Longtime Austin Peay head coach Dave Loos will announce his retirement at a press conference on Monday, the school announced Thursday.
Loos missed four games in January while taking a leave of absence to continue chemotherapy on a cancerous lymph node on his colon. He returned to win his 500th career game in February.
The 69 year old Loos's 420 wins at Austin Peay makes him the all-time winningest coach in OVC history. He also led the Governors to five OVC regular season titles and four NCAA Tournaments during his 27 seasons on the bench.
Despite the overall success of his tenure, Loos's Austin Peay teams haven't finished above .500 in conference play since 2011. The Governors' last regular season title came in 2008, one year before he became the league's all-time wins leader.
One of the highlights of his career came last season when Austin Peay won it's final two games just to capture the no. 8 seed in the OVC Tournament. From there, the Govs went on an improbable run of four wins in four days to win the tournament and reach the NCAA Tournament.
Loos was diagnosed with cancer a short time later.
On top of his own health concerns, Loos's granddaughter, Rhyan, continues her battle with cancer as well. She was diagnosed with a neuroblastoma in 2015 and has had multiple rounds of chemotherapy in addition to surgery in November to remove a tumor from her brain.
Loos also served as Austin Peay athletic director for 16 years before he relinquished that role in 2013 to focus on his coaching duties.
