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DAVID GRACE

David Grace is currently the head boys basketball coach at Centennial HS in Peoria, Az. He’s a former college basketball coach and AAU head coach, and is retired from the United States Air Force. He was most recently the associate head coach for the Vanderbilt Commodores of the Southeastern Conference.

Grace grew up in Aberdeen, Maryland, while his father Gerald worked long hours as a mechanic and his mother worked as a beautician. He began military life after his mother remarried a serviceman and then moved to several bases over the years. He joined the United States Air Force at age 18 and served our country for 20 years. For 16 years he was a fuel specialist and accountant. Grace traveled between Air Force bases in Turkey, Germany, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Georgia and Virginia before settling down in the Phoenix area for the last few years of his enlistment.

Coaching Career

David began his youth coaching career in 1997 while he was stationed at Langley AFB in Virginia. He began coaching with the Boo Williams AAU programs in Hampton, Virginia. After leaving Langley, Grace was stationed at Luke AFB where he coached AAU and high school teams. Once at  Luke, he began coaching with the Compton Magic. He also co-founded and coached the Arizona Magic AAU program here in Phoenix, as an affiliate of the Compton Magic program. Grace began his high school coaching career at Trevor Browne HS while at Luke AFB. After he retired from the service he moved into coaching full-time. As an assistant varsity coach he helped lead Trevor Browne to a State Final Four and the team finished ranked in the top 40 in the nation by the Sporting News. He became head coach at South Mountain HS for the 2004–05 season and won the 2005-06 Division 5A-2 State Championship with a record of 29–4, and was the Arizona Varsity (Rivals.com) and Arizona Informant Coach of the Year.

College Coaching

Grace began his college coaching career at California State University, Sacramento in 2006 as an assistant coach to head coach Jerome Jenkins, after receiving a recommendation from University of Arizona coach Lute Olson.

After one year in Sacramento, Grace became an assistant coach at the University of San Francisco in 2007-08 under head coach Jessie Evans, who had been an assistant coach under Lute Olson on his 1996-97 Arizona Wildcats men’s basketball National Championship team.

Grace was hired as an assistant coach at Oregon St. in 2008-09 by head coach Craig Robinson, the older brother of former First Lady Michelle Obama, and served there through the 2012–13 season.

After is time at Oregon St., Grace moved down the coast to take a position with UCLA. In 2016 David was ranked #7 nationally and #1 in the West by ESPN for the best recruiters based on feedback from a D1 coaching peer survey done by ESPN. In March of 2018 long time Tucson sports columnist Greg Hansen, in referring to rejuvenating the Arizona Wildcats basketball program, after their first round NCAA exit, asked in his column “Is (Sean) Miller willing to pursue someone like UCLA’s David Grace, who, in my opinion, is the league’s most feared recruiter and top assistant coach?”

Grace completed 11 years of coaching in the Pac-12 Conference where he was one of the longest tenured coaches. Until 2018, he was an assistant coach at UCLA under head coach Steve Alford, his fifth season with the Bruins who had 117 wins during his time there. Three of Grace’s first four seasons at UCLA ended with Sweet 16 appearances in the NCAA Tournament.

ESPN ranked the 2018 Bruin recruiting class #2 in the nation behind only Duke. “With this current class, it’s fairly clear that UCLA has re-established itself as one of the premier recruiting schools in the country. Given the Bruins’ history, that shouldn’t be news — but they have now landed nine ESPN 100 prospects in the last two recruiting classes, on the heels of two five-star prospects and three one-and-done prospects from the 2016 class.”

“David has been tremendous,” Alford said. “I’ve been fortunate in my 23 years to not just hire people who understand basketball but who are also really good people, and that’s what David is. He’s a great guy and he’s a tireless worker. He’s always on the phone calling or texting recruits.”

The 2016–17 UCLA Bruins men’s basketball team included recruits Lonzo Ball (the Naismith National Prep Player of the Year), T. J. Leaf, and Ike Anigbogu, and was rated the fifth best recruiting class in the nation by ESPN. Grace had recruited Ball prior to Alford arriving at UCLA. “They went up the court about four times, then stopped,” Grace recalled. “I walked over to his head coach and said [Lonzo] has a scholarship offer from UCLA. I knew he was that good.” After his freshman season with the Bruins, Ball was voted consensus first team All-American (USBWA, NABC, and Sporting News) and won the Wayman Tisdale Award as the top freshman in America. T. J. Leaf led UCLA in scoring and was voted First Team All-Pac-12 Conference.

Ball and Leaf both declared for the NBA draft after the conclusion of the 2016-17 season and were drafted in the first round along with Ike Anigbogu in the second round.

After Grace left UCLA, he was hired by Wyking Jones to be an assistant coach at the University of California in April 2018. On October 1, 2018 Grace landed Joel Brown as a Cal commit, the #4 ranked player in Canada (from Toronto), and the #12 ranked PG in the class of 2019 according to 247Sports.

In 2019, David was hired by Jerry Stackhouse to be the associate head coach for the Vanderbilt Commodores. Stackhouse, an 18 year NBA veteran, was signed to a six year deal after serving as an assistant coach with the Memphis Grizzlies and Toronto Raptors and he also had been the NBA G League Coach of the Year for the Raptors 905. After only one season on the recruiting circuit Grace was named by his fellow college coaches as the number one recruiter in the Southeast after having been ranked number one on the West Coast for several years while he was at UCLA. On February 5, 2020 Vanderbilt broke its record setting SEC consecutive game losing streak (26) that begun the previous season under the old head coach, by beating 18th ranked LSU 99-90 in Nashville. In April 2020 Sports illustrated reported that Grace was one of the top 50 most impactful coaches in the country at the high D1 level joining 10 other SEC assistant coaches.

Personal

Grace grew up in Aberdeen, he played basketball and baseball at Aberdeen High School (Maryland). He is of Native American descent (Eastern Cherokee) and has worked with the Nike N7 program for several years to honor Native Americans. He earned a bachelor’s of science degree in management (human resources) from Park University, and degrees in logistics and social services from the Air Force. He and his wife, Crystal, have six grown children: Troy, Terrell, Tierra, David II, Aubrey, and Andre, as well as godson Mekai Roquemore.