Oklahoma State Women’s Hoops Coaches Budke, Serna Die In Plane Crash

Oklahoma State women’s basketball coach Kurt Budke and assistant Miranda Serna have died in a plane crash along with two others, just 10 months after the school commemorated the 10th anniversary of a crash that killed 10 men associated with the men’s program.

The plane went down Thursday night in Perry County, Ark., killing the pilot and another individual not affiliated with the university, the school said in a news release. There were no survivors.

Budke, 50, had opened his seventh season as the Cowgirls’ coach on Sunday with a 96-60 win over Rice in Stillwater.

“The Oklahoma State family is devastated by this tragedy,” OSU president Burns Hargis said Friday in the statement. “Our hearts and prayers go out to the families of Kurt Budke, Miranda Serna and the other victims.

The school has canceled the team’s games scheduled for Saturday and Sunday against Grambling State and Texas-Arlington. The school’s second-ranked college football team plays Friday night at Iowa State.

Associate head coach Jim Littell will take over as interim head coach, school VP for athletics Mike Holder said.

“We are shocked by this terrible loss,” Holder said in the news release. “Kurt Budke was an incredibly positive influence on his players and was a tremendous coach. He quickly turned our program around and put Cowgirl basketball on the map.”

On Jan. 27, 2001, a plane that took off near Boulder, Colo., after a men’s game went down east of Denver, killing two players, four team officials, a play-by-play announcer, a radio engineer and two pilots.

An NTSB report cited a power loss aboard the plane and said the pilot suffered disorientation while flying the plane manually with still-available instruments.

On Thursday night, the single-engine plane Budke and Serna were riding in for a recruiting trip crashed near a wildlife management area in central Arkansas near Perryville, about 45 miles west of Little Rock. The Winona Wildlife Management Area is in steep terrain in the eastern Ouachita Mountains, but a cause of the crash was not announced.

The weather near the crash site was clear with temperatures in the upper 30s to mid-40s.

The Perry County Sheriff’s Department said the crash occurred just before 7 p.m. about 4 miles south of Perryville. FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford said an immediate search revealed that at least two were dead. The school’s statement Friday put the death toll at four.

Lunsford said the plane was a single-engine Piper PA-28.

The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending investigators, and that it could take nine months to determine the cause of the crash.

Travis Ford, the Oklahoma State men’s coach, said he was told of the crash Friday at 6 a.m. and went directly to Budke’s house.

“I just found out and there are so many unanswered questions,” Ford said. “I just saw him. We talked every single day. He came to my shootarounds. It just doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t seem real. It doesn’t seem real.”

Budke had brought Serna with him from Louisiana Tech. She had also coached at Fresno State, Chicago State and Long Beach State.

“Miranda was a tireless worker and great recruiter,” Holder said.

Budke, born June 3, 1961, leaves wife, Shelley, daughter Sara, who is a student at Oklahoma State, and sons Alex and Brett.

Budke had turned the Cowgirls around from a team that finished winless in the Big 12 in his first season to a perennial conference contender.

In 2010 he led them to the program’s most successful season, as they reached the second round of the NCAA tournament after a school-record six wins over Top 25 teams. They also finished with a top-10 ranking for the first time, recording 24 victories. Oklahoma State advanced to the second round of the WNIT in 2011, the Cowgirls’ fifth straight postseason appearance.

Doug Gottlieb, an ESPN radio show host and college basketball analyst who starred as a point guard for Oklahoma State from 1997-2000, called Budke a “very good coach and better man.”

“It doesn’t seem fair or real or possible that … 10 months removed from the 10-year anniversary in which we celebrate the lives of the 10 that were lost, that here we are again,” Gottlieb said. “But it doesn’t seem right it could happen to anyone, let alone the same university.”

Budke, a 1984 graduate of Washburn University, earned a masters degree at Wichita State in 1985. As a player, he earned all-conference honors at Barton County Junior College in 1981.

The Salina, Kan., native came to Oklahoma State from Louisiana Tech after coaching stops that included Allen County Community College and Friends University in Kansas, and Trinity Valley Community College in Texas.

Serna had played on Budke’s 1996 national championship team at Trinity Valley Community College and was an assistant coach on his 1999 national championship team at the school.

“Miranda is a rising young star in this business and I think one of the greatest recruiters in this nation,” Budke had said of Serna after announcing her hire in March 2005.

Information from ESPN.com’s Andy Katz and Dana O’Neil, and The Associated Press was used in this report.