Taylor Meeks
Sports Writer
Last Tuesday, Idaho State University’s Athletic Director Pauline Thiros announced that Bill Evans, the head coach of the men’s basketball program, will not have his contract renewed for another season. The contract will expire in early May.
For the past seven seasons, Evans tallied a 71-141 overall record and a 46-83 Big Sky Conference record as the head coach.
“Bill has been such a good coach in terms of all the things that happened off the court such as academics, running a program with high integrity, treating his guys well and all the things that we want,” Thiros said. “But, knowing that five of the last seven years we’ve finished 10th or 11th in the Big Sky, I feel like we can’t get comfortable at the bottom of the conference like that and we need to turn the dial in terms of winning.”
Evans has coached for 36 years. He began his coaching career as the head mentor at Port Sulphur High School in New Orleans from 1977-83 and had a six-year record of 112-47.
From there, Evans became a volunteer assistant coach at Southern Utah State College in the 1983-84 season. During the completion of his master’s degree in athletic administration from Idaho State, he was a graduate assistant for the program from 1984-85.
He returned to SUU for another year as the assistant coach before coaching at University of Alaska-Anchorage from 1986-90.
Evans became SUU’s head coach from 1992-2007. As the 22nd coach in the program, he became the winningest coach in Thunderbird history with 209 victories. He was also named coach of the year four times and guided SUU to the programs first and only NCAA tournament berth in 2001, finishing the season 25-6.
After moving to Missoula and being an assistant coach at Montana for four years, where he led the team’s defense, he landed at ISU in March of 2012.
“Bill loves Idaho State and I think that he will be a loyal Bengal for as long as possible,” Thiros said. “I feel like my job is to give our guys the best opportunity to be successful on the court, and I felt like a change was just necessary on that end.”
Despite a losing record with the Bengals, Evans has helped the men’s basketball program accomplish great feats. He graduated all 18 of his seniors as well as regularly holding a grade point average of 3.0 or above.
After the 2017-18 season, the Bengals were one of only 41 Division I programs to have a GPA of 3.0 or better. On top of this, the team was one of only 12 schools to have five players or more recognized by the NABC Honors Court for academic excellence.
For the 2017 spring semester, the team had its highest GPA in program history, a 3.36. In the 2015-16 season, a record of six players earned Big Sky All-Academic honors. The team also received the team academic excellence award by the NABC for the 2014-15 season.
“My hope is that we continue to move towards excellence and that we win more games,” Thiros said. “I think that there’s a real recognition of the responsibility of a coach to be great at things off the court, have a high integrity program, but also be committed to excellence on the court and begin to elevate our place in the Big Sky.”
On the court, Evans coached the team to be one of the best defensive teams in the conference. In the 2012-13 season, ISU finished the year second overall in scoring defense, giving up only 64.3 points a game, making it the best mark by an ISU team since before the shot clock era.
Evans’ best season was the 2015-16 season when the Bengals finished 16-15 overall and 11-7 in conference play, marking it as the sixth best finish since the 1967-77 season and the best winning percentage since the 2000-01 team went 10-6.
“I have a responsibility to support programs and remove obstacles and make it easier for everybody to be successful in those things. Obviously, I think the impact on the program is going to be positive and that it’s the best thing for the student-athletes or we wouldn’t have made a change,” Thiros said. “I think Bill would love to continue to be a Bengal, but I also think that he will be successful in whatever he chooses to do next because that’s the kind of person that he is.”
Evans was named the NABC All-District Coach of the Year as well as the Big Sky Conference Coach of the Year in the 2015-16 season. He is only the fourth ISU coach to be named Big Sky Conference Coach of the Year.
Since Evans became head coach, ISU has seen a number of star athletes. He coached the Big Sky Conference Top Reserve in Brandon Boyd for the 2017-18 season, and Jared Stutzman earned third-team all-league honors in the same season as well.
In six years of living in Pocatello, Evans has coached six all-conference players in Ethan Telfair, Chris Hansen, Geno Luzcando, Stutzman, Boyd and Jeffrey Solarin.
“We are trying to move quickly, and I think it’s important for players to understand what their future is going to look like,” Thiros said. “I am hoping that within a couple of weeks, we will be able to make an announcement about a new head coach. With that being said, we will take the time that we need to find the right candidate, but we want to get this done within the next two to three weeks.
