Eastern Washington on Friday hired Dan Monson, the coach who led Long Beach State to the NCAA Tournament after the school told him he would be fired at the end of the season.
Monson, who also coached at Gonzaga and Minnesota, will take over an Eagles program that has won the last two Big Sky Conference regular-season titles.
The 62-year-old gained an unexpected level of celebrity during March Madness for his unusual coaching status.
“Throughout the search for our next men's basketball coach, it was important to us to identify a head coach who represented this area,” Eastern Washington athletic director Tim Collins said in a statement. “While he was talking to [Dan]It became clear that he cared about this region as much as the East.”
Monson replaces David Riley, who left to take the head coaching job at Washington State last week.
Long Beach State athletic director Bobby Smitheran made the decision that Monson would not return next season just before the Big West Conference tournament.
Long Beach State won the conference tournament to earn an unexpected bid to the NCAA tournament before losing to Arizona in the first round.
Smitheran later told the AP that ousting Monson, who was on a four-game losing streak when the decision was made, was part of the plan to turn things around and get the team to the tournament.
“That guy doesn't deserve that. He's a great man,” Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said of his friend after beating Long Beach State in the tournament. “He deserves another job, another opportunity.”
He'll get that opportunity not far from where Monson's head coaching career began.
Monson will bring an impressive resume to Cheney, Washington: 27 years as a head coach, 445 wins, nine regular-season or conference titles, four trips to March Madness.
He's the man who, in the late 1990s, built the foundation at Gonzaga that propelled the Zags to a string of 25 consecutive trips to the tournament. He also rebuilt Long Beach State after a recruiting scandal placed the program in NCAA purgatory.
