NCAA Basketball: Purdue, Vols with head coaching hires from the year 2005

7. Steve Pikiell (Stony Brook)

Having not even been a member of D1 for a full decade yet, it was far too early to tell what this Stony Brook program would become. By 2005, the Seawolves weren’t really making waves in the America East and it was time for a change in the leadership. Any coach hired had the big responsibility of making this program competitive at the D1 level, and the man hired was up for this challenge.

That man was Steve Pikiell, who had bounced around the last decade or so as a college assistant. He had played and coached under Jim Calhoun at Connecticut and spent time under former UConn assistants on the staffs of Central Connecticut and George Washington. He had briefly been interim head coach at Wesleyan, but this was certainly his first full-time head coaching gig.

Pikiell went right to work, though it was certainly no easy process. By his fifth season, he had led the Seawolves to a regular-season title, something he would accomplish four times. He wrote the opening chapter of success for Stony Brook basketball, going 67-13 in conference play in his final five seasons. He finally got Stony Brook to their first NCAA Tournament in 2016, right before he departed for Rutgers.