Bob Sundvold is in his 13th season as the head coach of the UMSL men’s basketball program. He has led the Tritons to the NCAA Tournament in four of the past six seasons with three Sweet 16 appearances and one Elite Eight, and last March he set the program’s career wins record when he recorded victory No. 215. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)

The halls of the Mark Twain Athletic Center were quiet, save for the sound of a bouncing ball and the occasional swish coming from Chuck Smith Court, as University of Missouri–St. Louis men’s basketball Coach Bob Sundvold strolled toward his office.

It was almost two weeks before the start of the fall semester and most of his players had yet to arrive on campus. Sundvold was enjoying the relative calm afforded by the end of summer, but he was also starting to get excited about his 13th season on the Tritons’ bench.

“I’m fired up about it,” Sundvold says. “I like the anticipation, but I really like when you’re in it. You don’t even recognize when the leaves turn in the fall because you’ve had three weeks of practice, and you miss stuff.”

Bob Sundvold talks to his players during a preseason workout at the Mark Twain Athletic Center. Sundvold is blending a roster that includes three holdovers and 12 newcomers after losing all five starters – four of whom transferred to Division I programs. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)

Sundvold knew this fall would be full of intrigue. He set UMSL’s all-time coaching wins record last March when he recorded victory No. 215 during the Tritons’ run to their third NCAA Division II Sweet 16 appearance in the past four years. But he and his staff entered the new season staring down the challenge of starting over after losing 10 players, including all five starters, four of whom transferred to Division I programs amid the churn of the transfer portal.

The coaches have been working to blend a roster with three holdovers and 12 newcomers into one that can contend in the Great Lakes Valley Conference and battle for an NCAA Tournament berth – something UMSL has achieved four times in the past six years after qualifying for a postseason tournament on only three occasions before his arrival in 2013.

Yet Sundvold is undaunted.

“That’s a great thing about college,” Sundvold says. “Whether it’s three new guys or 10 new guys, your team’s going to change. You, as a coach, have a challenge. You don’t get to coach the same way you did last year. No way. You better be ready to figure out where the landmines are with this squad and with each guy. We just have to do a good job of connecting.”

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Sundvold’s perspective has been developed over nearly 50 years in the coaching ranks. He officially began his career as a graduate assistant under Norm Stewart at the University of Missouri– Columbia in 1977, though his younger brother Jon said he started honing his skills long before, in the yard with him and their two brothers.

“I’m the youngest in fourth grade, he’s in 10th, and he’s bringing home his football playbook, and we’re running buttonhooks and down-and-outs,” Jon Sundvold says. “He was always coaching.”

Bob Sundvold coaches the Tritons during a timeout during first season on the UMSL bench. (Photo courtesy of UMSL Athletics)

There was a time immediately after his playing career ended at South Dakota State when Bob Sundvold thought he’d go to law school. But a meeting with his college coach, Gene Zulk, after his senior season got him contemplating coaching. The experience he had working at a basketball camp that summer in Kansas City convinced him to pursue it.

“When he made that decision, I don’t think anybody in our family thought, ‘You know, that’s crazy,’” Jon says. “We just thought, ‘That’s what he should be doing.’”

Bob Sundvold wound up joining Stewart’s program two years before Jon embarked on his playing career with the Tigers. He had a front-row seat as his younger brother helped lead Missouri to four consecutive Big Eight Conference Championships before setting off on a nine-year NBA career.

Sundvold remained by Stewart’s side throughout the 1980s after being promoted to an assistant coach and got to share in many other highlights while learning the ins and outs of the coaching profession. By 1992, after a season as an assistant coach at Southwest Missouri State, the then-36-year-old Sundvold received his first chance to be a head coach when Central Missouri State Athletic Director Jerry Hughes handed him the keys to one of the winningest programs in Division II history.

