Daniel Lloyd Monson (born October 6, 1961) is an American college basketball coach serving as the head coach at Long Beach State since April 2007. Previously he was head coach at Minnesota for over seven seasons (1999–2006), reaching postseason play five times. Before coaching the Gophers, he was the head coach at Gonzaga for two seasons, leading the Zags on an improbable run to the Elite Eight during his last season.
Early years
Monson is the son of college basketball coach Don Monson, and spent most of his early years in eastern Washington, where his father was a successful high school head coach in Cheney and Pasco for 18 seasons. At age 14, the family moved from Pasco to East Lansing, Michigan, where Don was an assistant coach for Jud Heathcote at Michigan State for two seasons.
They moved to Moscow, Idaho at the start of his junior year, when his father became the head coach of his alma mater, the University of Idaho, in August 1978. He graduated from Moscow High School in 1980 and played college football a few blocks away as a receiver for the Idaho Vandals, then under head coach Jerry Davitch. Monson suffered a knee injury that ended his playing career, and focused on coaching; he graduated from Idaho with a degree in secondary education (mathematics) in 1985.
Coaching career
After graduation, Monson was a high school coach (and math teacher) in Oregon City for a season, then became a collegiate graduate assistant under Gene Bartow at UAB in 1986, where he earned a master's degree in education.
Gonzaga
Monson began at GU as an assistant coach in 1988 and was elevated to associate head coach under head coach Dan Fitzgerald in 1994; in all, Monson spent eleven years helping build the Gonzaga program. As an assistant, Monson was a key figure in the Bulldogs turnaround during the 1990s. Gonzaga had a record of over ten 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. For all of this, Monson was promoted to head coach of the Zags in 1997.
His first year as head coach at Gonzaga (1997–98) resulted in a 24–10 mark, as the Bulldogs won the West Coast Conference championship and advanced to the second round of the NIT. On their way to setting a school-record with its 24 wins, Monson was named the WCC Coach of the Year and National Rookie Coach of the Year by Basketball Times.
The 1999 team brought Gonzaga basketball to national prominence with an impressive run in the NCAA tournament. In the West regional, the tenth-seeded Zags defeated 7th-seed Minnesota and second-seed #7 Stanford in the Seattle sub-regional, then sixth-seed Florida in the Sweet Sixteen round in Phoenix. Gonzaga advanced to the regional final (Elite Eight), taking the region's top seed, eventual national champion Connecticut, down to the last minute, losing by five points.
While at the helm at Gonzaga, Monson had a record in his two seasons and won both regular season titles.
Minnesota
Monson became one of the more sought-after coaching candidates in college basketball in the spring of 1999. After Gonzaga's improbable run to the Elite Eight, he signed a new contract in mid-April, then was offered the head coaching position at the University of Minnesota in late July, which he accepted. University president Mark Yudof was hoping that Monson would be able to help the program move past the scandals of previous head coach Clem Haskins. In the previous season, Gonzaga had defeated Minnesota in the first round of the NCAA tournament after several Gopher players were forced to sit out due to an academic fraud investigation. Mark Few, Monson's top assistant, succeeded him at Gonzaga. Monson also had ties to Minnesota already, as his father Don was born in rural Menagha.
In April 2002, Monson was courted by the University of Washington in Seattle to coach the Huskies and return to his home state of Washington. Monson initially accepted the offer presented by Huskies AD Barbara Hedges to succeed Bob Bender. The Minnesota athletic department, under Tom Moe, convinced Monson to change his mind and stay on with Minnesota. In the end, Monson decided to return to Minnesota because he didn't feel he had given enough time to the rebuilding effort at Minnesota and hadn't yet attained enough success with the team. Washington ultimately hired Lorenzo Romar.