Hall of Fame
The all-time winningest basketball coach in school history, Cheryl Burnett becomes the first Missouri State University head coach inducted into the Missouri Valley Conference Hall of Fame.
A native of Centralia, Mo., Burnett guided MSU to ten 20-win seasons and 10 NCAA Tournament berths in her 15 seasons as head coach of the Lady Bears.
Missouri State advanced beyond the first round in seven of those 10 NCAA appearances, with a Sweet Sixteen trip in 1993 and trips to the Final Four in 1992 and 2001. In all, she had an overall NCAA slate of 14-10.
The 1991-92 Lady Bears became the lowest-seeded team (eighth) to reach the Final Four, as they defeated Kansas, top-seeded Iowa, UCLA and Ole Miss before facing Western Kentucky in the national semifinals.
The 2000-01 MSU squad were seeded fifth and defeated Toledo, Rutgers, top-seeded Duke and Washington to advance to St. Louis with a national semifinal loss to Purdue.
Her career numbers include 319 overall wins and 201 league triumphs in the Gateway Collegiate Athletic and Missouri Valley Conferences.
Missouri State won or tied for nine conference regular-season titles and claimed six league tournament championships during her tenure.
Burnett’s years saw her MSU teams also among conference and national leaders in academic performance and the Lady Bears were among the nation’s top 10 teams in average attendance 11 years in a row, including leading the nation in average attendance in 1992-93.
A winner of numerous Coach of the Year honors who produced eight Kodak All-America selections by five different players, Burnett had the staggering totals of five league MVP selections, 26 first-team all-conference players and 12 first-team academic all-conference choices.
Three Lady Bears were named CoSIDA (College Sports Information Directors of America) Academic All-Americans, with Lisa Davies selected as the 1997-98 Academic All-American of the Year.
A graduate of the University of Kansas, Burnett recruited and coached four-year starting guard Jackie Stiles -- the all-time leading scorer from 2001-2017 in NCAA women’s basketball history with 3,393 points. Stiles was inducted into the Missouri Valley Conference Athletics Hall of Fame in October of 2006.