Carmel’s Ryan Osborn is one of six Indiana high school boys basketball coaches have been chosen as 2021 Bob King Coaches of the Year by their peers in the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association, it was announced Wednesday.
The other coaches receiving the award are Chris Johnson of Homestead, Chad Johnston of South Bend Adams, Andy Weaver of Plainfield, Jeff Moore of Sullivan and Josh Thompson of Barr-Reeve. The coaches have been selected as honorees for the 2020-21 season through voting that occurred from late January through early March, IBCA executive director Steve Witty said.
Honors are awarded according to IHSAA district boundaries, and two coaches from each district are recipients – Johnson and Johnston in District 1; Osborn and Weaver in District 2; and Moore and Thompson in District 3.
Osborn is honored after directing Carmel to a 25-2 record and a berth in the 2021 Class 4A State Finals. The Greyhounds have won the Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference, Carmel Sectional, Logansport Regional and Lafayette Semi-State earlier this season. Osborn has a 90-18 in four seasons at Carmel with four sectionals, three regionals, three semi-states and the 2019 Class 4A state championship. A 1999 graduate of Logansport, Osborn averaged 19.4 points as a senior for the Berries. He attended Butler for one semester, then transferred to IUPUI and played three seasons of basketball with the Jaguars, including being a part of a team that played in the 2003 NCAA Tournament. He graduated from IUPUI in 2004 and later earned a master’s degree from A.T. Still University in Arizona in 2009. Osborn began his coaching career as IUPUI’s director of basketball operations from 2004-06. He then was an assistant at Avon for five seasons and an assistant for six seasons at Carmel before being promoted to the Greyhounds’ head coaching position. Osborn was an IBCA District 2 Coach of the Year in 2019. He was a Junior All-Star assistant coach the same year. He was to be senior All-Star head coach in 2020 and now will serve in that role in 2021 after the 2020 games were canceled.
These six coaches will receive plaques as an IBCA District Coach of the Year during the 2021 IBCA Clinic, the in-person portion will be held on Saturday, Oct. 16 at Lawrence North High School in Indianapolis. There also will be a virtual portion of the 2021 IBCA Clinic where this year’s Coaches of the Year — six girls and six boys — will make a video presentation on a basketball-related topic. The “virtual clinic” is planned to be available online starting April 23.
The Coach of the Year award is named for the late Bob King, the IBCA executive director from 1984-94. King was a Lebanon native who coached at Sacred Heart and Shortridge high schools in Indianapolis before serving as an assistant basketball coach at Purdue and later as an assistant and associate athletic director at Purdue.