Michigan assistant men’s basketball coach Kyle Church talks to Trey McKenney during a Feb. 11 game Northwestern. Photo credit: TonyTheTiger/Wikipedia Commons
After a 69-63 victory over the UConn Huskies, the Michigan Wolverines, including Riverside graduate Kyle Church, are officially national basketball champions.
This win marks the end of a 37-year championship drought for the Wolverines, and a 26-year championship drought for the Big Ten conference.
Church is the general manager for the Wolverines men’s basketball team.
Assistant athletic director Brian Strickland worked with Church when he was a senior and Strickland was an assistant basketball coach.
“He was one of the hardest working kids I know,” said Strickland. “Every bit of success that he had in basketball was because of his work ethic.”
Church graduated in 2006, then made UNC-Charlotte’s basketball team as a walk-on. He majored in History and in Kinesiology and Sports Performance, then became an graduate assistant coach at Ole Miss in 2010.
From Ole Miss, Church had coaching jobs at Chipola College, University of Florida, Florida Atlantic University, and now the University of Michigan.
Throughout all seasons in Church’s career, his team has never finished with a losing record.
In 2024, he was an assistant coach for the Florida Atlantic University Owls when they went to the Final Four. The Owls went 35-4 in the regular season, then upset two teams to reach the Final Four before losing to San Diego State on a buzzer-beating shot.
This year, the Wolverines went 37-3, earning themselves the 1-seed for the March Madness tournament. During the tournament, only one of the team’s six wins had a differential of or under 10 points, that being the championship game.
“You have families, children, parents, and grandparents who sacrifice to make coaching possible,” Church told UNC-Charlotte’s Luke Zahlmann during a recent interview. “There’s so much more to it than just winning a title.”
