The 2025–26 Northern Colorado Bears men's basketball team represented the University of Northern Colorado during the 2025–26 NCAA Division I men's basketball season. The Bears, led by sixth-year head coach Steve Smiley, played their home games at the Bank of Colorado Arena in Greeley, Colorado as members of the Big Sky Conference.
Previous season The Bears finished the 2024–25 season 25–10, 15–3 in Big Sky play, to finish as Big Sky regular season co-champions, alongside Montana. They defeated Weber State and Montana State, before falling to Montana in the Big Sky tournament championship game. They received an automatic bid to the NIT, where they would be defeated by eventual tournament runner-up UC Irvine in the first round.
Preseason On October 22, 2025, the Big Sky Conference released their preseason coaches and media poll. Northern Colorado was picked to finish third in both the coaches poll and the media poll, while receiving two first-place votes in the latter poll.
Preseason rankings
+Big Sky Preseason Coaches' Poll Place Team Votes 1 78 (6) 2 72 (3) 3 Northern Colorado 63 4 59 (1) T-5 40 7 35 8 31 9 22 10 10
Source:
+Big Sky preseason media poll Place Team Votes 1 323 (21) 2 302 (9) 3 Northern Colorado 245 (2) 4 231 (2) 5 202 6 165 7 143 (1) 8 136 9 113 10 61
Source:
Preseason All-Big Sky Team No players were named to the All-Big Sky Team.
Roster
Schedule and results
!colspan=12 style=""| Non-conference regular season
!colspan=12 style=""| Big Sky regular season
!colspan=12 style=""|
Sources:
References