Former K-State basketball star Steve Henson to become head coach at UTSA

Former Kansas State basketball star Steve Henson will be introduced next Friday as the new head coach at Texas-San Antonio.

Henson will continue as Oklahoma’s assistant coach during the Final Four. The Sooners meet Villanova in Saturday’s semifinal.

Henson, 48, becomes a head coach for the first time.

“I’ve wanted to be head coach for a while,” Henson said. “I thought I was ready 10 or 15 years ago, but I look back on those interviews I think, ‘I didn’t have any idea what I was doing at that point compared to now.’

“I kept grinding away. Now’s the time.”

Henson was one of the top athletes in Kansas State history, an All-Big Eight selection as a point guard who remains the program’s leader in career assists, and a decathlete. Henson placed third in at the Big Eight meet as a junior.

After six seasons in the NBA and a brief tenure in Europe, Henson turned to coaching in 1999 and joined the Illinois program headed by his Kansas State coach, Lon Kruger.

He’s been on Kruger’s staff with the Atlanta Hawks, UNLV and Oklahoma.

Henson, a McPherson, Kan., native, won Kansas’ Mr. Basketball award in 1986.

This story was originally published April 1, 2016 at 7:34 PM with the headline "Former K-State basketball star Steve Henson to become head coach at UTSA."