ISU Men's Basketball Camps
Head Coach Ryan Looney
Ryan Looney enters his fifth year at Idaho State. Looney is the 22nd head coach in the history of the Idaho State men’s basketball program after his hiring in April of 2019. During his first season in Pocatello, Looney led the Bengals to their first Big Sky tournament victory since 2009.
Before Idaho State, Looney was a head coach at the Division II and NAIA levels for 15 years and compiled an impressive 330-132 record (.714 winning percentage) and a 198-82 record in conference games (.707 winning percentage).
Looney comes to Pocatello after spending three years as the head coach at Point Loma Nazarene.
In the 2018-19 season, Point Loma finished 31-5 and 20-2 in PacWest Conference play and competed in the Division II National Championship game.
Looney recruited and developed the NCAA Division II Player of the Year Daulton Hommes. Hommes averaged 21.9 points and 5.8 rebounds per game while shooting .533 percent from the field and .470 percent from 3-point range. He was even better in the NCAA Tournament. He averaged 23.5 ppg and shot .526 percent from behind the arc (20-of-38).
During the 2017-18, Looney guided PLNU to a 21-10 record with a 15-5 mark in the PacWest and earning the No. 8 seed as an at-large bid into the NCAA West Regional. The Sea Lions concluded the 2016-17 season with a 17-13 record.
He also helped guide Point Loma to the nation's best rebounding margin as PLNU led all of NCAA Division II at plus-11.9.
Before Point Loma, Looney spent seven seasons as the head coach at Seattle Pacific. During each season as the head coach, the Falcons won at least 20 games with an NCAA West Regional appearance each season. With his team winning the league title in both 2010 and 2014, Looney was a two-time Great Northwest Athletic Conference Coach of the Year. The Falcons also won three straight GNAC Tournament Championships (2013-15) with a 164-51 overall record (.763 winning percentage), the best winning percentage in school history. Off the court, Looney emphasizes great academic success as he led the Falcons to receive three consecutive Team Academic Excellence Award from the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC). SPU compiled a 3.41 combined GPA and earned the GNAC trophy for posting the top GPA among the league’s men’s basketball teams for the fifth consecutive season.
Prior to joining SPU, Looney coached at his alma mater of Eastern Oregon University. As a coach, he led the Mountaineers to back-to-back NAIA Tournament appearances and their first conference title in 38 years.
Looney graduated from EOU in 1998 and earned his master's degree in sports administration from Wisconsin-LaCrosse in 2001. He is married to Julianna, and the couple has two children, daughter Peyton and son Micah.