Don Knodel

Don Knodel was born on 5 September 1931 and grew up in Ohio. He was a key player at Hamilton High School in Hamilton, Ohio, graduating in 1949, and accepted a basketball scholarship to Miami University.

At Miami he played from 1950 to 1953. From 1951 to 1953 he was named to the All-Mid-American Conference team and was the team's second-leading scorer each season, helping Miami win two conference titles.

Knodel started coaching as an assistant at Miami in the 1955 to 1956 season. He then coached high school basketball for five seasons at Talawanda and Marion Harding, compiling a record of 76 wins and 31 losses, before joining Vanderbilt as an assistant from 1961 to 1966.

In March 1966 Rice University appointed him head coach in place of George Carlisle. The Owls had won just three games in the previous two seasons. After steady improvement, his 1969 to 1970 team won the Southwest Conference, Rice's first title since 1954, and reached the NCAA Tournament, where it lost to John Wooden's UCLA. It remains the programme's last conference championship. Greg Williams was named Southwest Conference Player of the Year in 1969 and Gary Reist was All-Southwest Conference in 1970 and 1971. Knodel left Rice in 1974 with a record of 77 wins and 126 losses; his victories rank sixth in school history.

He moved into professional basketball as head coach of the Houston Angels of the Women's Professional Basketball League. In the league's first season, 1978 to 1979, the Angels won the championship and he was named Coach of the Year. He coached the team until 1980.

In April 1999 he returned to Rice as executive director of the R Association, which supports the athletics department and its former letter winners, and oversaw its growth and development for the next 12 years.

Knodel spent most of his adult life in Houston, Texas, and stayed closely connected to Rice athletics long after he stopped coaching there. Details of his family life have not been widely reported.

Rice University announced on 2 November 2026 that Don Knodel had died in Houston, Texas, at the age of 95. The university did not give a cause of death, and said funeral arrangements were pending.

Knodel is remembered at Rice as the coach who lifted a struggling team to the 1970 Southwest Conference title, the Owls' last conference championship in men's basketball. He was inducted into the Rice Athletics Hall of Fame in 2009 and into the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame in 2023. With the Houston Angels he became the first championship coach of the Women's Professional Basketball League.