Story Courtesy: Ethan Erdman, Assistant Director of Communications, South Dakota

South Dakota men’s basketball coach Eric Peterson has announced the promotion of Matt Murken to associate head coach ahead of the 2026-27 season. Murken enters his second season with the Coyotes after joining South Dakota in May of 2025 and has over 20 years of collegiate coaching experience. 

In his first season with the Yotes, Murken aided in the development of All-Summit League First Team and All-Defensive Team selection Cameron Fens and All-Summit League Second Team honoree Jordan Crawford. 

In 2025-26, Murken helped guide the Coyote offense to a 79.6 points per game average, which ranked No. 4 in the Summit League and No. 88 in the NCAA. The Yotes ranked fifth in the country in both free throws made and attempted per game at 19.4 and 26.4, respectively. 

Prior to South Dakota, he was the head coach at Minot State for 13 seasons where he departed the Beavers as the program’s second winningest coach in program history. In his final two years at Minot State, he guided the team to back-to-back 20-win seasons. 

Murken holds a Masters of Science in education from Wayne State and a Bachelor of Science in secondary education from Concordia (Neb.) where he played basketball for the Bulldogs and was twice named to the NAIA Academic All-American Team.