John Little

PHOENIX — Former Northern Iowa men’s basketball player John Little has been named the head coach of the NBA G League’s Valley Suns, as announced by the franchise last week.

Little, who played for the Panthers from 2002 -2006 under Greg McDermott, becomes the Suns’ first head coach in franchise history as part of NBA G League expansion, which announced the addition of a team in Arizona earlier this spring under ownership the Phoenix Suns.

A Peoria, Ill., native, Little was part of three consecutive NCAA Tournament teams at UNI in 2004, 2005 and 2006. This stretch also included the program’s first-ever Missouri Valley Conference Tournament championship in 2004.

Little shot 40.3 percent from beyond the 3-point arc during his collegiate career and ranks in the program’s top-10 all-time list in 3-point percentage.

Little spent eight seasons playing professionally in Germany before returning to UNI in 2017, where spent two seasons under Ben Jacobson as the program’s video coordinator.

In 2019, Little made the jump to the NBA G League with the Windy City Bulls, where he coached for four seasons. This past year, he served as associate head coach of the Maine Celtics, the G League affiliate of the Boston Celtics.