Dan Monson has rebuilt the Long Beach State basketball program in his 16 seasons with the Beach. The winningest coach in LBSU history, Monson has piled up over 250 wins at LBSU and led Long Beach State to four Big West Championships, seven top three finishes, four NIT appearances as well as a trip to the 2011-12 NCAA Tournament.

Monson was named the Big West Coach of the Year for a fourth time in 2022 after leading a Long Beach State squad picked to finish eighth before the season to a Big West championship, the 15th league title in program history. The Beach had four players named All-Big West, while senior Colin Slater was the Big West Player of the Year and Jadon Jones was the Big West Defensive Player of the Year.

Monson’s success at Long Beach State has been rewarded with four Big West Coach of the Year awards, as well as back-to-back NABC All-District Coach recognition from 2010-11 and 2011-12. The conference coaching award following last season marked the fifth time that Monson has been recognized as a league’s top coach, previously winning the honor as the West Coast Conference Coach of the Year in 1998 following his first season at Gonzaga.

Success at the collegiate level hasn’t been the only measure of what Monson has accomplished at Long Beach State. Two-time Big West Player of the Year Casper Ware reached the NBA with the Philadelphia 76ers, becoming the first LBSU player to enter the NBA since 2003. 2013 Big West Player of the Year James Ennis also became the first LBSU player picked in the NBA Draft since 1992, and has gone on to a tremendous career over eight seasons with 10 different organizations.

Navigating the COVID-19 Pandemic was especially difficult for Long Beach State, as the program was one of the last in the nation to begin to any team activities, was not allowed inside the Walter Pyramid until late in October, and suffered through three separate full pauses. LBSU also had 12 players miss at least one game due to injury, and had five players miss seven or more games, just one of two programs in the country to be hit that hard. But the Beach bounced back to reclaim the title in 2021-22, the first full season back after the pandemic. The team then went on to make the program’s ninth NIT appearance, and the fourth under the leadership of Monson.

Junior Joel Murray was named first-team All-Big West along with Colin Slater, marking the 10th time in 13 seasons that the team’s primary ball-handler has earned either first or second team All-Big West, with seven of those point guards earning first-team honors.

Monson had no returning starters in 2015-16 but still led Long Beach State to the Big West Tournament Finals and an NIT appearance, the fourth postseason appearance in his tenure at Long Beach State. Playing the nation’s toughest non-conference schedule, the Beach went 7-9 against Top 100 teams, and picked up signature wins over Seton Hall and BYU. Let by Big West Newcomer of the Year Nick Faust the Beach went on to face Washington in the first round of the NIT.

In 2012-13, Monson directed a squad that lost four starters from the 2011-12 NCAA Tournament team, and guided them to a another Big West championship, a third-consecutive regular season championship, the first time in over 40 years The Beach had won three straight conference titles.

LBSU’s championship season in 2012-13 came on the heels of a four-year run based on a nucleus of solid recruiting in his first few years on campus. His first recruiting class featured Greg Plater, the second-leading all-time 3-point shooter at the school, while his second recruiting class of Larry Anderson, Eugene Phelps, T.J. Robinson and Casper Ware may go down in school history as the best recruiting class of all-time at Long Beach State.

Anderson, Phelps, Robinson and Ware all rank among the all-time leaders in school history in at least two categories and all four have earned all-league honors at least twice.

Three of the four own a school record. Ware is the school’s all-time assist leader, Anderson has more steals than anybody in LBSU history, and Robinson is not only the all-time leading rebounder at Long Beach State, but the leading rebounder in the history of the Big West Conference.

Ware established himself as not only one of the top players in the conference, but one of the best players in the nation. Named a finalist for the Bob Cousy Award, honoring the top point guard in Division I, as both a junior and a senior, Ware won Big West Conference Player of the Year awards and was named an honorable mention Associated Press All-American in 2011 and 2012, while also being named the U.S. Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) District IX Player of the Year as a senior.

In 2010-11, Ware became the first player in Big West history to be named both the league’s player of the year and its defensive player of the year. His first-team all-league selection made him the third Monson recruit at LBSU to be named first-team all-league. Ware also was named first-team All-District 9 by the NABC and first-team All-District IX by the USBWA as both a junior and senior.

Monson’s team also picked up two wins over nationally-ranked teams in 2011-12, handing No. 9 Pittsburgh an 86-76 defeat on the road before knocking off No. 14 Xavier 68-58 at the Diamond Head Classic in Honolulu. The two wins over ranked teams marked the first time a LBSU team had beaten multiple top 25 teams since the 1992-93 season.

Monson was tabbed as the 16th head coach in Long Beach State men’s basketball history on April 7, 2007. He inherited a depleted roster but still managed to be competitive in his first season at LBSU. Monson has been a Division I head coach for 20 years, during which he has compiled a career record of 387-352, with 11 trips to postseason play, including a trip to the Elite Eight in 1999 with Gonzaga University.

Monson was the head coach at the University of Minnesota for seven-plus years, compiling a 118-105 mark and reaching postseason play in five of his seven seasons.

