Jonathan Morse begins his third season as an assistant coach in 2015-16 with the Roadrunners. He joined the Roadrunners in 2013-14 as a student assistant after completing his playing career.
The Roadrunners finished the 2014-15 season with a 26-6 record, including 19-3 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference. They captured a share of the RMAC regular season championship, their third consecutive RMAC title. MSU Denver is just the second team in RMAC history and first since 1982 to win three consecutive RMAC regular season championships.
Senior Mitch McCarron earned NABC national player of the year, becoming the second Roadrunner in as many years to earn the award. He helped MSU Denver be ranked as high as No. 3 in NCAA Division II. McCarron and fellow senior Nicholas Kay were both named Capital One first team Academic All-America, the second pair of teammates to both earn first team Academic All-America in Division II history. Those two were no the only players to succeed in the classroom as the team carried a 3.30 GPA during the fall semester.
The 2013-14 team will go down as arguably the best team in school history not to win a national championship. The Roadrunners finished with the best record in NCAA Division II at 32-2 (.941) and became just the third team in Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference history to go undefeated in conference play at 22-0. After spending a school-record eight weeks ranked No. 1 in the nation, MSU Denver rolled through the RMAC tournament and the South Central Region tournament, knocking off a pair of top-25 teams on the way to the Elite Eight. The Roadrunners then won 106-87 over Tuskegee (Ala.) in the quarterfinals and were the only team in Division II to score 100 points in a postseason game in 2014. It took a last second shot by eventual national champion Central Missouri to end the Roadrunners' season in the semifinals.
The Roadrunners featured the consensus national player of the year, senior guard Brandon Jefferson, who broke Metro State's season records for scoring, scoring average, free throws and free throw percentage. Junior guard Mitch McCarron joined Jefferson as an All-American. McCarron and junior forward Nicholas Kay were both named Academic All-America, becoming the first teammates to earn that award in the same season at MSU Denver. McCarron was also the NCAA's Elite 89 Award winner with the top GPA at the Elite Eight.
Prior to the conference season, Metro State was selected to the NIT Season Tip-Off as the Roadrunners became the first Division II team to win more than one game at the Division I tournament. The Roadrunners ended up going 3-1 in exhibition play there, knocking off Fairleigh Dickinson, Elon and Canisius.
He finished his four-year playing career for the Roadrunners in 2013 after leading Metro State to four NCAA tournament appearances, including two Elite Eight appearances and a trip to the 2013 national championship game. Morse holds the school’s career rebounding record (1,029) and is one of five players in Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference history with over 1,500 points and 1,000 rebounds. As a senior, he was named RMAC player of the year and Division II Bulletin second team All-America. Over the course of his career, he was named first team all-RMAC three times and Academic All-America twice.
The Boulder, Colo., graduated from MSU Denver with his bachelor’s degree in biology and a minor in chemistry.
