ESPN NBA analyst Kendrick Perkins gave a shoutout to Brandon Chappell, his "brother and my Day 1 for joining one of the most Historic basketball programs in college sports" by being hired by Arizona as an assistant coach on Monday. Chappell and Perkins were teammates at Ozen High School in Beaumont, Texas and with the Houston Hoops AAU team.
Led by Chappell and Perkins, Ozen was 36-0 and won the Texas 4A state championship in 2001 during their junior season. Ozen went 33–1 the following season, with their only loss to Fort Worth Dunbar in the State Championship Game.
The Houston Hoops are led by Hal Pastner, the father of former Arizona player and assistant coach and current UNLV head coach Josh. Perkins was the 27th pick in the 2003 NBA Draft straight from Ozen. After 15 seasons in the NBA, Perkins retired and has primarily worked in broadcasting as an analyst on the ESPN NBA studio show.
Chappell began his coaching career as an assistant in 2013-14 at Division II Armstrong State, as a graduate assistant at Northern Arizona under current Arizona assistant Jack Murphy, at Division II Arkansas-Fort Smith, his first Division I assistant job at Lamar from 2017-21, at UNLV in 2021-22 and at Texas from 2022-25.
In 81 career games for Lamar, his hometown school, Chappell averaged 7.0 points per game and 1.7 rebounds. 3.0 assists, shot 38.7 percent from the field, 39.4 percent on three-point attempts 55.3 percent from the free throw line and had a 52.7 eFG percentage.
Despite his history as a guard, Chappell has excelled at recruiting big men. During his time with Texas, Chappell was the primary recruiter for Texas, signing three-star prospects, small forward Devon Pryor and center Jamie Vinson and four-star recruits, center John Clark and power forward Nicolas Codie.