COLLEGE PARK, MD – Nicholls State University has announced that Tevon Saddler has been named its new men's basketball head coach. Saddler spent last season as the Director of Player Personnel for the Terps and is the third member of the 2022-23 coaching staff to be named a head coach.
 
Saddler follows Tony Skinn, who was named head coach of his alma mater George Mason, and Grant Billmeier, who was recently announced as the NJIT head coach. Like Skinn, Saddler will also be taking over his alma mater as he is a 2018 graduate from Nicholls State. At the age of 28, he is now the youngest Division I head coach in NCAA men's basketball.
 
"I'm excited for Tevon to earn the honor of leading his alma mater," said Maryland head coach Kevin Willard. "He already has a firm grasp on what it takes to run a program and to be able to do so at a place that has such meaning to him is a terrific opportunity."
 
With Saddler's elevation, Maryland joins Alabama this offseason in seeing three staff members move on to take Division I head coaching positions. Saddler is the sixth former Willard staff member to become a head coach as well – Billmeier, Skinn, Shaheen Holloway, Donald Copeland, Dan McHale.

Saddler, an All-Southland performer for the Colonels and former staff member, returns to Thibodaux to become the 13th head coach in the Colonel program history. 
 
Before Maryland, Saddler was an assistant coach at Southland member McNeese in 2021-22. He recruited SLC Freshman of the Year Johnathan Massie and the Cowboys won their first Southland Tournament game since 2014. 
 
Saddler was a director of basketball operations at Nicholls for two years. Saddler joined the Colonels in the summer of 2019, serving as the program's director of operations under former head coach Austin Claunch. The Colonels went 21-10 in his first season before winning the Southland regular season title outright in 2021. 
 
Prior to returning to Nicholls, Saddler spent the 2018-19 season as a graduate assistant at the University of South Alabama under former Colonel head coach Richie Riley, where he worked with All-Sun Belt talents Trhae Mitchell and Josh Ajeyi on a daily basis. 
 
Saddler received his Master of Science in Sports Management from South Alabama in just 13 months, graduating from the program in July 2019.
 
Saddler started his playing career at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, earning SoCon Freshman of the Year and clinching back-to-back All-Conference selections before transferring to play at Nicholls. In his lone season with the Colonels, he helped lead them to their first conference championship in two decades while also earning All-Southland Second Team.
 
He received his Bachelor's Degree in Sociology from Nicholls in May 2018.