Sure hope he brings this guy with him...
Ron Coleman
Assistant Coach, 2011 - Present
Ron Coleman begins his first season with the Rams as an assistant coach. Coleman will work with the guards, be involved in scouting and game preparation along with sharing recruiting responsibilities.
Coleman, a former collegiate standout at Weber State University and Lamar University, joins the Colorado State staff after serving as a top prep and AAU basketball coach in his native Chicago.
"I feel like we hit a home run with Ron joining CSU basketball," said Miles. "He was valuable part of the storied tradition of Illinois high school basketball in recent years. He comes from two great programs: Mac Irvin Fire in AAU basketball and Whitney M. Young, which he helped into a national power in the high school ranks. He is an excellent coach and teacher of the game. He will model the right things for our student-athletes. We are very excited to add Ron to CSU basketball.
A 1992 graduate of Chicago's South Shore Career Academy, Coleman continued his basketball playing career at Weber State, where he saw action in 25 games for the Wildcats as a true freshman during the 1992-93 season. While at WSU, Coleman averaged 8.9 points and 3.3 assists per game while helping the team to a 20-8 record and earning Big Sky Conference Co-Freshman of the Year honors.
Coleman transferred to Lamar University as a sophomore and after sitting out the 1993-94 season (per NCAA transfer rules), he led the Cardinals to a very successful three-year stretch from 1994-97, earning three consecutive first-team all-Sun Belt Conference nods as LU's leading scorer each season, and ranking among the program's top-10 career scorers with 1,316 points in 81 career games.
Coleman earned his degree from Lamar, a bachelor's of applied arts and science, in May of 1997, and began a seven-year professional playing career that saw the 6-4 guard play stints domestically with the NBA's Houston Rockets and the Grand Rapids Hoops of the Continental Basketball Association. Coleman also played overseas in Finland and in the top league in Latvia before returning to the United States to coach in the high school and AAU ranks in talent-rich Chicago.
Since 2005, Coleman has been the head coach of Chicago's AAU Mac Irvin Fire, developing the squad into one of the top AAU programs in the country. Coleman's team earned top-3 overall finishes at the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League in 2009-10. While coaching the Fire, Coleman has developed some of the top prep players in the country, including four McDonald's All-Americans, four Illinois Players of the Year, and 15 players that participated in the NBA Players Association Top-100 camp and the LeBron James Skills Academy between 2007 and 2010.
Coleman has also had much success in the high school coaching ranks in Chicago, first as the head coach at Benjamin E. Mays Academy (2006-07) and most recently the associate head coach at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School.
At Mays, he led the program to a 35-0 season, taking home top honors as the District 299 City Championship before moving to national power Whitney M. Young as the associate head coach. From 2007-11, he helped guide the program to four consecutive national top-25 finishes, and earned an Illinois state championship during the 2008-09 season.
At Young, Coleman was directly responsible for preseason and postseason workouts, and player skill development, polishing the skills of several highly touted collegiate recruits and helping 11 players - Stan Brown (Lamar), Chris Colvin (Iowa State/Arizona State), Luke Hager (UNC-Wilmington), Brian Hall (Northern Illinois), Anthony Johnson (Purdue), Marcus Jordan (Central Florida), Kwai Pearson (UC-Bakersfield), James Reynolds (Rice), A.J. Rompza (Central Florida), Ahmad Starks (Oregon State), and Sam Thompson (Ohio State) – earn NCAA DI scholarships over the past three seasons.
In addition to his work at the prep level, Coleman has trained and developed several of the world's top basketball players, most recently working with Shawn Marion of the Dallas Mavericks leading up to the franchise's 2011 NBA Championship.
Coach Miles on Ron: "I feel like we hit a home run with Ron joining CSU basketball. He was a valuable part of the storied tradition of Illinois high school basketball in recent years. He comes from two great programs: Mac Irvin Fire in AAU basketball and Whitney M. Young, which he helped into a national power in the high school ranks. He is an excellent coach and teacher of the game. He will model the right things for our student-athletes. We are very excited to add Ron to CSU basketball."
T_O_B
G>B>R
