Montana State University has extended the contracts of head basketball coaches Tricia Binford and Brad Huse and head football coach Rob Ash by three years for each, MSU Director of Athletics Peter Fields announced Wednesday.
“Tricia and Brad and Rob have been very successful coaches who have brought tremendous stability to their programs,” Fields said. “Their teams consistently compete for conference championships and their student-athletes have also succeeded academically and socially,” Fields said. “They are each committed to operating their program the way Montana State University asks them to, and I'm happy that the University is committing to each of them.”
Binford completed her fifth season as Bobcat women's basketball coach in 2010, leading MSU to the Big Sky Championship Game in two of the past three seasons. Binford's 67 career wins is third in school history, and at the completion of the 2010-11 season will join Judy Spoelstra as the longest-tenured head coaches in school history. Her teams annually rank among the top 10 women's basketball programs in the nation in cumulative grade point average.
Huse has led the Bobcat men's basketball program to consistent success early in his career, becoming only the second coach in school history to lead MSU to the Big Sky Tournament in each of his first four seasons as head coach. MSU's 10 conference wins last season marked only the seventh time the program has hit that benchmark in the past 40 years, and Huse led the Bobcats to the Big Sky Conference Championship Game in 2009. Huse owns a career mark of 239-145 in his 12-year coaching career, and is 55-65 in his four seasons at Montana State.
Ash arrived at Montana State in the summer of 2007 and has guided the Bobcats to three consecutive winning seasons, the first Bobcat coach to do so in his first three seasons leading the MSU program since Herb Agocs from 1958-62. Already the wins leader for two different football programs, Drake and Juniata, Ash has more wins after three seasons as Bobcat coach than any coach in school history.
