Women’s Basketball: Former Ohio State assistant coach Mark Mitchell has died

Former Ohio State women’s basketball assistant coach Mark Mitchell sits next to current head coach Kevin McGuff. Mitchell passed away at the age of 56 on Tuesday. Credit: Courtesy of Ohio State Athletics

Former Ohio State women’s basketball assistant coach Mark Mitchell, who served under Ohio State head coach Kevin McGuff from 2013-2018, died Tuesday at 56 years old. As of now, a cause of death has not been reported.

Mitchell was the father of Indiana Fever guard and former Buckeye superstar Kelsey Mitchell, who played for Ohio State from 2014-18 and is fourth all-time on the NCAA Division I women’s basketball scoring list. 

While at Ohio State, Mark Mitchell helped develop Kelsey Mitchell to become the Buckeyes’ first four-time All-American in women’s basketball, as well as the fastest player in women’s basketball history to reach 2,000 career points. 

Kelsey Mitchell also became the all-time scoring leader in program history while her father was on the sidelines and was recently inducted into Ohio State’s Athletics Hall of Fame this past fall. She was selected No. 2 overall by the Indiana Fever in the 2018 WNBA Draft. 

For the past four seasons, Mark Mitchell was the head men’s basketball coach of Wilberforce University, a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics program in Wilberforce, Ohio. 

After leaving Ohio State, he returned to coach high school basketball in the Cincinnati area and worked as the head coach at Western Hills High School in the 2018-19 season and at Taft High School as an assistant coach the following year. 

Prior to coming to Columbus, Mark Mitchell was the head men’s basketball coach at Taft from 2002-13. While there, he helped rebuild the team from the ground up, culminating with the Senators’ first-ever Division III state title in 2011. It was also their first-ever state championship appearance. 

Under Mark Mitchell, Taft also won eight Cincinnati Metro Athletic Conference titles, nine sectional and four district titles and the aforementioned state title. He also added eight CMAC Coach of the Year awards. 

Mark Mitchell was able to turn Taft’s basketball team around immediately, going 22-3 and winning the city championship in his first season after taking over a team that suffered 10 consecutive losing seasons, according to his coaching biography. 

Before making waves at Taft, Mark Mitchell also served as an assistant coach at Winter Woods High School from 2001-03 where he helped the Warriors finish as a Division I state runner-up in 2002. 

Along with his success as a basketball coach, Mark Mitchell graduated from Princeton High School in 1985 and was viewed by many who knew him as a Princeton legend. 

He played offensive tackle on Princeton’s 1983 Division I state championship team and later played at Eastern Kentucky University and had a tryout with the Detroit Lions before becoming a basketball coach.