Former Kings star lays out coaching priorities for Sacramento State basketball
When Mike Bibby was informed by Sacramento State president Luke Wood and athletic director Mark Orr that he was their choice to lead the men’s basketball program, he was overcome with emotion. This was on Monday morning.
The former Sacramento Kings guard became a college coach for the first time, and he let it all out from his home in Phoenix.
“I sat and cried with the family,” Bibby said in a Zoom interview with Sacramento reporters Tuesday. He will be formally introduced to the school and media in a news conference April 1 on campus.
“Sacramento is a second home to me, and every time I come back, they show me love,” Bibby said. “I tried to get the Sac State job two years ago when it was open because I love the area. I played my best years (in the NBA) there. My kids grew up there. It’s storybook coming back to Sacramento, but instead of playing, I’ll be coaching and doing my best to turn it into a winning program.
“Being back in Sacramento is a big deal.”
Bibby’s coaching experience includes six seasons at Shadow Mountain High School in Phoenix, his alma mater. He coached the program to five state championships, the last in 2019, and he has in recent years dabbled in clinics with NBA combines, the G League and through the NBA coaching program. He has also done Kings television work as an analyst.
“This is a no-brainer for me,” Bibby said. “It’s a great situation.”
Bibby’s priorities
Bibby said he will be a teacher of the game — the fundamentals, the practices, the repetition. He said he will use elements of coaching and leadership that he learned from coaching, including Rick Adelman, his coach with the Kings in the early 2000s, and Hall of Famer Pete Carril, who was on Adelman’s staff and was big on ball movement, player movement and the thinking aspect of the game.
Bibby said he wants his teams to play fast on offense, but not to “jack up a ton of 3’s” and to play tenacious defense. He said he will recruit players out of the transfer portal, recruit high school players and invite the players who have already signed national letters of intent with the Hornets during the fall signing period to show him what they have.
This includes Mark Lavrenov, a multiple Sacramento Bee All-Metro from Rocklin High School in Placer County who stands 6-foot-8, weighs 220 pounds and can bang inside and shoot the 3-pointer.
“We’ll definitely hit the portal,” Bibby said. “There’s a lot of promise in younger kids, too, the high school players. I want to see guys play together. We’ll going to look into junior college guys. We’ll look at the Sacramento kids and all of the California high schools.”
Bibby has never been short on confidence. He played that way over 14 NBA seasons, his best seasons coming with the Kings as a steady, poised point guard who could make big shots.
And if he wants a challenge, he’ll have it with this gig. The Hornets moved up from Division II to Division I in 1991 and have suffered more than they have enjoyed.
The program cycled through coaches early in D-I, winning six or fewer games eight times between 1991-92 through 2000-01. The Hornets were competitive under longtime coach Brian Katz from 2008-2021, and he produced the only winning seasons in the D-I era, doing so in 2015 and 2020. They’ve never made the NCAA tournament at the D-I level.
Sacramento State slumped to 7-25 this season, and its 3-15 showing in the Big Sky Conference left the Hornets in last place.
Sacramento State is in the process of transforming the on-campus Well into a 3,200-seat arena, which is expected to be completed by this summer, a far cry from the 1,000-seat gym known as “The Nest,” which is among the poorest university-level facilities in the country.
A new era, new players and a new playing arena excites Bibby. He also understands that part of the pressure of being a big-name, former Kings player in a city that loves this sport is producing results. He expects a winner, and to impact the program similar to what Deion Sanders did in football at Jackson State and the University of Colorado, which includes scores of celebrities and former and current professional athletes stopping by practices and games.
“I told Mark (Orr) and Luke (Wood) that I’m going to turn this around. They’re going to play hard, play for each other, and we’re headed for that NCAA Tournament bid. I have a lot of NBA players who want to send their sons to me to play. We have to change the mindset of the program, so we can be a winner. We can get kids. We’re going to try to have that Deion impact. We’ll have superstars in the building, active NBA players stop by.
“I don’t know if 3,200-seating is enough room to watch these kids play.”
This story was originally published March 25, 2025 at 5:20 PM.