March is here and Utah State men’s basketball fans know what that means: it’s national coaching search season. The departure of the now-former Aggie head coach, Jerrod Calhoun, for Cincinnati was made official by both schools Tuesday morning. USU’s athletics department announced the usual “national search” which will take a little under a week if precedent holds.
Speculation will run rampant throughout this whole period and this analysis won’t be too far from that description. This is a collection of potential hires that Utah State could end up considering. And, if Cam Walker is doing his job well, most or all of these names will be on a list that he works his way through. These coaches will represent some of the best (realistic) options for Utah State to hire as the 23rd head coach of the Aggies.
For no real reason in particular, this list will be organized into a few different types of coaching hires:
- Coaches who have lots of wins over several years
- Coaches who are exceeding expectations in a rough situation
- Coaches who broke out in 2025-26, but lack track record before now
- Potential assistant coaches who could be hired as head coach
Let’s get started with the list. And, for the record, numbers on conference titles and NCAA Tournament appearances are in reference to what they’ve done at their current school.
Consistent Winners
Todd Phillips (Utah Valley)
- Record at Current School: 66-34 (.660) 3rd Season
- Average KenPom Rank: 121.7
- Avg KP Offense Rank: 191.0
- Avg KP Defense Rank: 80.7
- Conference Titles: 2
- NCAA Tournament Appearances: 0
A popular name for Utah State is that of Todd Phillips. He dominated as a head coach at the junior college level, leading Salt Lake Community College to 205 wins in eight seasons. Phillips led the team to top three finishes in his conference every year with two league titles and four appearances in the NJCAA Division I Tournament. The crown jewel of his tenure was a NJCAA National Championship in 2016.
In 2019, Phillips joined the staff of Mark Madsen as an assistant coach at Utah Valley. Madsen rebuilt the program after the departure of Mark Pope, leading UVU to back-to-back 20-win seasons in 2021-22 and 2022-23. Perhaps coincidently, Phillips was promoted to associate head coach before Wolverines jumped back to relevance. When Madsen left to take the job at California, Phillips moved from associate head coach to head coach. And after his own rebuilding season in year one, Phillips has posted back-to-back 25-9 seasons, complete with back-to-back WAC regular season titles.
If Utah State values a coach that can handle the year-to-year roster chaos that modern college basketball has become, Phillips is a pretty good candidate. After his first season, Phillips returned just five players but re-tooled by adding eventual WAC Player of the Year Dominick Nelson and Carter Welling to pair with his top returner, Tanner Toolson. Utah Valley won 25 games and a regular season title with that trio, but then all three left, Nelson to Iowa State, Welling to Clemson and Toolson for TCU. So Phillips took his two best returners, Jackson Holcombe and Trevan Leonhardt, and built around them by adding Isaac Davis (a recognizable name for Aggie fans) and Tyler Hendricks from UCF from the portal, among other offseason additions. Utah Valley then again won 25 games and a regular season title.
Phillips has done a really solid job of building defensively sound teams with decent enough offenses to have regular season success. In each of his three seasons at UVU, the Wolverines have been top 100 in KenPom adjusted defensive efficiency, topping out 66 in Phillips’ first season in Orem. There’s work to do with his offense, but Phillips has made steady strides in that area, going form 283rd in year one, to 181st in year two and finally 109th last year.
Ritchie McKay (Liberty)
- Record at Current School: 298-142 (.677) 13th Season
- Average KenPom Rank: 139.4
- Avg KP Offense Rank: 131.8
- Avg KP Defense Rank: 164.5
- Conference Titles: 11
- NCAA Tournament Appearances: 3
It’s hard to find a coach that has dominated his conference more than what Ritchie McKay has done to both the A-Sun and Conference USA. In the last eight years, Liberty has won 11 regular season or conference tournament championship in eight years. This includes conference titles in both the A-Sun and CUSA as Liberty moved to the latter during McKay’s tenure. Liberty even won a game as a 12 seed in the NCAA Tournament, beating Mississippi State in 2019. And, similar to Utah State, a potentially promising tournament run was cut short in 2020. The Flames had won 30 games and won the conference tournament, only for COVID to shut everything down.
