A familiar name and face is returning to Wyoming men’s basketball, as head coach Allen Edwards has hired Matt Wise as his new assistant coach Wednesday.

Matt Wise, Wyoming Basketball, Wyoming Cowboys, Assistant Coach
Courtesy: Little Rock Athletics
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Wise was the assistant director for player development from 2013-2018 under head coaches Larry Shyatt and Allen Edwards.

This past season he spent at Little Rock in Arkansas as an assistant coach on Darrell Walker’s staff.

Wise admitted he had no pause in making a decision to return to Laramie for this position.

“Having worked with Coach Edwards directly, I genuinely mean there was zero hesitation. He is about the right things. He treats people the right way. He’s a great motivator and inspiring, a brilliant basketball mind, and one of the closest mentors I have in this profession.”

Wise feels his familiarity with the system and culture at UW was a big reason why he received a call. He’ll be stepping in alongside current assistant Jeremy Shyatt and helping with the offense, playing a pivotal role in player development, and then a lot of game-planning, and trying to find ways to win games.

In a release from the University of Wyoming Edwards said, "We are very excited to bring Matt Wise back to the University of Wyoming. He did an excellent job on the staff under both myself and coach Shyatt. He is very familiar with what we want to do here in Laramie and has tremendous potential. Coach Wise has one of the best basketball minds I have been around and it was a no brainer to bring him back to our program."

Wise called the Gem City home.

“I spent more years in Laramie than I did in college. We have such an affection for us. That’s where we lived while my wife and I were married. It’s where we lived while our first child was born. Obviously, we had some great highs, winning the CBI championship and winning the Mountain West tournament. I had such an affinity, and high opinion of Coach Edwards, it was an absolute no brainer to come back home and to come back to Coach Edwards.”

In the last year, Wise was entrusted with player development at Little Rock. He helped coach All-Sun Belt Conference selection, Rajon Tucker. He was the third-leading scorer last season in the league at 20.3 points per game.

“It was a great opportunity for me to really feel out my relationship building on the court with players. That is certainly something I did a lot of off the court at Wyoming. To build those relationships on the court, and then to kind of fine-tune a lot of my on the court coaching. There’s only so much of that you can do watching, and so much more experiencing.”

Wise said looking at the program now from an outside perception, he felt the Pokes didn’t have the numbers last season.

“If you look at how many of their games, there were right in it with five, six minutes to go. I thought that they had plenty of talent, but not the depth of talent. Obviously, that’s going to take a tremendous step forward with the (recruiting) class that’s coming in.”

He compared the current team to the Wyoming squad that won the CBI after Josh Adams’ senior year. Plenty of questions surrounding the team, but Wise hopes it will be ‘success in numbers.’

The graduate of Transylvania University (Division III) in Kentucky. Wise was a graduate assistant at Florida. He has a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s degree in sport management.

Wise and his wife Katie have one daughter, Addison.

Wise replaces Jermaine Kimbrough, who left for Loyola-Chicago last week.

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