successful girls coaches who also took the Mustangs to the state tournament several years during a previous double assignment.
“I always knew of him, but I had never spoken to him before,” Spencer said. “But it was like we’d been coaching together for years. Being on the sideline with him, he taught me a lot. I decided I was just going to work hard, do what he asks me to do and just pray and hope at the end there would be a huge benefit for it.”
He said Quattlebaum asked him early if he wanted to one day be a head coach.
“I said, ‘Yes, sir,’ and he said, ‘I’ll help prepare you to be one,’” Spencer remembered. “From that day on, I started really listening to him and watching everything he did, just trying to add more to my tool bag for the future.”
Quattlebaum said that although the double duty was difficult, he would not have given up the boys after last season if he didn’t think Spencer was ready.
“I wouldn’t want to leave the kids in a bad way, but I feel totally confident — with the way he worked throughout the year — that he’s going to do a great job,” Quattlebaum said. “I think he’s going to do great things.”
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With the CAC football team reaching the Class 4A state quarterfinals last fall, the basketball Mustangs got off to a slow start but showed improvement all year, finishing 10-16 after a 1-12 start.
The turnaround began, ironically, at the Gina Cox Center in January.
“I was most nervous when we had to go on the road to play Lonoke,” Spencer said. “That was a very, very emotional game, the whole day, but it was great. We ended up with the win (60-59). I probably put a lot more in the pre-game speech and during timeouts.
“It was definitely some added passion there. That was a good booster for us.”
During the game, Spencer was reunited with Dean Campbell, the Lonoke head coach who was an assistant under Wes Swift during Spencer’s Jackrabbit career.
“We get there early and I see him and we’re just goofing off with each other — ‘Don’t shake my hand; you’re the enemy now,’” Spencer remembered, chuckling “But everything’s good; even during the game we’d look at each other and smile. It’s different seeing each other on opposing sides, but win or lose, being able to have that relationship is really important.”
Campbell said he thought CAC had picked a good one.
“Bradley was the glue that kept everyone together,” he said. “He did all the little things that nobody else wanted to do. He also was the type of player who could do a lot of things to help your team play better and win.
“I think because of his understanding of the game and how important it is to have guys that play their role, he will be a really good coach.”
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Spencer, the younger son of Danita Spencer, was born in Lonoke and started playing basketball in an elementary classroom league. Early, he said, he was more of a baseball player, but by the time he was a freshman, he had started focusing on basketball, playing for Swift as a Jackrabbit as well as for Swift’s Wings AAU team.
“Coach Swift taught us how to play hard, and that’s something that doesn’t take much talent, just to play with guts and defend,” Spencer said. “I bought into that philosophy. He took me to several camps, and the one I appreciate the most was point guard college, where I learned a lot about how to be a leader on the floor as well as off. It came natural to me.”
Swift, now at Jonesboro, remains a big Spencer fan.
“I think CAC got an absolute winner,” he said. “As coaches, we’re always trying to teach, and we put them in 2-on-2, 3-on-3,4-on-4 situations, and I guarantee you, Bradley’s team — it didn’t matter the caliber team I put him with. A lot of times I’d put him with an inferior team, but his team would win 95 percent of the games.
“He’s great at the intangibles, is a great teammate, makes people better on the court, gets people to believe in themselves. I fully expect him to do the same thing as a coach. He’s going to be very demanding, but the kids will love him. He will make them see things beyond their boundaries.”
Spencer’s older brother, Brentley, was a Jackrabbit senior during his sophomore season.
“We got to play a year together,” Spencer said. “I was his back-up point guard. We very seldom got to play at the same time, but when we did, it was pretty good to say I was on the floor with my brother.”
During his senior year, the Jackrabbits won the 2008 state championship, and Spencer was named MVP of the title game.
From there Spencer went to Harding to play for Jeff Morgan.
“He was at several (Lonoke) games, and after going to an actual Bisons game (at the rowdy Rhodes Field House), I was sold,” he said. “The crowd was amazing; the culture was amazing. I fit in well there, and coming from a winning program and going to a winning program was the best I could ever get.”
At Harding, he played on two NCAA Division II national tournament teams, including his senior season, when the Bisons won the Great American Conference and beat Central Missouri in the opening round of the national tournament before falling to Minnesota-Mankato in the semifinals.
For his career, he averaged 9.2 points and 4.8 rebounds and still ranks among Harding’s all-time leaders in defensive rebounds (seventh with 414), offensive rebounds (eighth with 121) and steals (ninth with 143).
At Harding, he met Makala McNair, a standout player at Alpena who transferred from Arkansas State after a year. They met during his freshman year, dated throughout their time in Searcy and married in 2013. They have a 10-month-old daughter, Olivia.
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Spencer hadn’t originally planned to coach.
“I’m big into technology, and I’d always wanted to get out in the corporate world, preferably somewhere dealing with databases and programming,” he said. “But (after two years at Acxiom), I was getting ready to move on and do something else.
“I needed to do something where I felt like I was valued and giving back. I just felt like working there wasn’t my calling, and I wanted to give back.”
He’s found that calling now at CAC, where he teaches computer programming and web design.
“The teaching is something I enjoy along with coaching basketball,” he said. “It was like the perfect fit.”
Shortly after CAC’s season ended in February, Dr. Carter Lambert, the school president, visited Spencer’s office about the position.
“After speaking to my family about it, I wanted to be at CAC even if it was junior high or head coach, but the opportunity hit so soon, I said, ‘I can’t let this pass by,’” Spencer said. “‘It’s something I need to take hold of right now while it’s in front of me.’
“I told (Lambert), ‘Hey, I’m at your service. Whatever you need me to do for this program, I’m here to do it.’ I’m very thrilled about it. A 25-year-old head coach — that’s a pretty good opportunity for me.”
In a press release announcing the hiring, Lambert praised the young coach.
“Bradley exceeded our expectations this year and exhibited exceptional basketball knowledge and experience as well as the ability to communicate with his players,” he said. “What convinced us that he was the person to lead the boys basketball program is the maturity and Christian spirit he displayed.
“The feedback we received regarding his work was overwhelmingly positive.”
Spencer will finish his MAT degree this summer.
Swift said that CAC’s hire wreaked a bit of havoc on his own plans.
“My whole plan was to hire him and bring him up here to work with me, but CAC got him first,” he said, chuckling.
Campbell called it “a little weird” to face a former player as an opposing coach.
“It just reminds you that you’re getting older,” he said. “It’s flattering to have former players go into coaching. It makes you feel good about the time you have put into these young men over the years.”
And now Spencer will be doing the same for the next generation — at Mustang Mountain.
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