That McKay has stuck around so long at Liberty is a pretty strong indicator of loyalty to the program and/or extreme pickiness at making his next coaching move. There’s also the fact that he’s 60 and may not be at the point in his career where he’s looking to make significant moves one way or the other. He’s got a solid gig at Liberty and it may be enough for him.
McKay does have plenty of ties to the west, especially the Mountain West and Pac-12. He first coached at Portland State and then went to Colorado State in 1998 where he was actually the successor to Stew Morrill. He coached the Rams for two years, then at Oregon State for two years, then five years at New Mexico before going to Liberty.
Takayo Siddle (UNC-Wilmington)
- Record at Current School: 133-54 (.711) 6th Season
- Average KenPom Rank: 147.3
- Avg KP Offense Rank: 137.3
- Avg KP Defense Rank: 183.2
- Conference Titles: 3
- NCAA Tournament Appearances: 1
UNC-Wilmington has seen its share of ups and downs, going from back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances under Kevin Keatts in 2016 and 2017 to then winning 27 games in a three-year span. Siddle was an assistant under Keatts during that great two-year run and followed Keatts when the latter was hired to be head coach at NC State. But in 2021, Siddle was brought back to UNC-Wilmington to be its head coach.
By year two, Siddle had put together a 27-win season, claiming the first of what is now two CAA regular season conference titles. As of this year, Siddle has won 27 games in a season three times with the Seahawks, and in the 2024-25 season took the team to the NCAA Tournament. The team went on to have a decent showing against 3-seed and eventual Elite Eight team, Texas Tech.
Siddle’s rankings in KenPom overall and in offense/defense are dragged down by his first season, the 2020-21 COVID season and his first year with the program. The Seahawks went 7-10 in a season which included a nearly month-long break from mid-December to mid-January. Excluding that year, Siddle average KenPom ranks come in at 127.2 overall and 130.2 for his offense and 158.0 for his defense.
There is one hiccup in figuring out whether Siddle would come to Logan, and that’s his recent contract extension. And by recent, that means it was announced _ days ago on March _. The six-year deal is meant to help keep Siddle in _ longer and the buyout has not yet been publicly reported. Though it probably isn’t a prohibitive amount. Siddle signed a similar contract extension at the end of last season, which only put the amount at a flat $500,000.
Another important note is that Siddle is very much an east coast man. Specifically, North Carolina. He was born in Eden, North Carolina, played college ball at Gardner-Webb (in Boiling Springs, North Carolina). And he has coached at a North Carolina-based school for all but one of his seasons as a coach (the one year exception being his first year as an assistant where he coached at Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Virginia which is approximately 15 miles from the Virginia-North Carolina border). Put another way, the second any Carolina-adjacent job opens up, Siddle would make like the rest of USU’s recent coaches and jet.
Eric Olen (New Mexico)
- Record at Current School: (25-10) 1st Season
- Average KenPom Rank: 46.0
- Avg KP Offense Rank: 57.0
- Avg KP Defense Rank: 42.0
- Conference Titles: 0
- NCAA Tournament Appearances: 0
Utah State has become familiar with Eric Olen. The first taste of an Olen-led program for the Aggies came when UC San Diego came to the Dee Glen Smith Spectrum in 2024 and pulled off a surprise upset. Olen went on to take the job at New Mexico, ending a 12-year run at UC San Diego that spanned its transition from Division II to Division I, and during which Olen went 240-119. And in the single season with the Lobos, rebuilt literally the entire roster and finished as runner-up to the Aggies in the race for the Mountain West regular season title.
If we mix together Olen’s last year at UC San Diego with his time at New Mexico, we can get a better picture. The Tritons ranked 39th in KenPom in Olen’s final year there, posting a 30-5 record and ranking 61st in KenPom adjusted offensive efficiency and 30th in defense. That marks the high point and pairs well with New Mexico ranking 46th overall and top 60 in both offense and defense per KenPom. Olen has the ability to build a team with both a good offense and a good defense, which is something that many of the other candidates on this last can’t really say about themselves.