In 2004-05 he led the Gophers to a memorable year. He engineered the second-best Big Ten turnaround in the previous 20 seasons, finishing with a 10-6 conference mark after posting just three league wins the previous campaign. Minnesota reached the 20-win plateau for the first time since 1992-93 and
Monson led the Golden Gophers to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1999. In 2005-06 the Gophers advanced to their fifth postseason appearance in six years. Senior guard Vincent Grier was named All-Big Ten and All-District for the second straight year. In 2002-03 Minnesota went 19-14 and earned the program’s first trip to the NIT semifinals in Madison Square Garden.

Monson reached two personal coaching milestones in 2004-05. With a victory over Indiana in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals, he earned his 100th victory at Minnesota. When he defeated Purdue on February 26, 2005 he picked up his 150th career head-coaching victory. With 100 victories in his first six years at Minnesota, Monson ranks second all-time at the school behind Jim Dutcher (1975-85) in wins during his first six years as head coach.

Monson stepped into the Minnesota job on the heels of NCAA sanctions against the school. Those NCAA violations during the mid-1990s severely limited scholarships and put strict recruiting sanctions on the program since the summer of 1999, coinciding with Monson’s arrival at Minnesota. The summer of 2005 was the first Monson and his staff could recruit on par with every other college basketball program and that season concluded with a trip to the NCAA Tournament, the programs first year off probation.

Prior to accepting the Minnesota job on July 24, 1999, Monson was the head coach at Gonzaga for two years. In 1998-99 he led the Bulldogs to within a breath of the Final Four.

Gonzaga, which went 28-7 on the year and won the West Coast Conference regular season and tournament championships, defeated such notable NCAA powers as Minnesota (75-63), Stanford (82-74) and Florida (73-72) before bowing out to eventual national-champion Connecticut (67-62) in the Elite Eight.

His first year as head coach at Gonzaga resulted in a 24-10 mark, as the Bulldogs advanced to the second round of the NIT. Monson had a sparkling 52-17 (.754) record in his two seasons as the head coach of the Bulldogs.

Monson spent 11 years helping build the Gonzaga program. He began at GU as an assistant coach in 1988 and spent six years laying the groundwork. In 1994-95 he was elevated to associate head coach under head coach Dan Fitzgerald.

Three years later he took over full control of the Gonzaga program. He led Gonzaga to a West Coast Conference title in 1998 and was named the WCC Coach of the Year. The squad set a school-record with its 24 wins and Monson was also named the National Rookie Coach of the Year by Basketball Times.
Monson was a key figure in the Bulldogs turnaround in the 1990’s. Gonzaga had a record of 223-89 over 10 seasons and he was responsible for recruiting many of the key players in Gonzaga’s NCAA Sweet 16 appearances from 1998-2001. From the time Monson was named associate head coach in 1995, Gonzaga averaged 22 wins per season and reached postseason play every year but one.

Prior to joining the Bulldogs’ staff, Monson spent two seasons as a graduate assistant coach under Gene Bartow at the University of Alabama-Birmingham.

Monson played one year of football at Idaho, but turned his attention to coaching when a knee injury cut short his gridiron career. He coached the boys’ basketball team at Oregon City (Ore.) High School for one year prior to taking the UAB graduate assistant post.

A 1985 graduate of the University of Idaho with a bachelor degree in mathematics, Monson earned his master’s degree in education with a concentration on athletic administration from UAB in 1988. In addition to his 20-plus seasons coaching Division I basketball, as either a head or assistant coach, Monson has served on two coaching staffs for USA Basketball representing the United States in international competition.

Monson gained valuable experience by coaching on the international level with USA Basketball. He was an assistant coach for Kelvin Sampson on the gold medal winning 20-and-Under World Championships for Young Men Qualifying Tournament squad in the summer of 2004 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He also assisted Oliver Purnell at the 1999 Men’s World University Games in Mallorca, Spain where the U.S. won the gold medal. With Team USA, Monson had the opportunity to coach future NBA players Sean May, Brendan Haywood, Bracey Wright, Chris Paul, Michael Redd, Mark Madsen, Kenyon Martin and Charlie Villanueva.

Monson grew up around basketball as his father, Don, was a well-respected collegiate coach. Don was the head coach at Idaho and Oregon and was an assistant coach under Jud Heathcote at Michigan State (1976-78) for two years.

Monson and his wife Darci have four children, a son, MicGuire, a daughter, Mollie, a son, Maddox and a daughter, McKenna.

Name	Title	Phone	Email Address	Twitter
Dan Monson	Head Coach	985-1610	Dan.Monson@csulb.edu	@CoachDMonson
Myke Scholl	Associate Head Coach	985-5182	Myke.Scholl@csulb.edu
Senque Carey	Assistant Coach	985-5066	Senque.Carey@csulb.edu
Allen Caveness	Assistant Coach		Caveness.Allen@csulb.edu
Alex Manfredi	Director of Basketball Operations	985-1610	Alex.Manfredi@csulb.edu

Long Beach State University Athletics

2020-21 Men's Basketball Coaching Staff

Coaching Staff