The 2011-12 season will mark the 27th campaign for Bowdoin Head Coach Tim Gilbride. During his career at Bowdoin, Gilbride has accumulated a 364-272 (.572) record, including a school-record 22-7 mark, NESCAC Championship Game berth and NCAA Tournament win in the 2007-08 season. Gilbride has led the Polar Bears to several postseason appearances, including three NCAA Tournament berths and has the best winning percentage of any men's basketball coach at Bowdoin and is the school's career wins leader.

Gilbride began his time at Bowdoin in the 1985-86 season, after serving as assistant men's basketball coach at American International College and head women's coach at his alma mater, Providence College. In his five years with Division II AIC, Gilbride was part of a team that had a cumulative record of 104-45. In 1985, AIC finished as NCAA New England Regional Champions with a 29-4 record and finished the season ranked third in the nation. As the head coach of the Providence College women, Gilbride had a career record of 82-27 and finished the 1980 season with a 22-7 record and a No. 16 national ranking.

Gilbride also served as the head men' soccer coach for the Polar Bears. In 1997 and 1998, Gilbride led the Polar Bear soccer squad to two straight trips to the NCAA tournament. In '98, Gilbride became the only coach in any division of the NCAA to lead both a men's soccer and a men's basketball team to the NCAA tournament.

Assistant coach Abe Woldeslassie is in his second year at Bowdoin College. A 2008 graduate of Division III Macalester College, Woldeslassie averaged 17.2 points and 5.4 assists per game and was twice named First Team All-MIAC (Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference), leading the league in assists on two occasions. Prior to college, he was an All-Conference performer and team co-MVP at St. Thomas Academy.

Woldeslassie broke into the coaching ranks following graduation, earning an assistant coach position at Impact Basketball, one of the premier basketball training facilities in the world. In addition to recruiting prospective student-athletes, he was active in on-court player development and assisted with the 2008 and 2009 NBA Pre-Draft workouts. He also served as co-director of the 2009 Impact Basketball Classic, a 14-team event held in Las Vegas. In the summer of 2009, he held a head coaching position at the Basketball Training Institute in Pasadena, California.

A native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Woldeslassie graduated from Macalester with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology. 

One of the greatest athletes in Bowdoin history, and a 2004 inductee into the school's Athletic Hall of Honor, Edward "Bo" McFarland joined the Polar Bear coaching staff in 2010. A 1969 graduate of Bowdoin, he became the school's all-time leading scorer in basketball and achieved such prowess on the baseball diamond that he was drafted by a major-league club.

A native of Scarborough, Maine, McFarland was the first Polar Bear to score 1,300 points, graduating with 1,356, and still holds the career scoring average record, 21.9 points per game. A two-time Division III All-East and All-New England performer, McFarland still holds the all-time season-scoring average among Polar Bears for his 1968-69 season, even without the help of the three-point shot.

That season, under head basketball coach Ray Bicknell, McFarland led Bowdoin to a school-record 16 wins against just five losses. That magical 1968-69 season saw McFarland average an unprecedented 25.1 points per game - a program mark that still stands more than 30 years later. He was honored by United Press International as New England Player of the Year.

McFarland's records have stood the test of time, as he still holds Bowdoin records in single-season and career scoring, career field goals (474) and career free throws (469).