Michael Brown, who served the previous two seasons as Director of Men’s Basketball Operations at Marshall University, has been in college coaching since 2006, when he completed a 10-year career as a professional player overseas.
Hailing from the Syracuse, NY, area, Brown was a star at Providence College, where he played from 1992 to 1996 and earned a degree in accounting. Winner of the 1994 Big East Conference championship, Brown played on teams that reached postseason play in all four of his seasons, taking part in the 1994 NCAA Tournament and three National Invitation Tournaments. A member of the 1992-93 Big East All-Rookie team, he won 35 Big East regular season games in his career, the most of any player in PC history.
At Providence, Brown scored 1,163 points (17th all time), made 167 3-pointers (2nd), had 173 steals (5th) and 359 assists (10th), while appearing in 123 games, the third-highest total in the long and storied history of the Friars.
Beginning in 1996, Brown played professionally for three teams in England, while also coaching three years at a Sixth Form College, a type of school for teenagers aged 16 to 19, who study for advanced school-level qualifications. He won two league championships in his three seasons as head coach.
The last five of his eight seasons in England were spent playing for the Brighton Bears. In 2002-03 at the Bears, Brown helped the squad to a 30-6 record and the British Basketball League crown. He spent his last two professional seasons playing in Greece for AGE Halkidas.
He entered college coaching 2006 at Division III Bowdoin College in Maine, before going to Division I Idaho State for two years. He was an assistant coach at Dartmouth in 2009-10, before moving to Marshall, whose head coach, Tom Herrion, was an assistant at Providence when Brown played there.
In Brown’s two years with the Thundering Herd staff, Marshall won a combined 43 games, including 22 in 2010-11 when the team played in the postseason CollegeInsider.com Tournament and 21 in 2011-12, when the Herd reached the NIT.
At NJIT, Brown succeeds Ira Bowman, who returned to his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, as an assistant coach. Bowman, the 1996 Ivy League Player of the Year and later a player in the NBA for parts of three seasons, joined the Highlander coaching staff for 2008-09, Jim Engles’ first year as head coach, and remained on staff for four seasons, culminating in a trip to the 2012 Great West Conference championship game.
