48. Jai Lucas (Miami-Florida)
0 NCAA Tournaments
It’s the first season for Lucas as a head coach and things went pretty much according to plan in Coral Gables. He’s a former Florida and Texas point guard who picked up significant coaching experience in a brief career. Lucas was a very involved assistant for Texas, Kentucky, and Duke over the last decade before getting his own shot to run a program. We already knew he was a top-notch recruiter but now he’s won 25 seasons in his head coaching debut and quickly got Miami right into contention in a stronger ACC.
47. Travis Steele (Miami-Ohio)
0 NCAA Tournaments
Steele’s coaching career has been a climb and even after falling he’s finally reaching the summit. In his earliest days, he was a grad assistant at Ohio State and a staffer for Kelvin Sampson at Indiana before a long association with Xavier. After a decade on staff, he became Xavier’s head coach but his four seasons were largely unsuccessful. Steele found a new gig, taking over Miami-Ohio and turning things around for the RedHawks, culminating in a perfect regular season and the program’s first Tourney bid in almost twenty years.
46. Jerrod Calhoun (Utah State)
1 NCAA Tournament (0-1)
A rising star in coaching circles, Calhoun played at Cleveland State and graduated from Cincinnati and got early work under Bob Huggins. After that time with West Virginia, his head coaching career began with D2 success at Fairmont State before engineering long-awaited success at Youngstown State. After seven years with the Penguins, Utah State brought him to town in 2024 and the results have been otherworldly. His Aggies danced in his debut last season and then this year won both the regular season and MWC Tournament titles.
45. Bryan Hodgson (South Florida)
0 NCAA Tournaments
This native New York is becoming more of a familiar name around college basketball, as Hodgson has his hands on the success of several programs these days. He helped Nate Oats build both Buffalo and Alabama into notoriety as an assistant before starting his head coaching career at Arkansas State three years ago. He won a Sun Belt regular season crown with the Red Wolves but now he’s finally reaching the Big Dance for the first time in year one at South Florida, engineering an incredible season with an American Tournament title to cap it off.