Five thoughts on Michigan hiring Brown head coach Mike Martin

Mike Boynton Jr. made his first assistant-coaching hire since being named head coach, adding Brown head coach Mike Martin as an assistant coach.

Here are five thoughts on Martin, his path to this point, and his potential fit at Michigan.

1. He has a unique track record that fits Michigan’s needs

Mike Martin was a star player at Brown and has been the program’s head coach for 14 years. He was named head coach at just 29 years old and has survived at a school where winning isn’t easy.

The Bears are one of the worst programs in the Ivy League, a conference where it’s only become more difficult to win in the modern era. There’s one NCAA Tournament bid available in the Ivy every year, and Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Penn operate on a different level from the rest of the league.

He put together top-four finishes in the Ivy League in 2019, 2020, 2023 and 2024, coming a buzzer-beater short of the NCAA Tournament in 2024.

Martin was linked to an opening on Florida’s staff last offseason — a solid endorsement, given the Gators’ track record of hiring smart coaches — and now takes the Michigan job, looking to jump-start his career and parlay high-major assistant success into a better head-coaching job down the line.