Columbia athletic director Peter Pilling announced that Kevin Hovde, an assistant coach at Florida, has been named the Columbia men’s basketball program’s next coach Monday.
“I am honored to be named head coach of Columbia men’s basketball,” Hovde said in a statement. “Columbia is truly a special place for my family and me, and we are thrilled to be back. It’s humbling to have the opportunity to develop young men into leaders on and off the court at one of the top universities in the world. I am eager to get to work and build a program our alumni and community can be proud of. Our team will focus on having a consistent approach and an unrelenting competitive spirit as we strive for success in the Ivy League and beyond.”
This will be Hovde’s second stint in Morningside Heights, where he was an assistant to then-head coach Kyle Smith from 2011 to 2016.
Hovde will remain with the 2025 SEC Tournament champion Gators, which is in the Sweet 16 of this year’s NCAA Tournament, for the duration of the team’s run.
Hovde played college basketball from 2006 to 2011 at Richmond under head coach and former Princeton player Chris Mooney.
Immediately after his time in Richmond, Hovde was hired as the director of basketball operations at Columbia. He spent one year in that position before being promoted to assistant coach.
In the last of his four years as an assistant at Levien Gymnasium, the Lions went 25-10, including a 10-4 record in Ivy play and a CollegeInsider.com Tournament championship.
After that title winning season, Hovde joined Smith at San Francisco for five more years. Following Smith’s departure for Washington State, Hovde became the Dons’ associate head coach.
“I am thrilled that Kevin will be the next head coach at Columbia,” Snith said in the program’s press release. “Kevin played a big role in our success during our time together at Columbia and USF, especially when it came to our development offensively. He was instrumental in recruiting Maodo Lo, Grant Mullins, Alex Rosenberg, Isaac Cohen, and Luke Petrasek, who helped us win the CIT in 2016.”
Hovde came back to his alma mater for the 2021-22 campaign to join Mooney’s staff as an assistant coach.
A year later, Hovde was on the move again and heading south to Florida. There, he joined the staff of Todd Golden, another member of Smith’s staff at Columbia and San Francisco, who had recently been hired to lead the Gators.
The Kennett Square, Pa. native’s wife Jackie is a 2009 Columbia alum and the sister of Dave Klatsky, a former Penn player, the head coach at NYU and one of the rumored candidates for the vacant Quakers’ head coaching position. In addition to playing four years for the Lions’ field hockey team, she played for the women’s basketball team in 2005-06 and 2007-08, the first of which overlapped with current Columbia women’s head coach Megan Griffith.
Hovde will take over a team that finished last season at 12-15 overall and 1-13 in the Ancient Eight, looking to get the Lions into its inaugural appearance in the Ivy League Tournament and a NCAA Tournament bid for the first time since 1968.