Dan Monson
	Position: Head Coach

Dan Monson has rebuilt the Long Beach State basketball program in his four seasons with the 49ers.

Monson has taken a program that won just six games in his first season at LBSU to a regular-season Big West Conference championship in his fourth season and a berth in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT).

On the heels of the title, Monson was named the Big West Conference Coach of the Year, as well as the All-Region Coach. It was his second career coach of the year honor with the first coming in 1998 in his first season as a head coach at Gonzaga when he was named West Coast Conference Coach of the Year.

Monson built the 2010-11 49er team around a solid nucleus of players he recruited to play at LBSU. 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.

All four returners, currently seniors, rank among the all-time leaders in school history in at least one category and all four, along with Plater, earned all-league honors.

Ware has established himself as not only one of the top players in conference, but one of the top point guards in the nation. Named a finalist for the Bob Cousy Award, honoring the top point guard in Division I, midway through last season, Ware went on to become 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 an honorable mention All-America pick by the Associated Press, and was named first-team All-District 9 by the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) and first-team All-District IX by the United States Basketball Writers of America (USBWA).

Joining Ware on the 2010-11 All-Big West Conference First-Team was Anderson, who earned first-team honors for the second time in his three seasons at Long Beach State.

Robinson, a first-team pick as a sophomore in 2009-10, was named second-team All-Big West as a junior, while Plater and Phelps garnered honorable mention all-conference honors to put all five starters on the all-league team.

Monson's success during the 2010-11 season came after his team nearly broke through in 2009-10. After finishing the season tied for third place in the Big West, the 49ers jelled in the Big West Tournament and advanced to the title game, just missing a berth in the NCAA Tournament after a five-point loss in the championship.

During the 2009-10 season, Monson led LBSU through the toughest schedule in school history and in the process picked up his 200th career win at Cal State Northridge on Jan. 28, 2010. The 49ers faced five teams ranked in the top 25, including the eventual National Champions, Duke, and a Final Four team, West Virginia. Monson also led the 49ers to their first win ever over national-power UCLA and a win over eventual WAC champion Utah State. Long Beach State played eight teams that eventually advanced to the NCAA Tournament.

Monson pushed a young team that featured four sophomore starters to the title game of the league tournament. Robinson, a sophomore, earned first-team All-Big West Conference honors and was a member of the Big West All-Tournament Team. He also became the first player from a "mid-major" to be named to the 76 Classic All-Tournament Team.

Fellow sophomore Ware was named second-team all-league and earned Big West All-Tournament accolades as did Anderson, also a sophomore.

Monson's 2009-10 team became the first team in Big West Conference history to have five different players earn Big West Conference Player of the Week honors in the same season when Robinson, Ware, Anderson, Phelps, another sophomore, and senior Stephan Gilling claimed the award.

During his second season at the helm of the Long Beach State program, Monson may have done the best coaching job of his career.

Picked eighth in the Preseason Big West Conference Coaches Poll after finishing his first season at LBSU 6-25, Monson led a team with four true freshmen in the regular rotation, including three freshmen starters at the end of the season, to a nine-win improvement with a 15-15 record and a second-place finish in the Big West Conference. All this despite losing Donovan Morris, an All-Big West selection after Monson's first season, for a big portion of the conference schedule.

Anderson became the first freshman to be named first-team All-Big West since LBSU's Clifton Pondexter earned the honor following the 1973-74 season. Anderson also became just the third 49er to be named Big West Freshman of the Year joining Lucious Harris (1990) and James Cotton (1994).

Robinson and Ware joined Anderson on the five-player Big West All-Freshman Team to mark the second time three 49ers made the all-freshman team in the same 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 The Beach.

Monson has been a Division I head coach for 14 years, during which he has compiled a career record of 230-191 (.546), with eight 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-1990's 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 (11), a daughter, Mollie (9), a son, Maddox (8) and a daughter, McKenna (6).