Two finalists for UW-Stevens Point coaching position

There are now two candidates to replace Bob Semling as the men’s basketball coach at UW-Stevens Point. Forums with the two candidates were held this week, and they are former Pointer assistant and current UW-LaCrosse coach Kent Dernbach, and former UW-Green Bay assistant Freddie Owens. Dernbach is a native of Almond, and was the associate head coach at Stevens Point between 2011 and 2017. He played college basketball at Carthage, and assisted at Northern Illinois and George Mason before joining the Pointer staff. Dernbach took the head coaching job at LaCrosse in 2018. He is 99-46 in six seasons at LaCrosse. Owens is a Milwaukee native, who played for Bo Ryan at Wisconsin in the early 2000’s. He has assisted at Oregon State, Montana and Iowa State, and joined the UW-Green Bay staff in 2020. Owens finished out the past season as Phoenix interim head coach when Will Ryan was fired. Semling was let go as Pointer head coach in March after 18 seasons as head coach, winning two Division III national championships. Semling was 332-139 during his tenure at Stevens Point. He is a Merrill native and a former head coach at Wausau-West High School.