Wyoming hires Northern Colorado’s Jeff Linder as head coach

Northern Colorado‘s Jeff Linder is the first head coach this spring to jump from one D-I job to another, as he will move up north over the border and into Wyoming and the Mountain West. Linder was 80-50 in four years with the Bears, winning 21+ games in each of the last three seasons and claiming the CIT title in 2018.

“Jeff possesses many important qualities I was looking for in a new head coach for Cowboy Basketball,” AD Tom Burman said Tuesday. “His brand of basketball will be great for our Cowboy fans to watch, as his teams play with great offensive efficiency and play a tough hard-nosed style of defense. We couldn’t be more excited to have Jeff lead Wyoming Basketball into a new era.”

Before he arrived at Northern in 2016, Linder assisted at a number of D-I programs in the West and Pacific Northwest. He was an assistant under Leon Rice for four years at Boise State and started his career at Colorado assisting Ricardo Patton. Originally from Lafayette, Colorado, Linder attended Western Colorado University.

“Having grown up in the region and having coached in the Mountain West Conference it was almost too good to be true when Tom Burman called me,” Linder said in the statement. “We will look to play to our player’s strengths and put them in position to best utilize those strengths. Having coached against the current Wyoming players the past three seasons I am confident that they will really fit and flourish in this system.”

Wyoming moved on from Allen Edwards earlier this month following two-straight sub-.500 seasons. The Cowboys won the CBI in 2017 but haven’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 2015.

credit to Wyoming Athletics for the image