Brady Sallee was born to be a head coach.

The Eastern women’s head coach is a perfect example of a head coach as he has the personality of a rattlesnake and a high IQ in Basketball 101.

He is a perfectionist and expects nothing less from his team. He is a coach who loves the game more than anything.

He is a teacher, as it shows most this year with the Panthers off to a 6-3 start in Ohio Valley Conference play. And he is honest, perhaps the most important trait in a basketball coach.

Early in the season, it seemed that Sallee’s teaching wasn’t getting through to his young team as they started 0-6. Now, with three freshmen in the starting lineup, Sallee has won seven of his last 10 games.

Is anyone taking notice of Sallee’s work?

It seems like it as the women had more people in the stands than the men’s team did in Saturday’s victory over Eastern Kentucky.

It’s Sallee who has gotten players like Lauren Sims, Ellen Canale and Lindsey Kluempers to buy into their roles as hustlers and scrappers rather than scorers. He has built his team on hustle, effort and speed with a full-time emphasis on the half-court press.

The results have shown, as Eastern is No. 1 in the OVC in turnover margin, a big reason for the Panthers’ success.

He’s made freshman Megan Edwards the Robin to Megan Sparks’ Batman.

He’s turned a sub-par program into one that can be good for a long time.

Make no mistake, as much of the credit should go to Sallee’s players, it’s the baby-faced coach who is in firm control of his team.

He was the one in Saturday’s game against EKU that told Edwards and Rachel Galligan to shut their mouths after they were arguing with the referees. The players simply looked at Sallee and nodded. End of discussion.

His wit is as sharp as a whip that only a tape recorder could catch.

In Sparks’ hot-shooting display last week where she drained 12-of-16 three-pointers, Sallee jokingly took credit for all the ones she made and blamed his assistants for all the misses.

It’s safe to say Sallee is a quote-machine, as he will say anything that comes across his mind, whether it offends anybody or not.

He said last week, “If somebody had a better week of basketball than Sparks, that it was probably Michael Jordan’s daughter.”

When another reporter inferred that Jordan had probably more than one daughter walking around, Sallee looked at the recorders on the table and said, “Unless (the recorders) are turned off, I ain’t going there.”

It’s been said around Lantz Arena that the game doesn’t get interesting until Sallee takes his sports coat off.

Luckily for the fans, it’s been an interesting season.