New Jersey Institute of Technology Athletics

HIGHLIGHTS/AWARDS:

Follow on Twitter @CoachJimEngles


2014-15
--National Coach of the Year (John McLendon Award)
--Metropolitan (NY) Basketball Writers Peter A. Carlesimo Coach of the Year
--National finalist for Skip Prosser Man of the Year Award (given for combination of on-court success and moral integrity off the court)
--Led NJIT to the semifinals of the CollegeInsider.com Tournament (won first three rounds for deepest national postseason run in program history)
--Guided Highlanders to 72-70 upset road win at #17/#16 Michigan (program’s first win over a ranked team)
--Won games against teams from nine different Division I conferences, including three against teams that won either their regular season or postseason conference championships.
--21 wins overall; 16-3 from December 30 on; 15-2 at home
 
2012-13
--Great West Conference Coach of the Year
--National finalist for Skip Prosser Man of the Year Award
 
--Great West Conference Champions
 
2011-12
--Great West Conference Tournament championship game
 
2010-11
--One of only 11 coaches to receive a vote for Associated Press National Coach of the Year (voting done by the same panel of sportswriters that votes for the National Top 25)
--National finalist for Skip Prosser Man of the Year Award
 
--Has recruited and coached three Associated Press All-America honorable mention honorees—Isaiah Wilkerson (2011-12), Chris Flores (2012-13), and Damon Lynn (2014-15)
--Has recruited and coached four men playing professional ball internationally (Wilkerson, Mexico in 2014-15, NBA D League prior; Flores, Germany since 2013-14; Daquan Holiday, signed to play in Germany for 2015-16; Sean McCarthy, signed to play in Germany for 2015-16)
 
 
Bio
Few college coaches anywhere, in any sport, have transformed their program the way Jim Engles has since taking over as men’s basketball head coach at New Jersey Institute of Technology on April 10, 2008.
 
Now, it's easy see what the Highlanders have become under Engles’ leadership—a respected Division I program whose players combine mental and physical toughness in all parts of the game with efficient execution of a diverse offensive playbook; a team capable of beating a national Top 25 opponent on the road and capable of winning close games in the crucible of a national postseason tournament play.
 
What’s more difficult, if you weren’t there to witness it, is to appreciate how far the program has come with Engles at the helm.
 
Stepping in at NJIT for the 2008-09 season, he inherited a program that had been 0-29 the year before, in its second season of Division I competition. On top of that, the top two scorers and the top rebounder were gone from the previous year’s winless team.
 
The 0-29 from the previous year had been preceded by four losses at the end of the 2006-07 season. And NJIT was an Independent, with no conference tournament to look forward to. In fact, zero chance at postseason play in those years.
 
In that first year, the improvement was modest in terms of wins (one), but the specter of the program’s long losing streak was put to rest, ending in the 19th game of Engles’ first season as a head coach.
 
The win (61-51 over Bryant on January 21, 2009) attracted national attention, as reporters focused on the Highlanders’ determination in snapping their skid. Engles handled the ensuing coverage with grace, adding to his “good guy” image, earned  in the New Jersey/New York college basketball community and with his co-workers in 18 years as a hard-working assistant coach at three different programs.
 
The losing streak was history, but at least as important, Engles and his staff put in place a regimen that set the tone for future improvement. Even now, with his teams winning more games, the coach has great praise for that first team, praising the players who put their faith in a new coach and continued to buy in, laying the foundation for what came in the games and years that have followed.

From one win in Engles’ first season, the Highlanders won 10 in his second and 15 each in his third and fourth seasons.
 
In his fifth season (2012-13), NJIT men’s basketball reached a new height, winning 16 games. That was up one from the 15 the Highlanders reached the previous two seasons. But included in the record 16 victories was 6-2 a record in the Great West Conference, good for the GWC regular season championship.

Within the 16-13 overall record were losses in four games against teams from the vaunted Big East Conference. In defeat, the NJIT team nonetheless gained credibility. There was a 64-63 loss at Providence. Later, there was an 8-point loss at St John’s in a game the Highlanders trailed by a single point with 3:52 remaining. There was a 9-point loss at Seton Hall and a 10-point loss at Villanova.

After five years of exclusively upward win totals, mathematical reality took over and 2013-14 finally saw an Engles-coached team win fewer games than it had won the season before. Having won 16 games in 2012-13, NJIT made a small drop to 13 in 2013-14.
 
But a look at the facts shows another great coaching job. More than two-thirds of the 2012-13 team’s points went out the door on graduation day, leaving a mostly inexperienced roster for the 2013-14 season, with no seniors and just two juniors.
 
With a still-young squad in 2014-15 (two seniors), the previous season’s learning experiences paid off in a big way as NJIT had a watershed season that would make Engles and his Highlanders a national story, and for all the right reasons.
 
