David Smalley retires after 34-year Rio Grande coaching career

David Smalley’s retirement closes one of Adams County’s most durable links to college basketball, ending a 34-year run at the University of Rio Grande that made the Peebles graduate a familiar path from local gyms to the NAIA stage. With Brandon Bias stepping in as head coach, Rio Grande now has to prove that the recruiting and mentorship lane Smalley helped create can survive without the man who defined it.

Rio Grande officially announced Smalley’s retirement on Monday, March 16, 2026. His career at Rio began in 1992, after coaching stops as a varsity girls coach at Warren High School in Vincent, a graduate assistant at Bowling Green State University and an assistant at Morehead State University. Over the next three decades, he built a 729-348 record, a .676 winning percentage, won 10 conference coach of the year honors and coached in 13 national tournaments.

The numbers put him in rare company. Rio says his 729 victories rank among the top 50 all-time in women’s college basketball history, and the school lists him as a Women’s Basketball Coach Hall of Fame member. In Adams County, his name carries an added layer of meaning: he is also in the Peebles High School Athletic Hall of Fame as a player, which helps explain why his Rio Grande tenure resonated far beyond Portsmouth and Gallia County.

The timing mattered, too. Rio’s 2025-26 team finished 31-2, won the River States Conference tournament for the fifth straight year, beat Rochester Christian 80-68 in the NAIA first round and lost 86-80 to Indiana Wesleyan in the second round. Smalley was also named the River States Conference Coach of the Year for the 10th time in 2026, after reaching his 700th career win on Feb. 28, 2025. He left while the RedStorm were still operating at championship level, not after a slide.

Bias, a native of Hewett, West Virginia, had been on Rio’s staff since 2012 after four seasons as head coach at Buffalo High School, where he went 17-6 in 2011 and earned Kanawha Valley Coach of the Year honors. Jeff Lanham said Smalley’s influence reached beyond wins and losses to players, staff, students and the wider community. That is the question now for Rio Grande and for Adams County: whether the trust Smalley built, and the route he made visible for local athletes, will remain as strong under the next coach.