NCAA Basketball: Picking each league’s Coach of the Year for 2023-24 season
By Joey Loose
Pac-12: Kyle Smith (Washington State)
In what has been a somewhat dreadful final season for the Pac-12, Arizona has been sitting on top of the world yet again but it’s a different program that’s caught the attention in recent weeks. Smith built winning basketball as head coach at Columbia and San Francisco and is now doing the same at Washington State, with these Cougars in excellent position to break a long NCAA Tournament drought.
Despite being picked to finish 10th in the Pac-12, the Cougars sit in 1st place in the Pac-12 and are riding an incredible hot streak. They have won 11 of their last 12 games and just completed an amazing sweep of Arizona with a road win late Thursday night. They’ve powered past the other teams projected to success in this league and look like a major power. This is Smith’s best coaching effort of his entire career.
Patriot League: Mike McGarvey (Lafayette)
Considering that Colgate currently has a four-game lead in the conference, giving the award to Matt Langel for a fifth time in seven years wouldn’t be any kind of stretch. However, we’re looking closely instead at one of his former assistants in McGarvey, who became Lafayette’s interim coach last year and is settling in nicely to the full-time gig.
The Leopards were considered an afterthought, picked 7th in the preseason polls, but are the team that’s four back of Colgate, currently sitting in 2nd place. That 11-17 record doesn’t look good at all after a brutal nonconference run, but the Leopards won their first seven league games and have looked sturdy in the Patriot in McGarvey’s first real year running the show.