Southern Oregon University alum Matt Zosel enters his fourth season as the Raiders’ head men’s basketball coach in 2025-26 on the heels of the best NAIA National Tournament run in program history.
Zosel, who became the 15th head coach in program history in May of 2022, compiled a 60-35 record over his first three seasons and guided SOU to the national tournament in two of them.
His 2024-25 team got into the 64-team bracket as a No. 11 seed and went on to upset three consecutive conference champions – No. 6 seed Montana Tech, No. 3 seed The Master’s and No. 7 seed Keiser. The Raiders won three straight tournament games for the first time in team history and made their third national quarterfinal appearance – but their first since the NAIA’s two-division merger.
The Raiders have been named an NAIA Scholar Team every season under Zosel. He has also led them to three consecutive Cascade Conference Tournament semifinals, going 20-11, 17-13 and 23-11 overall.
Before joining SOU, Zosel served as the head coach at Lane Community College for three seasons and was named the Northwest Athletic Conference's South Region Coach of the Year after the last two of those.
He graduated cum laude with a history degree from SOU in 2002 and was a three-time NAIA Academic All-American for the Raider basketball and football teams. Twenty-three years later, he still stands as the school record-holder for single-season and career field-goal percentage.
His coaching career didn't begin in earnest until 2013. After leaving Ashland, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and completed a 75-week Arabic program before joining the Army's Airborne School. He served for more than seven years as a platoon sergeant on the 75th Ranger Regiment, the Army's premier light infantry force, while earning two Bronze Stars among other commendations. He was also twice selected among the Army's top-100 soldiers to compete in the Best Ranger Competition.
Following a year-long stint as a diplomatic special security agent at the U.S. Department of State – serving on the Secretary of State's protective detail to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Syria; being picked for the U.S. Marshals task force; and conducting high-level criminal investigations – he found his calling as a coach.
Zosel got his start in Illinois as an associate head coach at MacMurray College (2013-14) and Millikin University (2014-15). He landed a graduate assistant position at University of Oregon under Dana Altman by 2015. With the Ducks, he helped develop three current NBA players (Chris Boucher, Dillon Brooks and Tyler Dorsey), and in his second season they advanced to the NCAA Final Four for the first time since 1939.
His next stop was Phoenix, Ariz., where for one year he directed the Jamal Murray Elite AAU program. He then returned to Eugene as an assistant at Lane before taking his first head coaching gig with the Titans in 2019. They went 51-21 over three seasons under Zosel, and celebrated an NWAC South championship with a 24-4 record in 2021-22.