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UNI folk hero Ali Farokhmanesh is Colorado State’s new head men’s basketball coach
Fifteen years after making NCAA tournament lore for Northern Iowa, Farokhmanesh’s coaching career advances with the promotion at Colorado State
Mar. 27, 2025 1:35 pm, Updated: Mar. 27, 2025 2:03 pm
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Ali Farokhmanesh, who produced one of the more-memorable moments in NCAA tournament history for Northern Iowa, is the new men’s basketball head coach at Colorado State.
Farokhmanesh, 36, attended West High in Iowa City before playing at Indian Hills Community College for a year, Kirkwood Community College for a year, and UNI for two.
He played on two NCAA tournament teams for the Panthers. In 2020, he made a 3-pointer against Kansas with 35 seconds left in his No. 9-seeded team’s 69-67 second-round win over the No. 1-seed Jayhawks in Oklahoma City.
UNI had the ball and a 63-62 lead at the time and conventional thinking would have been to run down the clock. But Farokhmanesh, who made 152 threes in averaging 9.7 points in his UNI career, was open and didn’t hesitate.
That was two days after he made a deep 3-pointer with 4.9 seconds left that was the difference in UNI’s 69-66 first-round win over UNLV.
Farokhmanesh played professionally for four years in Europe, worked on Nebraska’s men’s basketball staff for three years, then he became an assistant coach for Niko Medved at Drake. Medved took Farokhmanesh with him to Colorado State in 2018, where they were together until Medved recently took the coaching job at Minnesota.
The Rams were 143-85 in Medved’s seven years at CSU. They lost a second-round NCAA tournament game to Maryland at the buzzer.
Farokhmanesh, who had been CSU’s associate head coach, got a five-year, $4.5 million contract to replace Medved.
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