WAC Basketball: Top 10 head coaches of the century (2000-20)

7. Billy Gillispie – UTEP (2002-2004)

When he accepted the UTEP job in 2002, Gillispie was still a relative unknown in the basketball world. He had spent the last five seasons assisting Bill Self at Tulsa and Illinois and only had head coaching experience at the high school level. UTEP was three years removed from the retirement of the legendary Don Haskins and had really struggled across the last decade.

Initially, those struggles continued, but after a 6-24 debut, Gillispie went hard to work. He brought in an impressive recruiting class and completely turned around this Miners program. UTEP won 24 games, and won both the regular season and conference titles, returning to the NCAA Tournament. They couldn’t pull off a Tournament upset but came close against 4-seed Maryland.

UTEP was a solid program under successors Doc Sadler and Tony Barbee because of the work Gillispie put in. Gillispie did pretty well himself, leaving for Texas A&M before faltering in two seasons at Kentucky. Allegation during his brief time leading Texas Tech put a dent in his coaching career, but he was recently hired at new D1 school Tarleton State. Time will tell if the Texans have made a mistake or not, but Gillispie certainly did incredible work for this Miners program.