Utah State is off to a great start. The Aggies come into Saturday’s contest at Air Force with a 17-2 record and a Net ranking of 36. With solid non-conference wins versus Iowa and at Saint Mary’s to go along with a road victory versus Mountain West Conference rival San Diego State, Utah State looks to be in good position for an at-large NCAA Tournament bid under head coach Jerrod Calhoun, who is in his first year at the helm.
But despite its mid-major status and frequent coaching changes, success for Utah State is nothing new. The Aggies have reached the NCAA Tournament 24 times (25 if you count the 2020 Covid year in which the Tournament was cancelled after Utah State had secured an automatic bid by winning the Mountain West tournament). The Aggies’ 24 NCAA Tournament appearances are greater than more well-known college basketball brands. The only mid-major programs with as many or more NCAA Tournament appearances as Utah State are Penn, Princeton, Temple and Gonzaga.
What makes Utah State’s accomplishments even more unique, particularly recently, is that it has continued under various coaches. Whereas, Gonzaga, for example, has reached the NCAA Tournament a mind boggling 24 times since 2000, it has done so under one head coach, Mark Few. On the other hand, Utah State’s 12 NCAA Tournament appearances since 2000 have come under the leadership of four different head coaches. Since 2019, Utah State has qualified for five NCAA Tournaments under three different head coaches. If the Aggies continue to play at the level it has this season, Coach Calhoun will be the program’s fourth coach in seven years to reach the NCAA Tournament.
The question is, Why? What makes Utah State so special?
One obvious answer is good players. Utah State has had its share of great players over the years, including Jaycee Carroll, Sam Merrill, Neemias Queta, Steven Ashworth and Great Osobor. One advantage Utah State may have is that Mormon missions are a part of life on campus and within the basketball program. “Our young men on our team, they are more mature because they’ve gone on a mission and they come back years older,” Utah State Vice President and Athletics Director, Diana Sabau told Hoops HQ. “This is my second basketball season and my second basketball head coach, and you learn very quickly that when we have young men on our roster that have come back from a mission, we’re more successful as a team and we make the NCAA Tournament.”
Coaching is another factor. When it comes to hiring the right head coaches, Sabau and her predecessors have done an exemplary job.
In 1998, Stew Morrill was hired as Utah State’s head basketball coach. Sabau credits Morrill with “establishing a cornerstone” of achievement for the program during Morrill’s tenure from 1998 to 2015. Morrill points to those before him such as Ladell Andersen, Rod Tueller, Dutch Belnap and Larry Eustachy. “I just stayed for such a long time that they give me some credit,” Morrill joked.
Morrill compiled a record of 402-156 during his time at Utah State, earning eight NCAA Tournament bids and four NIT bids. In 2015, Morrill’s assistant, Tim Duryeah, replaced him and had modest success, going 47-49 in three seasons. In 2018, then Utah State Athletics Director John Hartwell hired Craig Smith. He went 74-24 in three seasons, qualifying for three straight NCAA Tournaments (including the cancelled 2020 Tournament), before leaving to take the University of Utah head coaching position. Hartwell then hired Ryan Odom away from UMBC, where he led the Retrievers to a historic first-round upset over top-seeded Virginia in 2018. In two seasons, Odom went 44-25, taking the Aggies to the NCAA Tournament in his second season.
After Odom bolted in 2023 to take the head coaching job at Virginia Commonwealth, the school’s interim athletic director, Jerry Bovee, brought in Danny Sprinkle. He led the Aggies to a 24-7 record, including a first-round win over TCU in the NCAA Tournament, before losing to Purdue in the round of 32. Sprinkle then left to take the head coaching position at Washington, leaving Utah State with yet another vacancy. In March of 2024, Diana Sabau, who had been hired as AD the previous August, tapped Calhoun. So far, that decision seems to be working out as well as you would expect: quite well.
The only thing that these men seem to have in common is that they are very good coaches. Only Morrill and Duryea (as a Utah State assistant prior to taking over as head coach) had ties to the state. All had different coaching styles and philosophies. Since Morrill, the longest tenured head coaches were Duryeah and Smith, both lasting just three years. Yet, since Smith took over, the program has been rolling along as if 20-plus wins and an NCAA Tournament appearance were its birthright.
“I feel the pressure every day when you’re the head coach at Utah State,” Calhoun said. “You’re expected to win conference championships or tournament championships. So there’s a sense of responsibility, a work ethic that comes with that.”
Utah State’s administration surely deserves much of the credit for the program’s success, particularly in the last 10 years when retention has been a tough task. The university’s meticulous hiring process impressed Calhoun. “I’ve interviewed for other jobs, but this one was very thorough,” he said. “They knew numbers. The players were in on the interview process, something I’d never seen before. I spent an hour with all five players when I got here on the interview. I thought that was really cool and unique. So, I think they listen to their players a lot too.”
“I probably have a different approach than most,” Sabau said. “It’s very disciplined and it’s about a fit. It’s tremendously tiring, but I’m going to do the amount of research that it takes to make sure that we bring the best individual into Logan and into this community, because basketball is so honored and those trophies and those traditions mean something.”
Hartwell also gave credit to the Mountain West Conference and former league commissioner Craig Thompson for encouraging league members to make a conscientious effort to invest in its basketball programs. Thompson pushed schools to “allocate additional budget money across the board, invest more to play buy games, to have more quality home games, to invest more in charter flights for conference games.” All of this helped Utah State and the league as a whole, Hartwell said.
When talking to people who have been around Utah State, both past and present, there is no bigger factor brought up to explain the success of its basketball program than the school itself and where it resides. “It’s just such a unique college town and arena,” Morrill said. “The students set the tone in that arena, but it is a special place when it gets rocking and rolling, which is most of the time when you’re winning.”
“The people in Logan, they love basketball, Calhoun said. “It’s a basketball crazed place. Not only the students, but the general population here.”
Another common theme was that Utah doesn’t get enough credit for being a basketball state. Morrill harkened back to the times when he was in high school and four Utah colleges were in the Top 25, BYU, Utah, Utah State and Weber State. “Basketball has always been a big deal in Utah,” he said. “I remember once reading an article when I was coaching that said the four best high school basketball states in the country, in their opinion at the time were Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Utah.”
Utah’s prep and college basketball scene gained some notoriety this year as A.J. Dybantsa, the top rated high school senior in the country, attended Utah Prep for his senior year and recently committed to BYU. With a basketball crazed state, city and student body, comes one of the best home court advantages in college basketball. Utah State’s student section, “The Hurd,” is lauded as one of the best in the sport and brings unmatched enthusiasm to every home game along with some Duke-like craziness.
“I think we have the best student section in the country, it’s really impactful for games,” Calhoun said. “The Hurd is incredible. Every game is absolutely packed. In this world we’re living in with tech and games on TV, our fan base still comes. It’s about their team. It doesn’t matter who we play, they’re still coming. That, to me, there’s only about 20 of those (types of programs) left.” The unwavering support of a city and student body also brings with it pressure to perform and produce, but it is a good type of pressure. “There’s an expectation for success in men’s basketball [at Utah State] and success is not just being above .500, it’s being competitive in the Mountain West, which is a really strong basketball league,” Hartwell said. “There’s an expectation for success, not only during the regular season, but to play in championship games and league championship games and to play in the postseason.”