CONTACT: John A. Martin, Assistant Director of Athletics Communications
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Cooley Joins Men’s Basketball Staff As Assistant Coach
FORT COLLINS, Colo. – Colorado State men’s basketball has added Brian Cooley as an assistant coach, head coach Niko Medved announced today.
“We are excited to have someone with Brian’s talent and experience join us,” Medved said. “He has always been a part of winning and has a great eye for identifying talent. He will be a great addition to Colorado State basketball.”
“I am incredibly grateful and excited to be joining Coach Medved and his staff at Colorado State,” Cooley said. “I have long admired the values of his program and look forward to working with the coaching staff and players to help build on the winning culture that has been established.”
Cooley spent the last five years at Wright State, four of them as the associate head coach under Scott Nagy. With the Raiders, he served as the recruiting coordinator as well as all coaching matters and development of the guards during practices.
In his five seasons at Wright State, he helped the squad to a 109-49 overall record, 69-23 mark in the Horizon League, three regular-season conference championships and three postseason bids, including the 2018 NCAA Tournament, the first for the Raiders since 2007. The team posted four 20-win seasons (the only one that wasn’t during his tenure was the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season when the Raiders went 18-6). The program had 11 player postseason conference awards along with Nagy being named the Horizon League Coach of the Year three times and NABC District Coach of the Year once.
Cooley spent nine years with Nagy at South Dakota State, the last seven as an assistant coach after serving as a graduate assistant his first two years. In that time, he helped the Jackrabbits to 154 wins, including a 121 in the last five seasons, which resulted in five straight postseason appearances. SDSU captured back-to-back Summit League Tournament championships and NCAA tournament berths in 2012 and 2013 and again in 2016, with a College Basketball Invitational bid in 2014 and an NIT berth in 2015, when the Jacks won their first-ever Division I postseason game at Colorado State.
2015-16 not only saw a return to the NCAA Tournament, narrowly losing to five seed Maryland, but also the school’s highest year-end RPI at 39 and three players honored by the Summit League in post-season teams.
Cooley coached a total of 13 Jackrabbits who went on to earn All-Summit League honors, including 2013 Summit League Player of the Year, the Jacks all-time leading scorer and assists man and the 38th overall pick in the 2013 NBA draft, Nate Wolters.
Before becoming an assistant coach, Cooley served as the program’s academic coordinator, helping the Jackrabbits to a 3.0 or better team grade point average from 2010-13, as well as helping the Jackrabbits earn 19 spots on the Summit League Academic All-League Team and a pair of CoSIDA/Academic All-District selections during that span.
Cooley came to South Dakota State after working as an assistant under Jason Ryan at Bellevue East High School in Bellevue, NE, in 2006-07.
Cooley played at Nebraska Wesleyan in Lincoln, Neb., for four years with the Prairie Wolves, serving as a senior captain in 2005-06. More than just a great all-around athlete, Cooley also earned Great Plains Athletic Conference Scholar Athlete honors in 2006, and graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan University in 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in health and physical education.
Cooley graduated with his master’s degree in sports pedagogy from South Dakota State in the spring of 2009.
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