Morehead State has ‘good problems.’ Spradlin relishes tests brought by success.

Preston Spradlin has noticed a certain coolness over the phone this spring. When the Morehead State men’s basketball coach reaches out to colleagues seeking to schedule non-league games, return calls are sporadic.

“I can tell you, scheduling is a lot different,” Spradlin said. “When you are winning 13 games (in a season), you get a lot of phone calls. When you are winning 23, nobody wants to call you back.”

MSU won 13 times each in back-to-back seasons in 2018-19 and 2019-20. This past winter, however, Spradlin directed the Eagles to one of the best seasons in school history.

Led by a freshman breakout star in center Johni Broome plus a core of tough-minded, veteran guards, Morehead State went 23-8, won the OVC Tournament and played in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2011.

Even amid the coronavirus pandemic, it was an enchanted winter in Morehead. Once the calendar turned to 2021, MSU went 19-2, including a 12-game win streak and two victories each over traditional Ohio Valley Conference kingpins Belmont and Murray State.

Now, in what will be his sixth season as Morehead State’s head coach, Spradlin, 34, for the first time faces the challenges that accompany success.

“One of my assistants has been saying all spring, what we’ve got now are ‘good problems,’” Spradlin said Wednesday, the same day MSU announced it had extended his contract through the 2024-25 season.

Part of what made Morehead State’s turnaround this past season so impressive is that it came after the Eagles lost rugged, 6-foot-8, 240-pound post player Tyzhaun Claude (9.5 points and 6.5 rebounds in 2019-20) to a torn ACL in November.

Yet his absence cleared the way for Broome, a lightly recruited 6-10, 235-pound freshman from Plant City, Fla., to assume the starting center position. All Broome did is lead Morehead State in scoring (13.9 points per game), rebounding (9.0) and blocked shots (1.9) while earning OVC Freshman of the Year and OVC Tournament MVP honors.

Not bad for a guy who had scant recruiting interest other than Morehead State.

“Johni played (high school for Tampa Catholic) down in Florida. He played for a really good AAU program,” Spradlin said. “So he played in front of a whole lot of (college) coaches (as a prospect). I just think maybe we saw something in him that everybody else didn’t.”

Though Broome was willowy thin as a high schooler, Morehead State noticed he had a high-basketball IQ, a knack for rebounding and great hands.

However, Spradlin said it was “peeling back the layers” and learning more about the character of Broome and his family that sold MSU on the big man.

“Because of Johni’s character and the people who were behind him and committed to his success, we thought he would work and buy in to what we asked him to do,” Spradlin said. “That was really the separator for him in our eyes when were were evaluating him and comparing him to other prospects.”

Now, Claude is working his way back to health and is expected to be ready for the coming season.

So Spradlin faces — wait for it — the “good problem” of having two proven post players to integrate into MSU’s playing style in 2021-22.

“That makes my job very fun, to figure out how to do that,” Spradlin said.

To a veteran backcourt led by returnees Skyelar Potter (12.0 points, 5.8 rebounds) and Ta’lon Cooper (8.2 points, team-high 111 assists), Morehead is adding a pair of Kentuckians returning home — Tray Hollowell and Jaylon Hall — as transfers.

A product of University Heights Academy in Hopkinsville, the 6-3, 185-pound Hollowell averaged 11.1 points and hit 34.5 percent of his three-point tries last season at Wofford.

One of the starters for the Doss team that lost to Paul Laurence Dunbar in the 2016 Boys’ Sweet Sixteen finals, the 6-5, 190-pound Hall went for 9.4 points, 2.5 rebounds and 2.4 assists this past season for Wright State.

“Two Kentucky guys coming back home and bringing with them great (college) experience,” Spradlin said. “We are super-excited about them.”

A Pike County native, Spradlin cut his teeth in college basketball with five years working under John Calipari at Kentucky, first as a graduate assistant, then as UK’s assistant director of basketball operations.

Spradlin can perhaps draw on his time with Kentucky to prepare for the challenges of being the head coach of a team that will enter 2021-22 with sky-high expectations.

“We’ve done a great job of really selling our guys on that underdog-, chip-on-your-shoulder mind set,” Spradlin said. “So we’ve got to make sure we maintain that.”

First things first, Spradlin has to overcome the “good problem” of trying find enough non-league teams willing to play a tournament-tested MSU nucleus to fill out the Eagles schedule.

“You are almost calling people trying to convince them you won’t be very good,” Spradlin said, laughing. “No one is biting on that one right now.”