The one day that will never be forgotten in the annals of NJIT athletics was December 6, 2014. The Highlanders had never faced a team in the National Top 25 (when that team was in the Top 25).  On that first Saturday in December, Engles and the Highlanders went into Ann Arbor and stunned one of college basketball's perennial elite programs, Michigan, 72-70 when the Wolverines were ranked #17 in the AP national poll and #16 in the USA Today national poll.

As great as that signature win was, NJIT still had to prove it wasn't a one-off fluke. The Highlanders did exactly that, finishing with 21 victories. The wins came against teams from nine different Division I conferences, including Northeast Conference regular season champion St. Francis Brooklyn, Ivy League co-champion Yale, and Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference champion Hampton, which would win a First Four game in the NCAA Tournament.

The Highlanders were a program-record 15-2 at home, including three consecutive wins in sold-out Fleisher Athletic Center in the CollegeInsider.com Tournament (CIT) to reach the semifinals at Northern Arizona. From December 30 to the end of the season, NJIT's record was 16-3.

Engles was honored by CollegeInsider.com as 2014-15 John McLendon National Coach of the Year and shared the 2014-15 Peter A. Carlesimo Division I Coach of the Year award.  NJIT's Engles was also among 16 finalists for three other CollegeInsider.com awards: Hugh Durham Award, Jim Phelan Award, and Skip Prosser Man of the Year Award.

Damon Lynn, the record-setting sophomore, received honorable mention on the Associated Press 2014-15 All-America team, becoming the third Highlander in four years to be so recognized. He was voted onto the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association Division I second-team (first NJIT men's player to receive All-Met second team) and Eastern College Athletic Conference Division I all-star third team. Lynn is the first player in NJIT history to reach 1,000 career points as a sophomore (1,078).
 
With the 2014-15 season ongoing, New Jersey Institute of Technology announced plans to build a new on-campus Wellness and Events Center, planned to break ground for construction in late 2015 with an eye toward opening in 2017.
 
In the wave of media coverage after the win at Michigan, Engles voiced NJIT’s case to gain admission into a Division I conference and that theme was supported throughout the news media, local, state, and national for the “little engine that could” program which, despite being the only remaining Independent in Division I, had proven its worth where it matters most--in competition.
 
With the plans to build the new $100 million Wellness and Events Center and continuing success on the court gaining national notice in college sports, NJIT got the call to become the eighth full member of the Atlantic Sun Conference, effective July 1, 2015.
 
Commitment, hard work, and attention to detail are a hallmark of Jim Engles’ work ethic. He brought it with him when he signed on at NJIT and it’s what continues to drive him as he prepares for a future with expectations formed by what his program has accomplished.

NJIT is the first head coaching job for Engles, who agreed to lead the Highlanders after having been an assistant coach at the Division I level for 18 years.
    
A 1990 graduate of Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, where he was a three-year letter winner, Engles jumped into coaching at the Division I level in 1991 as a graduate assistant at Wagner College on his native Staten Island, NY. From that point on, he earned the respect of his peers throughout the region.
 
He soon became a full-time assistant at Wagner under head coach Tim Capstraw and remained with the Seahawks through the 1996-97 season, when he moved on to Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ.
 
Engles stayed at Rider from 1997 to 2003, serving as the top assistant under head coach Don Harnum, who is now Rider’s Director of Athletics. From Rider, Engles moved on to Columbia, where he joined the new staff under head coach Joe Jones in 2003-04. Engles was the top assistant coach with the Lions until he was hired to lead NJIT’s fortunes.
 
In two of his stops—Wagner and Columbia, Engles was involved in noteworthy turnarounds. And at Rider, he was with teams that approached 100 total wins in his six-year stint.
 
At Wagner, he was part of the best winning percentage turnaround in all of Division I, as the Seahawks went from four wins in 1990-91 to 16 wins in 1991-92, his first season as a full-time coach. A year later, Wagner played for the Northeast Conference championship and won a school-record 18 games.
 
At Columbia, he was part of a new staff that achieved instant results upon its arrival in 2003-04. The previous season, Columbia was 2-25 overall and winless in 14 Ivy League games. In Engles’ first season, the Lions produced a 10-17 overall record, including a 6-8 mark in the Ivy League.
 
In 2006-07, Columbia posted a 16-12 record, the program’s best in 15 years.  In 2007-08, the Lions were 7-7 in the Ivy League for a second straight year, matching the program’s best league record since it was 10-4 in 1992-93.
 
His six-year run at Rider included the 2001-02 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference regular season title with a 13-5 conference record and Rider’s first-ever berth in the postseason National Invitation Tournament.
 
Engles, who starred at St. Peter’s High School on Staten Island has strong basketball bloodlines. His grandfather, Ken Engles, was a player and coach at Georgetown. And Jim’s uncle, John, was a star at Penn under Hall of Fame coach Chuck Daly.
 
Jim and his wife, Meegan, reside in Convent Station, NJ, with their two daughters, Kelcie and Ryenn.
 
Jim Engles Year-by-Year at NJIT

(last edit Sept. 2015)