A very Sad News:Am Leaving Kentucky wildcats key player accepted a deal of $45.5m to depart from Kentucky wildcats today after……..
A very Sad News:Am Leaving Kentucky wildcats key player accepted a deal of $45.5m to depart from Kentucky wildcats today after….....
A very Sad News:Am Leaving Kentucky wildcats key player accepted a deal of $45.5m to depart from Kentucky wildcats today after……..
SLIDE SHOW: Hilltoppers win CUSA Tournament to earn NCAA bid
SLIDE SHOW: Hilltoppers win CUSA Tournament to earn NCAA bid
WKU MEN’S BASKETBALL
LUTZ GO: Tops’ first-year coach gets program back to NCAA Tournament
By JEFF NATIONS jeff.nations@bgdailynews.com Mar 17, 2024
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Hilltoppers win CUSA Tournament to earn NCAA bid
Western Kentucky men’s basketball coach Steve Lutz celebrates following Saturday’s win over UTEP at VBC Propst Arena in Huntsville, Alabama.
Grace Ramey / grace.ramey@bgdailynews.com
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— HUNTSVILLE, Ala. Steve Lutz had a clear-cut objective when he agreed to become Western Kentucky’s men’s basketball coach last March – get the Hilltoppers back into the NCAA Tournament after an 11-year absence.
Seems simple and direct, no?
There was a bit more to it than that.
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WKU didn’t want any corners cut in making that long-awaited return to prominence. Lutz, who took Texas A&M Corpus Christi to back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances in his two seasons there – his first job as a head coach – and had the winning resume and highly-regarded reputation to accomplish what WKU Director of Athletics Todd Stewart and President Timothy Caboni most desired – winning yes, but also winning the right way.
On Saturday night at VBC Propst Arena in Huntsville, Alabama, Lutz delivered all that and more by guiding the third-seeded Hilltoppers to the Conference USA Tournament championship with a 78-71 win against No. 5 seed UTEP to secure WKU’s first NCAA Tournament bid since 2013.
“Western Kentucky’s one of the most historic programs in the country,” Lutz said. “I mean, we’ve had (48) 20-win seasons, there’s only seven other teams in the country that have had that. We’ve had a lot of good coaches here, we’ve had a lot of good players here. But the fact of the matter is, it’s been (11) years since we’ve been to the NCAAs. Todd Stewart and President Caboni were very forthright and upfront in what they described and what they talked about when they wanted to hire a new basketball coach. They said they wanted guys with high character, that were going to do things right on and off campus, that were going to be out in the community, that were going to go to class and were going to do the right things – and that they wanted to go to the NCAA Tournament.
“These guys, when we recruited them all, that’s what we talked about. We talked about winning the league, we talked about winning the tournament and going to the NCAA Tournament and winning games. And they believed in that. They took a chance on me, they took a chance on Western Kentucky and now they fulfilled their promise, right? It’s nothing I did. It’s these guys. You’ve got good players in that locker room that care about winning, care about winning for Western Kentucky. And more times than not, that’s going to supersede everything else.”
Lutz had precious little time to put together a roster after taking the job midway through March. First, he had to convince a nucleus of scholarship players recruited by former head coach Rick Stansbury to stay – redshirt senior Dontaie Allen, seniors Khristian Lander and Tyrone Marshall Jr., and junior Fallou Diagne stuck it out with a mostly new coaching staff. Incoming freshman Teagan Moore also opted to honor his commitment and give the new coach a shot. Walk-ons Tyler Olden and Jaylen Dorsey also stayed on, providing a bit more stability.
Lutz had plenty of holes to fill, and he started with players he already knew – redshirt senior guard Brandon Newman, who played at Purdue during Lutz’s tenure as an assistant there became the first signee. Guards Jalen Jackson and Terrion Murdix came in after playing for Lutz at TAMCC, although Jackson was soon lost to injury and Murdix didn’t play at all as he recovered from his own injury.
Hiring assistant coach Hank Plona away from his job as head coach at perennial junior-college power turned into a three-for-one deal, as point guard Don McHenry and guard Enoch Kalambay followed their old coach to Western.
The transfer portal helped the Tops add size in 6-11 Georgia Tech transfer Rodney Howard and 6-8 forward Babacar Faye out of Coastal Carolina, BJ Marable arrived as another junior-college signee and Louisville native Jack Edelen came aboard as a walk-on.
It was a far-flung group, to be certain. But Lutz was confident his team could win – from the start.
“When you recruit, you never 110% know but we spend an enormous amount of time doing background checks,” Lutz said. “And it’s really hard in the portal because things happen so quickly, but we sacrificed maybe a little bit of talent here and there – and that’s not to say that these guys aren’t very talented, I don’t mean that at all because we’ve got a lot of talent in the room. But we sacrificed a little bit on a couple guys to make sure we had the right people in the room. I’ve always believed that having the right people in the room or on the team is more important than having talent.”
Lutz would know – he’s done this before. At Texas A&M Corpus Christi, he completely flipped the roster of a losing program and got the Islanders into the NCAA Tournament in his first season. He did it again the following year, then landed the job at WKU with the hopes that his unbeaten record in conference tournaments would continue – it did, as Lutz won three games in three days to secure the Conference USA Tournament championship and return the Tops to the NCAA field after an 11-year absence.
Lutz insists there’s no real secret to that remarkable success – it always boils down to the players.
“Good players and great staff,” Lutz said. “I don’t know, guys – players have to feel good to play good, right? It’s hard to do that over the course of a 30-game season. I always try to build towards March and the way we play during the season and the way we play a lot of different people and we manage the minutes and all those sorts of things, I believe that helps you when it comes to tournament time.
“But at the end of the day, you’ve got to have good people in the locker room that care about winning and these guys obviously care about WKU and getting the NCAA Tournament. That’s the most important thing to them. And that was able to be the overriding factor.”{&end}
– Follow sports editor Jeff Nations on Twitter @Jeff_NationsBG or visit bgdailynews.com.
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