Mike Leaf
basketball player · tennis player · basketball coach
- June 7, 1961
- August 19, 2019
- 58 years
About Mike Leaf
Mike Leaf, 58, American college basketball coach (Winona State).
Explore other notable deaths in 2019 or deaths in August 2019.
The Deaths Archive presents
How well do you know Mike Leaf?
Explore their life. Test your knowledge. Beat the challenge.
10 questions · One legacy · How much do you really know?
Challenge your friends
Play together in real-time.
The Basketball Archive
The players, the coaches and the seasons that built the game — biographies, records and the moments that are still talked about. Step inside and follow the careers of the legends.
Explore the basketball archiveAdvertisement
Full Biography
|Michael P. Leaf (June 7, 1961 – August 19, 2019) was an American college basketball coach. He is known for his tenure as head coach at Winona State University, where he won two NCAA Division II National titles.
Leaf attended Cotter High School in Winona, Minnesota, graduating in 1979. He went on to obtain his undergraduate degree from Saint Mary's University of Minnesota, where he played two years of basketball and tennis. He became a high school tennis coach at his alma mater before accepting a role as an assistant basketball coach at Winona State prior to the 1987–88 season. He spent 11 seasons as an assistant for Jerry Nauman and Les Wothke and was named head coach when Wothke resigned in 1998.
Leaf was the head coach at Winona State for 17 seasons. During his time, he led the Warriors to a 382–152 record, becoming the school's winningest coach. During a three-year stretch from 2005 to 2008, Leaf's Warriors won two NCAA Division II championships (2006 and 2008) and went 105–6. In the 2007–08 season, behind NABC National Player of the Year John Smith, the Warriors went 38–1 to set a Division II single-season win record. Additionally, the team won 57 consecutive games from 2006 to 2007. He resigned as head coach during the 2015 offseason following an accusation that he made a sexual advance on a player.
Leaf died on August 19, 2019.
Content from Wikipedia — licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
Interactive
Test Your Knowledge – Trivia Challenge
How well do you know this person's life and legacy?
No account needed to play. Sign in to keep your score on the leaderboard.
Books & Media
Find books, audiobooks and films about Mike Leaf on Amazon.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.
Sources
- Wikipedia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Leaf
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Sep 26, 2026
- View article
- View record
- October 9, 2026
- Sep 26, 2026
People who died on August 19
Related People
Spotted an error?
Help us keep the archive accurate. Report a correction with a source.
Report an error for Mike Leaf →Advertisement











