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Women's Basketball

Huddle
Team_Huddle_Northern_Colorado_11-20-18
Photo by: Nick Monaghan
Williams_Ryun_Northern_Colorado_11-14-18_WBB_Web
Photo by: Nick Monaghan
Ryun Williams
Ryun Williams
Jamie Bonnarens, Annie Brady, Katia Stamatelopoulc
Ryun WIlliams
Ryun WIlliams
Ryun WIlliams
Ryun WIlliams
Huddle
Team_Huddle_Northern_Colorado_11-20-18
Photo by: Nick Monaghan
Ryun Williams
Ryun Williams
  • Title:
    Head Coach
  • Email:
    ryun.williams@colostate.edu
  • Phone:
    (970) 491-6569
The Colorado State women’s basketball has seen great success under the guidance and direction of Head Coach Ryun Williams, who enters his 12th season with the Rams and his 29th overall as a collegiate head coach in 2023-24.
 
Under Williams’ guidance, the Colorado State women’s basketball team has compiled a 212-128 (.624) overall record, including seven seasons with 20-plus victories and five conference championships – most of any coach in program history. His 212 victories in the Green and Gold make him the only coach in program history to surpass 200 wins and one-of-two active head coaches in the Mountain West.
 
While at Colorado State, Williams coached 21 All-Mountain West honorees, which is this most in the Mountain West era. Even more, Williams has coached all four of Colorado State’s Mountain West Player of the Year award winners. He also has coached three-consecutive Newcomers of the Year, a Freshman of the Year and a pair of Sixth Man Player of the Year honorees, as well as seven All-Defensive team members and three All-Freshman team members.
 
With his success comes seven postseason appearances in both the NCAA Tournament and the Women's National Invitational Tournament (WNIT), including a run of five seasons from 2014-18.
 
The 2013-14 season saw the Rams return to the postseason and WNIT for the first time since 2004 in Williams’ second season after winning the Mountain West regular season – which started a four-year run of regular season and/or tournament championships. Williams also was named the Mountain West Coach of the Year and District Coach of the Year that season.
 
Williams earned his second Mountain West Coach of the Year award after the 2015-16 season when his team won a program record 28-straight games, which shattered the previous record of 19 consecutive, and held a perfect 15-0 mark while in Moby Arena – just the second time in program history (1998-99).
 
With the tear of success, the Rams carried their 15-consectuive home wins into the 2016-17 season and extended it to 21 victories before a loss on New Year’s Eve snapped the streak.
 
Williams has compiled an impressive 524-319 (.622) career record, with stops at South Dakota (2008-12), Wayne State College (1998-2008) and Sheridan College (1995-98). Williams’ basketball teams have recorded 13 campaigns with 20-or-more victories, 11 postseason berths and five conference championships.

Before coming to Colorado State, Williams was most recently head coach at his alma mater, South Dakota from 2008-12. In four seasons, Williams led the Coyotes to a highly successful stretch during their transition to Division I competition and helped them become one of the nation’s premier defensive teams.

A staple of the Coyotes under Williams was team defense, and in 2011-12, the Coyotes were one of the nation’s premier defensive teams. USD ranked second nationally in blocks per game (7.3), eighth in field-goal defense (33.2) and 12th in scoring defense (52.3), as well as tops in the Summit League in all three categories. That season, the Coyotes qualified for the WNIT for the first time as a Division I program, marking their second straight postseason following a WBI appearance in 2010-11. South Dakota finished with a No. 97 rank in the RPI in 2011-12, the second-best RPI of any Summit League team that season as well as the highest RPI in school history.

Prior to arriving at USD in 2008, Williams spent 10 seasons at Wayne State (Neb.), building that program into a perennial contender in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference. Wayne State, which had won just 13 games combined over the previous two seasons, recorded 20 wins or more in three of Williams’ final four seasons and made appearances in the NCAA Division II North Central Region tournament in two of his last three seasons. While at Wayne State, Williams compiled a 182-106 record (.632) and became the winningest women’s basketball coach in school history.

Before taking over at Wayne State, Williams started his women’s basketball head coaching career at Sheridan College (Wyo.) from 1995-98. During his tenure, Williams received a Region IX Coach of the Year nod and was named the Wyoming Conference Coach of the Year twice. After his first season in 1995-96, he nearly tripled his win totals in the next season posting a 19-12 mark. In his final season, he finished with a 28-5 record – a 21-win difference from his first season to his last.

Williams also served as the volleyball head coach and men’s basketball assistant coach in 1993 at Sheridan. In his time as the head coach of the volleyball program he put together a 117-66 record. In 1995, Sheridan volleyball went 42-8, won the Region IX title and finished fifth at the junior college national tournament. Williams garnered Wyoming Conference and Region IX Coach of the Year honors in 1994 and 1995.

Sheridan is also where Williams began his collegiate playing career. He played basketball for two seasons at Sheridan, where he was an All-Region IX player as a sophomore, before transferring to South Dakota. Notably, Williams was an All-NCC selection and once led the nation in free throw percentage (91.2). As a high school senior at Campbell County High School, he was named Mr. Basketball for the state of Wyoming in 1988.

A native of Gillette, Wyo., Williams earned his associate’s degree from Sheridan in 1990, his bachelor’s degree from South Dakota in 1992 and his master’s degree from South Dakota in 1997. Williams and his wife, Lyndy, have two daughters, Natalie and Emily.