The question here is would Olen leave New Mexico for Utah State? On3 polled all of the coaches in the Mountain West asking which head coaching job was the best and New Mexico ranked second in the conference, several spots ahead of Utah State. Resources, especially NIL and revenue sharing dollars, weighed heavily in those rankings. So while Utah State could certainly pay Olen more (Calhoun made roughly $1.8 million to Olen’s $1.2 this past season), there’s not a guarantee that the Aggies can offer more money for their roster than New Mexico can.
There’s also the factor of Olen’s buyout. Currently, it’s $2.65 million, though it’s set to go down to $2.0 million on April 1. Utah State has $3.9 million from the Calhoun buyout to play with, but that money might be better spent on the roster and future coaching salary. Blowing half of it just to get Olen out of his contract with New Mexico may not be the wisest choice.
John Groce (Akron)
- Record at Current School: 197-94 (.677) 9th Season
- Average KenPom Rank: 119.9
- Avg KP Offense Rank: 126.2
- Avg KP Defense Rank: 139.2
- Conference Titles: 6
- NCAA Tournament Appearances: 4
Akron has had seven 20-win seasons in the last eight years, with the lone exception being the COVID-impacted 2020-21 season where Akron only played 23 games. The Zips went 15-8, which is the same win rate as a 20-win team. John Groce has had Akron’s program humming along like a well-oiled machine. They’ve made the NCAA Tournament four times in five years and the last two seasons have been the peak of that success. In 2024-25, the team won a program-record 28 games. In 2025-26, they upped that to 29 wins and a rank of 69th in KenPom. It’s a rather impressive ranking given Akron’s fellow MAC school Miami (OH) started the year 31-0 and finished the year 90th in KenPom.
Groce’s name has cropped up in a number of places where coaching carousel rumors are to be found. The 54-year old coach may have another move left in him, though he may prefer to stay in the northern states where he’s spent almost his entire coaching career.
Winners in Unexpected Places
Jerrod Calhoun is the embodiment of this kind of coach. His tenure at Youngstown State was not filled the the Coach of the Year accolades, NCAA Tournament appearances and all the other fun stuff that looks really good on a resume. But within the context of where he started, a program that was a consistent lower-tier team in a one-bid conference, Calhoun building it up to win 65 games in a three-year span was an accomplishment good enough to land him a job at Utah State.
These next coaches are in a similar boat. Winning in places that haven’t seen much of that in a while and may not have the resources to allow for top-tier success in their conferences.
Chris Victor (Seattle)
- Record at Current School: 101-67 (.601) 5th Season
- Average KenPom Rank: 129.0
- Avg KP Offense Rank: 236.0
- Avg KP Defense Rank: 61.8
- Conference Titles: 0
- NCAA Tournament Appearances: 0
In 12 years at the Division I level, prior to the start of Chris Victor’s tenure, Seattle had only cracked the top 200 in KenPom three times, and only then to rank 177th, 195th and 190th. The program’s average KenPom rank from 2010-2021 was 229.8. In the five years of Victor’s time in Seattle, the Redhawks’ worst season’s end ranking is 145th with an average of 129.0. And he’s done this despite there not being a reputation of Seattle being a great place to play. On3’s staw poll of head coaches in the WCC placed Seattle 10th out of the 12 schools in terms of how good the head coaching job was (these rankings being heavily influenced by resources and access to NIL and revenue-sharing).
The staple of Victor’s success is his defense, which has ranked top 100 in KenPom’s adjusted defense in each of his five seasons. This past season it ranked 20th nationally, led by WCC Defensive Player of the Year Will Heimbrodt. The downside of Victor’s teams has been a truly woeful offense over the years. He’s only had a top-200 offense once at Seattle, with this last year’s team barely cracking the top 300 by ranking 292nd in KenPom adjusted offense.