Sundvold knew the school had also launched numerous Division I coaching careers, and he was eager to be next in line. In four seasons, he compiled a record of 82-38, led the Mules to three straight NCAA Division II Tournaments and advanced to the 1995 Elite Eight.

Bob Sundvold offers guidance to guard Steve Webb during a stoppage in play. Webb became a three-time GLVC Defensive Player of the Year under Sundvold’s tutelage and helped the Tritons qualify for two NCAA Tournaments during his four seasons. (Photo courtesy of UMSL Athletics)

When the chance to move to the Division I ranks presented itself at the University of Missouri– Kansas City after the 1996 season, Sundvold jumped at it. But he quickly learned it would not be so easy to replicate his success with the Mules at a program that was then only 10 years into its tenure in Division I and still has not been to an NCAA Tournament.

“Certain jobs, they do a great job of giving you a clear track,” Sundvold said. “Then there are other jobs where there’s another hurdle every day.”

Sundvold got better at navigating them, but he ultimately was fired after four seasons despite going 16-13 and winning 10 conference games his final year.

That set him off on more than a decade bouncing around the basketball world – three years as an assistant at Iowa State, a stint as head coach of the Kansas City Knights of the American Basketball Association, two seasons as an assistant at Toledo, two more working in private business and a year as an assistant coach at Eastern Illinois.

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Sundvold figured his last opportunity to be a head coach was already behind him when UMSL Director of Athletics Lori Flanagan reached out to him in early May of 2013 after the resignation of Steve Tappmeyer. To her, Sundvold’s vast experience made him an ideal fit to build on the progress Tappmeyer had made during three straight winning seasons.

Bob Sundvold is introduced as the head coach of the UMSL men’s basketball program on May 8, 2013. (Photo courtesy of UMSL Athletics)

The two met for lunch in Effingham, Illinois, to discuss the job, and Sundvold remembers feeling an immediate rapport with his future boss. “We fit,” he says. “We got along.”

That relationship with the athletic director was important after what he’d experienced elsewhere. He also felt comfortable returning to the University of Missouri System, and he liked what he learned about the academic programs available at UMSL – an important part of his pitch to future recruits.

Sundvold did not let the fact that the Tritons hadn’t reached the NCAA Tournament since 1988 dissuade him from pursuing the position. He came to campus to meet Chancellor Tom George and soon after accepted a formal job offer. He was officially introduced as UMSL’s new coach on May 8, 2013.

No one, least of all Sundvold, could have predicted he’d still be in his head coaching seat nearly 13 years later. “My wife’s got a great stat: Nine moves and 11 houses,” he says, pointing to just how much of a nomad he had been in his career.

It did take a few years for Sundvold to settle in at UMSL and find the formula that would allow the Tritons to build sustained success. He had a record of 72-70 over his first five seasons.

“We started getting better players and the mix was better,” Sundvold says. “We started recognizing who we were. We got a core of guys out of high school. They took their lumps, and then they got really good, and that allowed us to recruit better.”

The UMSL men’s basketball team celebrated winning a share of the Great Lakes Valley Conference regular-season championship in 2020 after beating Illinois Springfield in the regular-season finale. The Tritons went on to receive the program’s first NCAA Tournament berth since 1988.

Steve Webb was a member of that core, joining the Tritons after graduating from Westminster Christian Academy. He would go on to become a three-time GLVC Defensive Player of the Year.

“We were little guys who were overlooked and looking for a platform to prove ourselves, and UMSL was doing the same thing at the time,” Webb says. “He knew how to pull the best out of each player and got people to buy in. We didn’t talk much about professional goals when we played basketball. We talked about getting the most out of each day and getting the most out of yourself and becoming great young men. He taught us some great life lessons. I think he poured so much into us that it was easy for us to pour into him.”

Jesse Shaw, Sundvold’s former assistant and now the chief of staff of the men’s basketball program at Iowa, remembers 2018-19 as a breakthrough as the young Tritons won 20 games for the first time since 1991. “I remember feeling really good about where our culture was at going into the following year,” Shaw says.

