Ukari Figgs

Last College: Purdue '99 Position: Assistant Coach Experience: 3rd year

Assistant coach Ukari Figgs joined the Purdue women's basketball staff on April 20, 2009. Figgs played point guard for the Boilermakers from 1995 to 1999, and in her senior season, led Purdue to an NCAA national championship. The 5-foot-9 co-captain was named the 1999 Final Four Most Outstanding Player. As a senior at Purdue, Figgs averaged 16.3 points, 4.5 rebounds and 4.2 assists and was named first team All-Big Ten as well as Associated Press and Kodak honorable mention All-American.

Figgs is a proven winner who has led her teams to a championship at every level, high school, college and the WNBA.

Drafted in the third round as the 28th overall pick by the Los Angeles Sparks, Figgs played five seasons in the WNBA. She was with the Sparks for three seasons, including the one culminating in a WNBA Championship title in 2001. Figgs played one season for the Portland Fire before they disbanded and was picked up by the Houston Comets in the 2003 dispersal draft. She played one season in Houston before retiring from basketball. For her five-year WNBA career, Figgs averaged 6.5 points, 2.3 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game.

Along with high school and future Purdue teammate Camille Cooper, Figgs led the Scott County High School girls' basketball team to a state title in 1995. She was named Kentucky Miss Basketball as a senior after averaging 18.6 points, 7.1 assists, 6.4 rebounds and 4.3 steals per game at Scott County. She went head-to-head in the Indiana-Kentucky All-Star Game series against Indiana Miss Basketball Stephanie White, who went on to become her classmate at Purdue.

In recognition to her contributions to Purdue, Figgs was inducted into the Purdue Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame in the fall of 2007.

An outstanding student, Figgs graduated from Purdue with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1999, and prior to joining coach Versyp's staff, was working as a production engineer for Toyota Motor Manufacturing in her hometown of Georgetown, Ky. She joined Toyota after retiring from the WNBA. At Toyota she achieved her dream of designing cars. In her second year, she worked on the Camry redesign and then was on the team that designed the Venza, Toyota's first crossover vehicle. Her responsibilities included travel to design headquarters in North America and Japan to participate in vehicle builds and experiments to prepare the assembly plant for the model change. Figgs also returned to Purdue on several occasions to recruit engineers for Toyota.

Figgs spent two seasons (2003-05) as an assistant coach with the boys' varsity basketball team at Scott County and helped lead them to the semifinals of the Kentucky state tournament. From 2000 to 2002, Figgs assisted former Boilermaker, Jane Schott at Harrison High School in West Lafayette, Ind.

In August 2009, Figgs married Dale Morgan. The pair will reside in Lafayette.