Ryan Johnson enters his eighth season with Idaho State. Johnson’s primary responsibilities include being the recruiting coordinator, the post/forward development coach and also assisting in opponent game scouting and game preparation.
Johnson also leads the Bengals in their international recruiting efforts, a major aspect of Bengal women's basketball. The Bengals have had multiple international players on their roster since his arrival, including players from Australia, Croatia, France, New Zealand and Spain.
Prior to ISU, Johnson was a longtime assistant at Northern Colorado spending 8 years with the Bears. Johnson spent time as the academic monitor, seeing the Bears finish four times in the top 25 among Division I programs in GPA. He was also in charge of guard and forward development, recruitment, film exchange, camp facilitation and more.
In his time at UNC, the Bears won the regular-season Big Sky title in 2010-11 and played in the Big Sky title game in 2012 and 2013. The Bears went to 3 different postseason tournaments, including getting to the second round of the WNIT in 2011-12.
Coach Johnson, during his tenure in the Big Sky Conference, has recruited, coached, developed three Big Sky MVP’s, four Freshman/Newcomer of the year, three Defensive POY, 2- Sixth POY, as well as multiple first, second and honorable mention Big Sky Selections.
Among the players he’s recruited, developed, coached nine are 1,000+ pt scorers, five of those who rank in their schools top 10 all time and 1-2,000pt scorer. Additionally, three players have the distinction of ranking in their schools top ten scoring, rebounding, assists and steals combined.
Before his time at Northern Colorado he was the graduate assistant at Utah State for the 2005-06 season. In 2004-05 he worked as the Director of Basketball Operations at Colorado State.
Between 2012-2015, Johnson has also had unique experiences in International Basketball as he has coached with the United States Basketball Academy and the Netscouts USA All Stars teams as both an assistant coach (5 times, 36-6 record) and head coach (2 times, 12-4 record).
Most of these experiences were playing against the FIBA world national teams of China, Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Lithuania, New Zealand and Poland. While one experience was coaching and playing against the Chinese Olympic team in preparation for the 2012 London Olympic games.
In the 2020-21 Season, Johnson assisted in Idaho State winning both the Big Sky Regular Season Championship and Tournament Championship. Johnson coached two post-season All-Conference honorees as well as three All-Tournament players including the 2021 Big Sky Tournament MVP Estefania Ors.