Players such as Webb, Jose Grubbs and Shane Wissink, along with transfers such as Yaakema Rose Jr., were all integral to the Tritons winning 27 games and securing an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament in 2020, though that team never got to take the court because the tournament was canceled due to COVID right as players boarded a bus that was supposed to take them to Indianapolis for the opening game.

That core group was still around two years later when UMSL made it back to the NCAA Tournament after winning the GLVC Championship and played its way to the Sweet 16.

Bowen Sandquist shoots a jump shot over the outstretched arm of a Nova Southeastern defender as Bob Sundvold (at left) looks on from the UMSL bench during an Elite Eight game in 2023. Sandquist scored a team-high 15 points, but UMSL fell 82-75 against the top-ranked and unbeaten Sharks at the Ford Center in Evansville, Indiana. (Photo courtesy of UMSL Athletics)

Sundvold and his staff – including longtime assistants Chico Jones, Javis Flynn and Scott Gauthier, now the director of basketball operations at the University of Denver – had to turn over nearly the entire roster after 2022. But with holdover Isaiah Fuller leading the way and impact newcomers such as Bowen Sandquist, Victor Nwagbaraocha and Matt Enright, the Tritons went on a late-season run, securing an NCAA berth with a push to the GLVC Tournament final and advancing to the program’s first Elite Eight since 1972. They even had eventual national champion Nova Southeastern on the ropes in their national quarterfinal loss.

Enright, a freshman in 2023, was at the center of last year’s team, which opened the year with five straight losses but had jelled by February, winning 12 of its final 14 games with another Sweet 16 appearance.

Jon Sundvold, who has observed numerous coaches over the years while working as a college basketball television analyst, believes his brother’s work with last season’s team might have been the best of his career.

“What I always think is interesting is how coaches adapt,” Jon says. “As they mature and get more years under their belt, it’s amazing the adjustments older coaches can make. I think Bob’s in that category. Last year’s team was totally different, how they played, than the year before.”

There have been some hallmarks from Sundvold’s tenure.

“From a basketball perspective, it was just always really hard to score and get rebounds,” says Shaw, who had a chance to compete against Sundvold for four seasons as the head coach at Maryville after he left UMSL. “It was like going to the dentist to get a basket.”

Sundvold is trying to instill those traits once again in this year’s team.

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Sundvold feels comfortable after 12-plus years at UMSL. He and his wife, Denise, bought a house near campus in Bel-Nor and, with their four children all grown, have had plenty of time to explore St. Louis and develop a list of favorite restaurants. Sundvold enjoys cycling around the neighborhood and down to Forest Park or the Central West End. And it’s an easy drive to the airport to get Denise when she’s traveling for work.

Bob Sundvold had been something of a basketball nomad during a coaching career that has spanned nearly 50 years, but he has made a home at UMSL. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)

He’s also appreciated being part of UMSL’s athletic department, which has enjoyed plenty of success beyond men’s basketball over the past decade, particularly from a volleyball program that has twice advanced to the national semifinals and men’s and women’s golf programs that have become regulars in the top 25.

“Bob is really the cornerstone of the department,” says Flanagan, who retired in 2024. “He understands how his basketball program fits within the university and the department.”

Sundvold, now 70, recognizes he’s at the point of his career when people inevitably start to wonder how much longer he’ll keep coaching. He has no immediate plans to retire and is still energized working with student-athletes.

“The big thing for me is I’ve got to be capable and relevant,” he says. “I’m not going to be the angry old guy. I’ve got to look in the mirror and ask, ‘Am I relevant?’ ‘Will the guys still listen?’ And ‘Do I enjoy it?’ So far, yeah.”

This story was originally published in the fall 2025 issue of UMSL Magazine. If you have a story idea for UMSL Magazine, email magazine@umsl.edu.