A tireless worker with a relentless approach to the coaching profession, Jason Tinsely has been a driving force behind the two best Southland Conference showings in 12 seasons by the Demons.
His hard-nosed approach helped the Demons post their best finishes in 10 years of Southland Conference competition.
Tinsley, 34, is a graduate of Northwestern with bachelors' and masters' degrees. He's also an experienced collegiate basketball coach, having served as a head coach on the high school level and as assistant in two highly successful collegiate programs.
A popular figure on campus as a student and graduate student, Tinsley is the grand-nephew of one of the great figures in state sports history. His great-uncle Gaynell Tinsley is one of the first three inductees (elected in 1958) in the Louisiana Sports hall of Fame, and is regarded as one of the finest players in the history of LSU football. Gaynell Tinsley was an All-American end and later head coach of the Bayou Bengals.
For three years prior to joining the Demon staff last summer, Tinsley helped to develop a very successful junior college program at Southwest Missouri State-West Plains. As the assistant coach, he helped establish the first athletic team in the history of the 30-year-old institution. Despite playing against well-established competition, the SMSU-West Plains program posted a record of 63-33 over Tinsley's three seasons, and finished second in the NJCAA Region 16 in 1994-95 and 1994-96.
Tinsley was recruiting coordinator, defensive coordinator and the academic advisor for the team. He worked extensively with pre=and post-season conditioning, scouting and game preparation.
Prior to that three-year stint in Missouri, he spent a year working under former McNeese State coach Glenn Duhon at Georgia Southwestern College, a program consistently ranked among the top 20 teams in NAIA Division I. As assistant coach, Tinsley recruited several of the players who helped the team play for two seasons in the NAIA Tournament, reaching the Sweet 16 and Elite 8.
At Georgia Southwestern, Tinsley handled recruiting, conditioning, scouting and game preparation.
He moved into the college ranks after spending two seasons as a head high school basketball coach in southwest Louisiana. He was athletic director and basketball coach at Pine Prairie High School form 1991-92. The previous year, he was head basketball coach and assistant track coach at South Beauregard High School.
His wife, the former Sonia Cox, played basketball for the Lady Demons and helped Northwestern reach the 1988-99 NCAA Tournament. She is an instructor in the Health and Human Performance Department at Northwestern, and also helped coordinate the successful "Scholarship Auction '97" that raised nearly $40,000 for NSu athletics in August,.
