Jim Rosborough

Rosborough's father, also named Jim Rosborough and who also played for Moline High School, scored the first basket during the first game in Wharton Field House on December 21, 1928.

James M. Rosborough (born December 2, 1944) is an American basketball coach.

Jim Rosborough was born in Moline, Illinois, to Jim and Pinky Rosborough on December 2, 1944, and is of Scottish American descent.

His family had a strong connection to local basketball.

Rosborough's grandfather, Caldwell Rosborough, was the president of the Moline School Board when it approved funding to build Wharton Field House to host Moline High School basketball games.

Rosborough was a standout player at Moline High School from 1960 to 1962.

As a senior in the 1961-62 season, Rosborough averaged 13.0 points and 9.0 rebounds per game as a forward, leading his team to a 21–3 record, a No.1 ranking in the state, and a berth in the Illinois state tournament.

Rosborough earned first team all-Mississippi Valley Conference accolades, as well as all-Metro Moline and All-Quad Cities honors, and was a fourth team all-state selection.

Upon graduating in 1962, Rosborough attended the University of Iowa to play on the basketball team where he was coached by Sharm Scheuerman for the first two seasons, and Ralph Miller for the final two seasons.

Rosborough was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon.

He graduated with a political science degree in 1966 and received a teaching degree in 1970 from Loyola University Chicago.

Following college, Rosborough completed a year of law school before beginning his career as a teacher at the Daniel J. Corkery School on Chicago's west side.

Rosborough began his career coaching basketball in 1970 in Chicago at Corkery Junior High, before being hired as an assistant coach in 1974 by Lute Olson at Iowa.

In 1970, he volunteered to organize and coach the eighth grade basketball team and across four seasons, would lead the team to 127 wins and 22 losses.

In the spring on 1974, Iowa hired Lute Olson as head coach.

Soon after the hire, Rosborough, a former Iowa Hawkeye but still a teacher and eighth grade coach in Chicago at the time, called Olson to tell him about a prospect.

A few weeks later, Olson hired Rosborough to be Iowa's graduate assistant coach.

Rosborough and Olson coached together for nine seasons, from 1974 to 1983, with an overall record of 167–91, before Olson left Iowa to accept the head coaching position at the University of Arizona.

On Olson's departure, Rosborough was hired as an assistant to athletic director Bump Elliott and stayed at Iowa for two additional years.

Rosborough and Olson coached together for nine seasons at Iowa, reaching five consecutive NCAA tournament berths and reaching the 1980 NCAA Final Four.

I’d comb through the newspapers and see this kid from a high school who’d done well, send him an invite to come to the camp, and we ended up – in the second year we did this – with 28 kids who went to Division I schools." Rosborough would rise to become Olson's top assistant and Iowa's chief recruiter in Chicago, landing key recruits Kenny Arnold and Ronnie Lester who would take Iowa to five straight NCAA tournaments and the Final Four in 1980.

Rosborough coached briefly at Tulsa (1985-1986) and as head coach at NIU (1986-1989) before rejoining Olson in 1989 as an assistant, and eventual associate head coach, at Arizona through 18 seasons.

For the 1985–86 season, Rosborough was hired as an assistant coach at Tulsa by head coach J. D. Barnett.

The team would have a successful season going 23–9, and winning the Missouri Valley Conference championship over Bradley.

Barnett would go on to praise Rosborough's strategy in the victory saying, "We used different defenses. We put in a match-up Jim Rosborough used at Iowa. He put it in and it worked. We were able to take away their great athletic ability with our defense."

The team would go on to play in the 1986 NCAA tournament and lose to Navy in the first round.

Following the success in Tulsa, Rosborough was hired as the head men's basketball coach at Northern Illinois University in April 1986, with a stated goal to build a team that could make the NCAA tournament.

The team was a prominent collegiate basketball program in the United States throughout the 90's and 00's, reaching 18 consecutive NCAA tournament berths, eight Pac-10 championships, three NCAA Final Fours, and winning the 1997 NCAA Championship.

Rosborough coached over 50 All-American, all-conference and future NBA players during his time at Arizona.

Rosborough was inducted to the Illinois Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame in 2001.

Since leaving the University of Arizona following the 2006-07 season, Rosborough has stayed active in coaching.

As Olson explained in his 2006 book, "What Jim lacked in experience, which was everything, he made up in personality. His willingness to work, his passion for the game, and his knowledge of the Chicago area made him a good fit at Iowa."

He served as an assistant coach for the University of Arizona women's tennis program for four seasons with Vicky Maes, before taking his current role as an assistant coach with Todd Holthaus for the Pima College women's basketball program in 2015.

Rosborough is in his 47th season of coaching across all levels, with a career record of 1001 wins and 414 losses, a winning percentage over 70%.

Rosborough achieved his 1000th career victory as a coach on April 2, 2021.

Recounting those days coaching and teaching in Chicago in a 2019 interview, Rosborough said, “I loved that.

I taught classes during the day.

We had a really good team.

I’m thinking in four years there we won a hundred-some games traveling all over the Chicago area.” It was during this time that Rosborough became familiar with the Chicago basketball high school scene which would lead to his first collegiate coaching position at Iowa.

Recruiting was one of Rosborough's initial responsibilities, as he explained in a 2019 interview, “One of the good things we did at Iowa was to start an Advanced Invitational Camp.