ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Cuonzo Martin has not held a collegiate head coaching job since he was fired by the University of Missouri in March 2022. That is no longer the case as Martin is on the verge of returning to collegiate coaching and it won't be too far from Columbia, Missouri.
According to ESPN's Pete Thamel, Missouri State University are set to reunite with Martin and are finalizing a deal to him to be the school's next head basketball coach.
Martin previously was the head coach at the school from 2008-2011, where he took the Bears to one NIT tournament in 2011 and won the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament in 2010. The East, St. Louis, Illinois, native was also the last coach at the school to post multiple 20-win seasons during his time in Springfield, Missouri, joining Charles Spoonhour, Steve Alford and Barry Hinson since 1982.
Martin's reunion with Missouri State will be his first coaching job since his firing in March 2022 with the Missouri Tigers. The Tigers were able to make it to two NCAA Tournaments during Martin's five-year tenure in Columbia, Missouri, but his tenure never lived up to expectations of being the program's highest paid coach ever when he resigned from California to join the Tigers on a seven-year deal worth $21 million in 2017, and being able to recruit Michael Porter Jr., one of the top prospects in high school basketball in 2017.
