NCAA Basketball: 10 best first-year head coaches through January of 2023-24 season

5. Alan Huss – High Point

When High Point hired Tubby Smith back in 2018 it was supposed to be the beginning of a new era. The Panthers are a program with very limited history and success, but a great coach like Smith was supposed to recharge the program. Instead, the next five years saw him and his son G. G. faltering, with the last four seasons all under .500.

Moving forward, the program was thrust into Huss’s hands, giving him his first collegiate head coaching gig. He coached at the high school level in Indiana for several years and spent nearly a decade as a D1 assistant. In fact, Huss played college ball at Creighton twenty years ago and had spent the last six years aiding Greg McDermott as an assistant.

This team suffered a few losses early in the season, but it’s impossible to say they haven’t exceeded expectations. High Point sits a fantastic 17-4 on the season, winners of 14 of their last 15 with a perfect 6-0 mark in the Big South. When your only loss in two months is on the road to an SEC team, you’re certainly doing something right and Huss is pushing all the right buttons in year one in High Point.