NCAA Basketball: Picking each league’s Coach of the Year for 2023-24 season

NEC: Joe Gallo (Merrimack)

There hasn’t been a lot of winning basketball in the NEC, aside from Fairleigh Dickinson’s Tournament antics last season. In reality, the Knights shouldn’t even have made that Big Dance, as Merrimack actually won the NEC Tournament but were ineligible due to the program’s transition to the D1 level. This year, Gallo and company can reach the NCAA Tournament and seem to be taking no prisoners en route to potential success.

Merrimack sits atop the league standings in the NEC, with their 12-2 mark giving them a 1.5 game lead over Central Connecticut. Gallo is looking for his third regular season title in five seasons after being picked to finish 4th in the league before this season. The former Merrimack guard and assistant coach has been inspiring in his eight years leading his alma mater and it’s hard to say anyone else in this league deserves the honor more right now.

OVC: Chad Boudreau (Western Illinois)

It’s a tight race in the OVC, with preseason pick Morehead State currently sitting on top by half a game. Among those teams in the thick of it, we could easily focus on Darrell Walker and the work he’s done in bouncing back at Little Rock, but Western Illinois is 10-5 and right in the thick of things too. They’re also doing this under a first-year head coach in Boudreau, who was an assistant the last three seasons with these Leathernecks.

Western Illinois got off to a 5-0 start in OVC play before dropping a few games. All in all, Boudreau has done fantastic work getting this Leathernecks squad into winning shape, sitting pretty at 17-11 right now. They were picked 8th out of 11 schools and certainly have a shot at winning the regular season title which would be quite the accomplishment. Did we also mention that this is Western Illinois’s first season in the OVC?