Eric Olen (born October 15, 1980) is an American

college basketball College basketball is basketball that is played by teams of Student athlete, student-athletes at universities and colleges. In the Higher education in the United States, United States, colleges and universities are governed by collegiate athle ...

coach who is the current head men's basketball coach at the University of New Mexico. He was previously the head coach at

UC San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Sc ...

from 2013 to 2025.

Playing career

Olen grew up in

Mobile, Alabama Mobile ( , ) is a city and the county seat of Mobile County, Alabama, United States. The population was 187,041 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. After a successful vote to annex areas west of the city limits in July 2023, Mobil ...

and prepped at McGill–Toolen Catholic High School. Olen went on to play collegiately at

Spring Hill College Spring Hill College is a private Jesuit college in Mobile, Alabama. It was founded in 1830 by Bishop Michael Portier of Mobile. Along with being the oldest private college or university in the state of Alabama, it was the first Catholic college ...

, where he was part of three straight NAIA national tournament appearances for the Badgers, including an Elite Eight appearance in 2000.

Coaching career

Olen joined his former college coach Bill Carr as an assistant at UC San Diego in 2004, and stayed in the role until 2013 before being promoted to head coach after then head coach Chris Carlson left for an administrative role with the

West Coast Conference The West Coast Conference (WCC) — known as the California Basketball Association from 1952 to 1956 and then as the West Coast Athletic Conference until 1989 — is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with NCAA Division I consisting o ...

. Olen has since led the Tritons to three CCAA regular season titles and four consecutive conference tournament titles in addition to four NCAA Division II tournament appearances. He guided the Tritons men's basketball program into its status in NCAA Division I as members of the

Big West Conference The Big West Conference (BWC) is an American collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference whose member institutions participate in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's NCAA Division I, Division I. The conference was origina ...

beginning in 2020-21.

Head coaching record

* Due to the 2020–21 season being the first year of transitioning to DI, games in the Big West did not count towards the Tritons' standings and conference record.

External links

New Mexico Lobos

UC San Diego

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Olen, Eric 1980 births Living people Basketball players from Mobile, Alabama American men's basketball coaches College men's basketball head coaches in the United States Spring Hill Badgers men's basketball players UC San Diego Tritons men's basketball coaches