Thorsten Leibenath (born 7 April 1975) is a German former basketball coach and basketball player. He is the Sports Director of ratiopharm Ulm in the German

Basketball Bundesliga The Basketball Bundesliga (BBL) (English language: ''Federal Basketball League''), for sponsorship reasons named easyCredit BBL, is the highest level league of professional club basketball in Germany. The league comprises 18 teams. A BBL season ...

. Leibenath coached the Ulm basketball team for eight years, spanning from 2011 until 2019.

Coaching career

Leibenath began his coaching career at TV Lich, a second-division team in Germany. With TV Lich, Leibenath won the championship, promoting the club to the first division. After his stint with TV Lich, Leibenath moved to Gießen 46ers where he worked as an assistant coach for six seasons. During the 2006-07 season the German was head coach of the Scottish Rocks in the British Basketball League. At the end of his first season in British basketball, Leibenath reached the

BBL Cup The British Basketball League Cup, often shortened to the BBL Cup, is an annual cup competition for British basketball teams organised by the United Kingdom's top professional league, the British Basketball League. It is one of two peripheral com ...

final, eventually losing to Guildford Heat 82-79, while also finishing 4th in the League Championship, and lead the Rocks to the BBL Playoff final, losing eventually to Newcastle Eagles. He also picked up the BBL Coach of the Month award for March 2007. In 2008, Leibenath returned to Germany, taking over as head coach of

Artland Dragons QTSV Quakenbrück, representing its professional team as Artland Dragons, is a basketball club based in Quakenbrück, Germany. Their home arena was the Artland Arena, which has room for 3,000 spectators. From 2003 till 2015 the club played in the ...

basketball team. While playing in the EuroCup and the EuroChallenge in the 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 season, the club only ranked 9th in the regular season in both years, missing the

play-offs. In May 2010, team management decided to release Leibenath who moved to GiroLive-Ballers Osnabrück in the German Pro-A league (lower division). In May 2011, Leibenath signed as head coach with ratiopharm Ulm in the German

. In the 2016-17 season, he led Ulm to a Bundesliga all-time best winning streak of 27 games and was honored as Bundesliga Coach of the Year. In March 2019, it was announced that Leibenath would step down after the end of the season and would assume the function of Sports Director at ratiopharm Ulm.

References

External links

Profile of Leibenath
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leibenath, Thorsten 1975 births Living people German basketball coaches German men's basketball players Sportspeople from Leverkusen Ratiopharm Ulm coaches