PULLMAN, Wash. – Washington State men’s basketball’s Tim Marrion has been elevated from coordinator of basketball operations to assistant coach, while assistant coordinator of basketball operations, Kenny Tripp, has been named the coordinator of basketball operations, WSU head coach Ernie Kent announced Thursday.
“Tim is a tireless worker with an extremely high basketball IQ who has been a part of Washington State men’s basketball on-and-off for the last 10 years,” Kent said. “He has a great relationship with the players, support staff and both the campus and Pullman communities and we’re happy to have him as an assistant coach.”
Marrion is currently in his third full-time stint with the WSU men’s basketball program, as he returned to his alma mater in September of 2016 to assume the role of coordinator of basketball operations. Marrion previously served on the WSU men’s basketball staff as the team’s director of player development under then-head coach Ken Bone, during the 2013-14 season. Prior to that, he was the coordinator of operations for Cougar basketball from spring of 2009 until the summer of 2012.
Marrion is no stranger to coaching. Following the 2013-14 season at Washington State, he served as the men’s basketball associate head coach at Clark College at Vancouver during the 2014-15 season. Between his first two times at WSU, Marrion served as an assistant men’s basketball coach at San Jose State during the 2012-13 season, his second stint with the Spartans. Before returning to WSU the first time, Marrion spent the previous three seasons on the men’s basketball staff at San Jose State University. He originally joined the Spartan basketball program for the 2006-07 season as an administrative assistant and was promoted to an assistant coaching position for the 2007-08 season. At age 22 at the time of his appointment, he was believed to be the youngest full-time assistant in Division I men’s basketball.
Prior to joining the SJSU staff, Marrion spent three seasons at WSU as a student assistant for the basketball team. He received his bachelor’s degree in sport management with a minor in leadership studies from Washington State in just three years, graduating in 2006. He earned his master’s degree in sports leadership from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pa.
Tripp joined the staff over the summer, after one year as an assistant coach for Division II Metropolitan State University of Denver in 2017-18. Prior to his stint with the Roadrunners, Tripp served as a graduate assistant for the men’s basketball program at Division II Regis University at Denver, Colo., for two years (2015-17).
His graduate assistantship followed four years as a student manager at the University of Nevada. A native of Sacramento, Calif., Tripp earned his bachelor’s degree in business management from Nevada in 2015, and in 2017 earned his Master of Business Administration (MBA) with an emphasis in strategic management from Regis.