Andy Newman (Cal State Northridge)
- Record at Current School: 61-40 (.604)
- Average KenPom Rank: 175.0
- Avg KP Offense Rank: 210.0
- Avg KP Defense Rank: 144.5
- Conference Titles: 0
- NCAA Tournament Appearances: 0
When Andy Newman showed up on CSUN’s campus in 2023, the team had won just 23 games in its three previous seasons combined and hadn’t had a winning season, or been to the NCAA Tournament, since 2009. So, naturally, Newman won 19 games in just his first season and then posted back-to-back 20-win seasons and third-place finishes in the Big West. To cite the On3 coaching job rankings again, CSUN ranked eighth of the 11 Big West schools, emphasizing how solid of a job Newman has done given his circumstances.
Newman’s teams have employed a lightning-fast style, ranking second in pace last season per KenPom, with an offensive possession average of just 15.2 seasons (sixth-fastest). CSUN speeds opponents up on both offense and defense and have rebounded the ball at an efficient rate as well as his three teams have an average defensive rebounding percentage ranking of 42nd over the previous three seasons (and ranking as high as sixth in 2024-25).
There’s some worry with the fact CSUN took a step back in 2025-26, going from ranking 117th at the end of the ’24-25 season to 178th this year (and were ranked 161st in this year’s preseason). But that step back was still a 20-win season with a program that has been starved for that kind of winning total.
One-Year Wonders
These coaches had very good 2025-26 campaigns that immediately put them on the radar of the coaching carousel. The main question is whether this past season was an indicator of the coach they truly are, or whether it was a flash in the pan. These are the riskiest potential hires, even if the one season they’ve put forward is very enticing to see replicated in Logan.
Flynn Clayman (High Point)
- Record at Current School: 31-5 (.861) 1st Season
- Average KenPom Rank: 85.0
- Avg KP Offense Rank: 62.0
- Avg KP Defense Rank: 142.0
- Conference Titles: 2
- NCAA Tournament Appearances: 1
High Point took off under Alan Huss, going 27-9 in 2023-24 and then 29-6 the next year. But Flynn Clayman, who was the associate coach under Huss those two seasons, took the program to even higher heights this season, winning 31 games and becoming a March Madness darling thanks to its first-round win over Wisconsin and narrow defeat to Arkansas in the Round of 32. Clayman coached a high-octane offense that averaged 89.7 points per game (third in the country). On defense a high-intensity defense ranked eighth nationally in defensive turnover percentage.
Clayman is not only an attractive candidate for his role in High Point’s breakout success, but also for his ties to the western U.S. and the Beehive State. Things that Aggie fans are valuing more and more as they see coach after coach return to their eastern or midwest roots after 1-3 seasons in Logan. Clayman is a native of California and played three seasons at Colorado State from 2007-09. He also got his coaching start at Southern Utah, eventually becoming associate head coach in 2022 and even serving as the Thunderbirds’ interim head coach for three games at the end of the 2022-23 season (he went 2-1 in those games).
Travis Steele (Miami OH)
- Record at Current School: (84-48) 4th Season
- Average KenPom Rank: 223.7
- Avg KP Offense Rank: 216.3
- Avg KP Defense Rank: 227.0
- Conference Titles: 1
- NCAA Tournament Appearances: 1
One-year wonder probably doesn’t fit super-well as Steele is actually a two-year star at Miami (which maybe puts him more on par with Todd Phillips, but we’re not reorganizing this list now, too far in). The RedHawks won 25 games last season before their headline-making 31-0 start to the 2025-26 season. The metrics haven’t always been a huge fan of Steele’s teams, but the wins speak volumes for him.
The part of this that speaks to a potential flash-in-the-pan status is that outside of these last two years, Steele’s head coaching record is middling 97-87. He went 27-37 his first two years at Miami and was 70-50 in four seasons at Xavier. That record at Xavier doesn’t look too bad out of context, he won 19 games three times, but in context it isn’t great. Steele took over a Xavier program that had been to the NCAA Tournament 16 times in 18 seasons and proceeded to not make it to the Big Dance a single time in four seasons.
