Don Meyer graduated with his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree from the University of Northern Colorado. As a basketball and baseball standout, he was an All-America guard for former Bears men’s basketball coach George Sage, and an All-Conference pitcher on the Northern Colorado baseball team.
He started his coaching career at Western State College of Colorado as an assistant from 1968 to 1970. He made a stop at the University of Utah, where he earned his doctorate in Health & Physical Education. And after another stop at Hamline University, Meyer arrived at David Lipscomb College in 1975 and coached there until 1999.
The former Lipscomb head basketball coach is the all-time leader in coaching wins in NCAA basketball history. In his 24-year coaching tenure at Lipscomb, his teams averaged 32 wins per season for ten years. He took the Bisons to 13 national tournaments and won the 1986 NAIA National Championship. In 1999, Coach Meyer made the move to Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. While there, the basketball team consistently led the nation’s attendance at Division II Basketball home games.
He retired from coaching following the 2009-2010 season with 923 wins in a career that spanned four decades and 38 years as a head coach. He is currently serving as a Regents Distinguished Professor and Assistant to the President at Northern State. Meyer, whose coaching credentials are unquestioned by his peers, his employers and perhaps most importantly, by his players, has produced three National Players of the Year and 22 All-Americans.
Along the way, he has seen his teams lead the nation in scoring in five seasons averaging more than 100 points per game. In addition, he has coached college basketball’s first and second all-time leading scorers.
Meyer was named NAIA National Coach of the Year following both the 1988-89 and 1989-90 seasons. He was elected to the NAIA Hall of Fame at the unlikely age of 47 and was honored at the 2009 ESPYS with the Jimmy V Perseverance Award.