After an extensive national search, Missouri State University announced Cuonzo Martin as its next men’s basketball head coach on March 27, 2024. The man who orchestrated Missouri State’s only Missouri Valley Conference regular-season championship run during his first tenure in Springfield from 2008 to 2011 returned to the program in 2024-25.
Now in the second year of his second tenure at MoState -- and fifth season overall with the Bears -- Martin begins the 2025-26 season with a 273-221 (.553) career record in 15 seasons as a Division I head coach at MSU, Tennessee, California and Missouri. His teams have made nine postseason appearances in that span, including four trips to the NCAA Tournament, four appearances in the NIT, and a CIT title with the Bears in 2010. Martin also led the Bears to a 2011 Missouri Valley Conference regular-season championship and boasts 56 college graduates during his head coaching career.
Martin’s Bears teams have combined for a total record of 70-64 (.522) in his previous five seasons at Missouri State.
A native of East St. Louis, Ill., Martin was a star player at Purdue from 1991-95 for coach Gene Keady and then played four years professionally. He was on the coaching staff at Purdue for eight years under Keady and Matt Painter before accepting his first head coaching position at Missouri State on March 26, 2008.
In Martin’s first stint in Springfield (2008-11), he was named Missouri State’s 16th head coach in time for the program’s 100th anniversary year and the inaugural season of Great Southern Bank Arena in 2008-09. In his second season (2009-10), Martin guided MoState to a 24-12 overall ledger, a 19-2 home record, and an impressive run to the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament title.
His third season at MSU in 2010-11 was one of the program’s most memorable, as the Bears finished 26-9 overall on the way to the program’s first-ever MVC regular-season title with a 15-3 league record. The Bears fell to Indiana State in the finals of the MVC Tournament in St. Louis and capped an unforgettable campaign by advancing to the second round of the National Invitation Tournament. Martin was named 2011 MVC Coach of the Year, making him the only MSU sideline boss to receive that honor, as well as claiming the 2011 Ben Jobe Award as the nation’s top minority head coach. Over Martin’s last two seasons in Springfield, the Bears were 36-3 at home and did not lose a non-conference home game during that span.
Martin made three head coaching stops after initially leaving Springfield with stints at Tennessee (2011-14), California (2014-17) and Missouri (2017-22).
In three seasons at Tennessee, Martin guided the Volunteers to a 63-41 (.606) overall record with three postseason appearances and three finishes in the top five in the SEC Standings. The Vols finished second in the SEC in Martin’s first season in Knoxville after being picked 11th in the SEC preseason poll. After back-to-back NIT appearances in his first two years as the Volunteers head coach, Martin led Tennessee to a 24-13 record in 2013-14 with an NCAA Sweet 16 trip and a No. 23 national ranking in the season-ending USA Today coaches poll. In the process, Tennessee matched the fourth-best win total in school history. After earning a berth in the NCAA’s First Four, the Martin-led Volunteers captured victories over Iowa, UMass and Mercer to equal the most NCAA Tournament wins in program history.
At Cal, Martin led the Golden Bears to a 21-13 mark and NIT appearance in his final season, guiding the 2016-17 squad into the Associated Press Top 25 in the season’s second poll while receiving votes in nearly every USA Today coaches poll that year. His squad boasted four All-Pac-12 players, including first-team selection Ivan Rabb. His 2015-16 club went 23-11 and tied for third in the Pac-12 en route to a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament, the highest in program history. The Golden Bears parlayed a consensus top 10 recruiting class into an 18-0 record at Haas Pavilion as part of a school-record 27-game home win streak over Martin’s last two campaigns in Berkeley with Cal leading the Pac-12 in both scoring defense (67.3 ppg) and field-goal percentage defense (.396) in year two. Martin was 62-39 (.614) during his three-year tenure at Cal.
At Missouri (2017-22), Martin took over a program that had won just 27 games in the previous three seasons. The Tigers went from eight wins before his arrival to 20 victories in Martin’s first season at the helm (2017-18). His Columbia debut season marked Martin’s seventh 20-win season in a 10-season stretch and made him the 59th head coach in NCAA Tournament history to lead three different programs to the Big Dance. He later led the Tigers to a second NCAA Tournament run in 2021 as Mizzou spent 11 consecutive weeks in the AP Top 25, reaching as high as No. 10 nationally. The Tigers finished the season with three wins over Top 10 teams and seven Quad 1 victories. He was 78-77 (.503) in his five seasons in Columbia.
“Zo’s” long-anticipated return to Missouri State in 2024-25 saw a complete overhaul of the Bears’ roster with 15 newcomers on hand. The Bears finished 9-23 overall but 14 of MSU’s losses were by less than 10 points, including nine games within two possessions and five games by three points or less. The club’s 14 single-digit losses tied for the fourth-most in the nation. Martin’s son, Chase, joined the Bears as a post-grad transfer from Purdue and was the squad’s only MVC award winner, claiming a spot on the MVC Scholar-Athlete Team.
Martin also has experience as a coach with USA Basketball, serving on the USA Junior National Team staff at the 2011 FISU World University games in China.
As a student-athlete, Martin was a 1995 first-team All-Big Ten selection at Purdue when he averaged 18.4 ppg and sank 91 3-pointers. He graduated as one of the program’s all-time leaders in 3-pointers (179) and among the Boilermakers’ career scoring leaders (1,666). Playing under Keady and alongside All-American Glenn Robinson, Martin led Purdue to a pair of Big Ten titles and to a 90-37 four-year record. The Boilermakers went to the postseason each season with Martin, reaching the Elite Eight of the 1994 NCAA Tournament.
Following his collegiate playing career, Martin was selected by the Atlanta Hawks with the 57th overall pick of the 1995 NBA Draft. He played professionally for four years with the NBA’s Hawks, Milwaukee Bucks and Vancouver Grizzlies. In 1997, Martin was the leading scorer for Felize Scandone in Italy. He then returned to his alma mater where he earned his bachelor’s degree in Restaurant, Hotel, Institutional and Tourism Management from Purdue in 2000, and served one season as an assistant on the staff at West Lafayette High School. After earning his degree, Martin joined Gene Keady’s Purdue staff for the 2000-01 season as an assistant, and remained with the Boilermaker program when Painter took over as head coach. He served as the Boilermaker’s associate during the 2007-08 season before taking the Missouri State post the following season. In his eight-year tenure at Purdue, he mentored several all-conference standouts, including All-American forward Robbie Hummel.
Martin has also served on the NABC Board of Directors, the NCAA Oversight Committee and the SEC’s Council on Racial Equity and Social Justice.
He and his wife, Roberta, have two sons, Joshua and Chase, and a daughter, Addison.
Chase was a member of the 2024 NCAA national runner-up team at Purdue and is a graduate assistant on this year’s Missouri State staff.