Assistant Coaches
It’s worth noting that hiring an assistant coach to become the head coach has not been Utah State’s style recently. While back in the 70s and 80s, the Aggies promoted men like Dutch Belnap, Rod Tueller and Kohn Smith to their first collegiate head coaching job, modern history as seen the Aggies turn from that trend. Six of the last seven hires have been coaches that already sat in the big chair, the one exception being the internal promotion of Tim Duryea. It’s wise to never say never, but be aware of that trend at the very least as you read through these names.
Justin Gainey (Tennessee)
It’s worth taking a glance at anyone attached to Tennessee as that’s where Cam Walker was most recently as an administrator. And as a first-time AD, he may not have the widest range of contacts. After all, Diana Sabau pulled Calhoun from Ohio, where she had roots. Perhaps Walker will follow a similar path.
Justin Gainey assumed the role of the team’s defensive coordinator, so to speak, when he was promoted to associate head coach in 2022. Tennessee’s defenses in that time have ranked 3rd, 1st, 3rd 3rd and 14th in KenPom. The Volunteers’ defenses under head coach Rick Barnes in the six seasons before Gainey led the defense was 53rd (though it was top six twice in that time). Safe to say, Gainey is pretty good at crafting high-level defenses and the 49-year old coach is probably overdue for a promotion to head coach.
Chris Burgess (BYU)
In previous coaching searches by Utah State, Chris Burgess was rumored to be a candidate. He’s been an assistant at Utah Valley (2015-19), BYU (2019-22, 2024-Present) and Utah (2022-24). He’s likely to make the jump to being a head coach at some point and probably within the state of Utah. That could end up being Utah State (or Utah Valley if Phillips gets poached in the near future).
The Elephant in the Room — Craig Smith
The name of the former Utah State head coach, and more recently the fired head coach at the University of Utah, has come up plenty of times. Memories of his tenure with the Aggies are fondly recalled among fans. His first season at USU revived the program from the mediocre days of Tim Duryea and brought a regular season title and two conference tournament titles to Utah State, the first of either in the Mountain West era. The peak of Sam Merrill was under Smith and Neemias Queta was brought in by Smith. Others recruited or developed by Smith include Justin Bean, Max Shulga, Diogo Brito and Sean Bairstow among other solid role players.
With Smith no longer employed by the Utes, could a reunion be in the cards? Some like the idea, others hate it. There have been a few cases of coaches returning to a school for a second stint. Some work out, others haven’t. Let’s look through some examples to get an idea for how it might work out.
There’s no easily searchable database for this kind of thing. You either know this information, or dig up coaching histories for 300+ teams, or find someone who did the work themselves. The following is the result of bullying an AI chatbot for a few minutes to see how many instances of a coach returning for a second stint it could come up with. Here’s the result:
There are essentially two instances where one could argue that a return stint as “worked out” for a team, though both have a bit of an asterisk next to it. Ritchie McKay is a name we’ve already gone over in some detail. He coached Liberty for two seasons from 2007-09, went 16-16 one year and 23-12 the next before leaving to be an assistant coach at Virginia. In 2015, he left Virginia and returned to Liberty where he’s had his bountiful success. Does that count? Maybe.
The other case of it working out was Sean Miller with Xavier. He led the team to four conference titles from 2005-09 before going to Arizona. He game back in 2022 and led Xavier to two more NCAA Tournament appearances, but then jumped ship again to go coach Texas.
So those two coaches kind of worked out, depending on how loose you want the comparison to be with a potential Craig Smith/Utah State reunion (and setting aside Miller dipping out a second time and how Aggie fans might handle that kind of situation). But the remaining five instances were absolute failures. Despite Joe Scott, Dave Leitao, Thad Matta, Steven Prohm, Cuonzo Martin and Joe Dooley all having some level of conference or even NCAA Tournament success, every one of them had losing season after losing season upon their return. Could Smith be an exception to what appears to be something of a rule in college basketball? Maybe, but it definitely could hurt to try.
