Mike Dement is in the fifth season of his second tenure as head coach at UNCG. Dement returned to UNCG on April 9, 2005 for his second stint as UNCG's men's basketball coach.
Dement, 55, is the ninth head coach in school history - and the first to serve two different tenures as head coach of the program.
Clearly not a stranger to the UNCG program, Dement served as the architect of the program in its move to Division I. The Louisburg, NC native was the Spartans' head coach from 1991-95, leading them from a team with no conference affiliation to the top of the Big South Conference regular season standings in just four seasons. In his last two seasons at UNCG, Dement's teams went 38-18, including a school-record 23 wins in 1994-95. That year, his team won the Big South Conference's regular season title and was the runner up in the conference tournament. The team received votes in the Associated Press and ESPN/USA Today Coaches' polls for the first time in school history during that record-setting season.
In 2007-08, Dement won his 300th career game when the Spartans topped The Citadel in Charleston. He enters his 23rd year as a head coach with a mark of 312-313.
Dement served five seasons at Cornell from 1986-91 where he led the Big Red to the Ivy League crown and the NCAA Tournament in 1988. Prior to that, he served as an assistant coach at East Carolina (1985-86), Cornell (1983-85) and Duke (1982-83). His first experience as a college assistant came under Mike Krzyzewski. Dement was a high school head coach at Vance Academy and Kerr Lake School before joining Krzyzewski's staff, logging a 109-26 mark in five seasons.
In his first season back at UNCG, Dement led a young Spartan squad to a 12-19 mark. With just one senior on the 2005-06 roster, and that being a player who hadn't seen game action in two years, Dement found that his task was going to be somewhat of a building mission, although not of the same magnitude that had faced 15 years earlier when UNCG was moving to Division I.
Still, with two players earning all-conference status in Ricky Hickman and Kyle Hines, and another earning SoCon All-Freshman honors, Dement had shown that the tools for a winner were there. Early in the season, UNCG won on the road at East Carolina and at home against a Gardner-Webb team that had gone right down to the buzzer with North Carolina two weeks earlier. But like many young squads do, the Spartans had their struggles down the stretch and a 7-3 start -- one of the best in school history -- was forgotten with February's fumbles. Yet still, 10th-seeded UNCG knocked off seventh-seeded Western Carolina in the opening round of the conference tournament and then had three shots at the end of regulation to beat second-seeded Elon, only to fall in overtime in the SoCon quarterfinals.
In 2006-07, Dement guided the Spartans to a 16-14 mark, including a second place finish in the Southern Conference's Northern Division. Hines, only a junior, earned Southern Conference Player of the Year and Associated Press All-America Honorable Mention status - a pair of firsts in the history of the UNCG program. The Spartans were considered by many to be the most dangerous team in the SoCon Tournament, but were upended in the final seconds by Furman in the quarterfinal round.
In 2007-08, the Spartans began the season and ended the season with a bit of history. A season-opening win at Georgia Tech gave the Spartans their first-ever win over an ACC team. UNCG also picked up big road wins out of conference at Fordham and UNC Wilmington.
By year's end, Hines became just the 97th player in college basketball history to record 2,000 points and 1,000 rebounds and just the sixth-ever to couple that duo with 300 or more career blocked shots. Hines also became just the fourth four-time All-SoCon selection in the last 50-plus years since all-league honors began.
Last season, with a roster that had no seniors on it, the Spartans finished with a 5-25 mark. Still, the Spartans swept the season-series with backyard rival Elon and split with Appalachian State.
In March 1995, Dement left UNC Greensboro to become the head coach at Southern Methodist University. In nine seasons at SMU, Dement recorded a 138-120 mark on the court. His win total is fourth all-time at SMU and is just two wins shy of second. During his tenure, he was able to attract Texas recruits to SMU. In 11 seasons before Dement arrived at SMU, the Mustangs had only 11 Texas natives on their roster. In Dement's nine seasons, the number jumped to 17, including 15 that were ranked as Top 45 recruits.
Off the court, Dement's teams had the second-best graduation rates in Division I in his last two seasons at SMU, trailing only Stanford.
From the 1996-97 season through 2002-03, Dement's squads were .500 or better in seven straight seasons - a first in SMU men's basketball history. In 1996-97, he was named Western Athletic Conference Coach of the Year by the Dallas Morning News and freshman Stephen Woods was named WAC Rookie of the Year. The following year, his team won its first 10 games, a school record for best start, and received votes in the Associated Press Top 25. In recording an 18-10 mark, the Mustangs also garnered their second-straight WAC Rookie of the Year when Jeryl Sasser received the honor. Sasser would eventually become the program's first NBA first-round draft pick in 15 years during the summer of 2001.
After having one of the youngest teams in the nation in 1998-99, SMU went to the NIT in 1999-2000. The Mustangs were 21-9, only the eighth 20-win season in school history, earning Dement District Coach of the Year honors from the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC). When his team won 18 games the following season, the 39 wins in two years were the most since 1987-88.
In 2002-03, SMU went 17-13 as Quinton Ross was named WAC Player of the Year and Bryan Hopkins, a high school All-American that Dement brought to SMU, garnered WAC Rookie of the Year honors. It was also the fifth time in seven years that the Mustangs received votes in the AP Top 25.
In his first UNCG tenure, the Spartans improved each season. After winning just seven games as a Division I independent in 1991-92, UNCG won 10 games the following season while still playing without a conference. In Dement's third season, UNCG's first as a member of the Big South, the Spartans were 11-7 in their first conference season and finished in fifth place, just two games out of second. In 1994-95, the first season that UNCG was eligible to participate in the Big South Tournament, UNCG went 14-2 in the league, winning the conference regular season title. The Spartans, however, were upset by second-seeded Charleston Southern on a basket at the buzzer in the championship game.
The following season, Dement went on to SMU, but his same core group of players, led by his former top assistant coach Randy Peele, won the Big South regular season and tournament titles and went to the NCAA Tournament.
Dement attended Louisburg College and East Carolina as an undergrad. At Louisburg College, Dement helped his team to a second-place finish in Region X. He earned an Associate of Arts degree from Louisburg in 1974 and a Bachelor of Science degree in Health and Physical Education from East Carolina in 1976.
Dement resides in Greensboro. He is married to Rhonda Rompola, the head women's basketball coach at SMU. Dement has a son Michael, 26, who played for him while he was coach at SMU, and a daughter Emily, 18.
