For those on the East Coast, West Coast games can make for late nights. What we miss is some excellent basketball, headed by some excellent coaches. The Big West conference has been one of the better mid-major conferences in college basketball for a while. Just last season, five Big West teams notched more than 20 wins, and the top two teams, UC San Diego and UC Irvine, went a combined 62-12 and 35-5 in conference play.
The Big West has been cultivating solid head coaches for a long time, and the conference has recently grown stronger due to the high quality of its head coaches. Two of those coaches, Mike Magpayo from UC Riverside and Eric Olen of UC San Diego, moved on to jobs at Fordham and New Mexico, respectively. The rest of the conference is littered with coaches who have had and continue to have success.
UC Irvine- Russell Turner
Let’s start with the most tenured coach in the conference and arguably the most successful, UC-Irvine’s Russell Turner. Turner will be entering his 16th season as the head coach of the Anteaters after his most successful season in terms of wins, going 32-7 in 2024-25. In addition, for the second straight season, UC Irvine finished 17-3 in league play and made a run to the NIT finals.
During his tenure, Turner has amassed 321 wins and, over that time, has had plenty of opportunities to move to another job but has stayed with the Anteaters. He’s eclipsed the 20-win mark 10 times and finished in the top two in the Big West 10 times. If you remove his first two seasons, which are also the only time his team finished below .500, his record is 288-148 with seven trips to either the NCAA Tournament or the NIT in 13 seasons. Turner and UC Irvine have become the gold standard for success in the Big West.
UC Santa Barbara-Joe Pasternack
Another Big West coach who has been extremely successful is Joe Pasternack at UC Santa Barbara. He spent four years as the head man at New Orleans before joining the Arizona staff in 2011. He remained in Tucson until 2017, when he took the job at UCSB. It wasn’t an easy job to take over as he was replacing the legendary Bob Williams, who is the school’s winningest coach with 313 wins.
Pasternack has certainly been up to the task of replacing a legend. Through eight years of his tenure, Pasternack has become the 3rd winningest coach in school history with a record of 169-81. He has won the Big West regular season and tournament championships twice, in both 2021 and 2023. Their trip to the NCAA Tournament in 2021 earned Pasternack Coach of the Year honors. The Gauchos have had a top-two conference finish five times in their eight years, a feat that Williams accomplished nine times in 19 seasons. UCSB has finished with at least 21 wins in all but two of Pasternack’s eight seasons, a mark Williams hit just twice in his career.
UC Riverside-Mike Magpayo and Gus Argenal
UC Riverside had to make a coaching change this summer because the most successful coach in the school’s Division I history, Mike Magpayo, moved on to take the head coaching job at Fordham. Magpayo spent five seasons with the Highlanders, compiling an 89-63 record. Magpayo notched a bunch of firsts for the Highlanders’ program at the Division I level. Their first 20-win season came in 2022-23, followed by another one this past season. They’ve also had their highest Big West Conference finish with three 3rd-place finishes in his five seasons. Magpayo went out with a bang, bringing the school its first trip to the NIT last year.
Hoping to repeat Magpayo’s success, UC Riverside dipped into the Division II ranks to find his replacement. They settled on Cal State San Bernardino head coach Gus Argenal for his first Division I head coaching job. Having played at UC Davis and coached there and at Cal State Fullerton, he’s quite familiar with the Big West. After two seasons on the staff at Arkansas, he took the job at Cal State San Bernardino. In two seasons with the Coyotes, he went 50-20 with two trips to the NCAA Tournament, including the Final Four in 2023-24.
UC San Diego-Eric Olen and Clint Allard
Another team in the Big West that had to make a coaching change thanks to the success their former coach had is UC San Diego. In their first season of postseason eligibility, the Tritons and head coach Eric Olen grabbed the bull by the horns by going 30-5 and earning a trip to the NCAA Tournament. Olen spent a total of 12 seasons with the Tritons, with the last five at the Division I level. In the previous five seasons at the Division II level, all Olen did was go 128-34 with 4 trips to the Big Dance. When the 2020 tournament was canceled, UC San Diego was 30-1 and 21-1 in conference play. Olen buoyed all of that success into the head coaching job at New Mexico after the season ended.
To replace Olen, the Tritons didn’t have to look far, just further down the bench, pegging associate head coach Clint Allard for the top seat. Allard is a Triton lifer, having played there and becoming an assistant with a short three-year stint at Cal Poly Pomona in between. Whether Allard can continue Olen’s success remains to be seen, but he’s had a bird’s eye view of what the recipe for success at UC San Diego looks like.
Hawaii-Eran Ganot
Eran Ganot is entering his 10th season at the helm of the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors. He’s already the school’s 2nd-winningest coach with a 171-118 record. Not only did Ganot reach the NCAA Tournament in his first year, he led the Rainbow Warriors to one of the biggest first-round upsets in the 2016 tournament, knocking off No. 4 seed California. Even though it has yet to reach the postseason since his inaugural season, Hawaii has been consistent, finishing in the top five of the Big West in six of his last nine seasons.
Over the last three seasons, Hawaii has seen the most success the team has seen since Ganot’s first year. In that span, Hawaii has a 57-41 record, including back-to-back 20-win seasons from 2022-2024, they hadn’t reached that benchmark since his first season. This season will be Hawaii’s final in the Big West as they are slated to move to the Mountain West in 2026. Expect their swan song to be another consistently strong finish.
Cal State Northridge-Andy Newman
For the second time in this piece, Cal State San Bernardino has lost a coach to the Big West. Before the 2023-24 season, Cal State Northridge grabbed CSU San Bernardino coach Andy Newman to be their new head coach. After five successful seasons with the Coyotes, Newman received another chance to be a head man at the Division I level. He was the interim head coach at Cal State Fullerton back in 2012 when the Titans went 14-18.
Very quickly, Newman has proven he was more prepared this time around. In his first year in 2023, he led the Matadors to a 19-15 record. That may not make people stand up and take notice, but when it’s the most wins by the school since 2007-08 when they went 20-10, it shines a whole new light on Newman’s first year. As an encore last season, the Matadors’ 22-11 and 14-6 Big West records were the most wins since the turn of the century when they went 22-10 and the 14 conference wins was a mark not seen in the school’s history at the Division I level, a mark that propelled them to the NIT. With Newman at the helm, things are certainly pointing north in Northridge.
Cal Poly-Mike DeGeorge
From the early 1970s through the mid-1980s, the Cal Poly Mustangs were one of the most successful teams at the Division II level. Under the direction of Ernie Wheeler, the Mustangs won 254 games from 1972-1986 with six trips to the NCAA Tournament.
Since then, consistent success has been difficult to attain for the Mustangs. They haven’t won 20 games in a single season since Wheeler’s last year in 1986, and a Cinderella run in the 2014 Big West tournament with a 14-20 record led to their only NCAA Tournament appearance as a Division I school. Enter Mike DeGeorge last season, to hopefully turn things around. If the Mustangs were looking for a coach who knows how to win, look no further than DeGeorge, who, prior to taking the job at Cal Poly, spent six seasons at Colorado Mesa. In those six seasons, he compiled a record of 141-43 with four straight trips to the NCAA Tournament thanks to four consecutive top-2 finishes in conference with a record of 75-10 against conference foes in those four years.
Even though DeGeorge went just 16-19 with an 8-12 Big West record in his first year, the school has to be thrilled because both of those win totals were the best since Joe Callero led the team to a CIT appearance in 2012-13.