Tony Paul of the Detroit News is reporting on Monday afternoon that longtime Michigan State assistant men's basketball coach Dwayne Stephens will leave East Lansing to become the new head coach at Western Michigan University.

Here's Paul's tweet:


Stephens has been in East Lansing as Tom Izzo's Associate Head Coach since 2012, and has been an assistant in East Lansing for 19 seasons.

Dwayne, who's from Ferndale, Michigan, played his college career at Michigan State from 1989-1993.  He scored the game-winning basket for the Spartans in the Big Ten-title clinching victory over Purdue at the Breslin Center in March of 1990.

He was voted as the team's Most Valuable Player in the 1991-92 season.  And he played three seasons of professional basketball in Europe after leaving school.

Before coming to Michigan State, Stephens was an assistant under Greg Kampe at Oakland University for two seasons before heading to Milwaukee to become an assistant under Tom Crean (another former MSU assistant coach) at Marquette University (where he coached future Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade).  He was a part of the staff that went to the Final Four in 2003, where they lost to Kansas 94-61 in the national semifinals in New Orleans.

This would be Stephens first head coaching job.  Western Michigan was 8-23 this past season and 4-16 in the Mid-American Conference.  Head coach Clayton Bates stepped down after two seasons in Kalamazoo after the season.

The Broncos have not made the NCAA Tournament since 2014.  They won the Mid-American Conference tournament that season to qualify.

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