Simply stated, Coach Roy Skinner put Vanderbilt basketball on the map and is more responsible than anyone else for the high expectations Commodore fans have for their team. As head coach for sixteen seasons from 1959 to 1976, he accumulated a 278-135 record that makes him the winningest Vanderbilt coach of all time. A four-time SEC Coach of the Year, Skinner brought the Commodores two SEC championships and six seasons with twenty or more victories.
Under his guidance, ten Vanderbilt players achieved first team All-SEC honors, and Clyde Lee was recognized as a consensus All-American. He showed great courage in recruiting the first African-American basketball player in the SEC, Perry Wallace, who would go on to become team captain his senior year. But Skinner’s exemplary character comes as no surprise to the athletes who played under him. “I can’t emphasize enough how he loved his players,” said Ray Maddux, a Commodore in the early 1970s. “He was a shepherd with his flock of boys.”
Before coming to Vanderbilt, Skinner was a basketball standout himself in his hometown of Paducah. The Kentucky native has been an outstanding ambassador for the game of basketball, serving as coach and lecturer for the U.S. State Department, while finding success in his post coaching career as an insurance salesmen. A true role model, Roy Skinner’s contributions to Vanderbilt University as a great coach and a quality human being will never be forgotten.