Cuonzo Martin

Cuonzo Martin, head basketball coach at Missouri State, was appointed Tennessee head basketball coach on March 28, 2011, succeeding the fired Bruce Pearl. Martin played guard at Purdue from 1991 to 1995, earning first-team All Big Ten honors his senior year. He was drafted number 57 in the second round of the NBA draft by the Atlanta Hawks. He played briefly for the Vancouver Grizzlies and the Milwaukee Bucks, and then for the Grand Rapids (Michigan) Hoops in the Continental Basketball Association. In 1997 he played for the Felize Scandone in Avelino, Italy.

In 2000 he became an assistant coach at Purdue and was associate head coach in 2007–08. In 2008 he became head coach at Missouri State University, where he had a 61-41 record in three years and won the Missouri Valley Conference regular season title in 2010–11, with a 26-9 record.

He holds the bachelor’s degree in restaurant, hotel, institutional, and tourism management from Purdue (2000). A cancer survivor, Martin was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in November 1997 and was treated for a malignant tumor between his heart and lungs. He received his last treatment in 1998.

During the 2013–14 season, with Bruce Pearl’s ban for coaching set to expire in August 2014 and the basketball team struggling, an online petition was circulated requesting Athletics Director Dave Hart to fire Martin and rehire Pearl. The petition garnered some thirty-five thousand signatures. Hart failed to enthusiastically endorse Martin or to put to rest the possibility that Pearl could be rehired. Martin’s team squeaked into the NCAA tournament game and played to a Sweet Sixteen berth, gathering fan approval and enthusiasm for the team and Martin. Following the tournament, Hart offered a contract extension and a $500,000 raise, which would have put Martin in the middle of the salary range of SEC head basketball coaches. After turning aside overtures from Marquette, Martin appeared ready to sign the new agreement, but announced on April 15 that he was leaving UT to become the new basketball head coach at the University of California, Berkeley, not having signed the new contract. The existing contract required a $1.4 million payment to UT to hire Martin away.

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  • Title Cuonzo Martin
  • Author
  • Keywords Cuonzo Martin
  • Website Name Volopedia
  • Publisher University of Tennessee Libraries
  • URL
  • Access Date July 17, 2025
  • Original Published Date
  • Date of Last Update October 9, 2018