First-place Aztecs head to second-place Utah State, which keeps on winning despite coaching turnover

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First-place Aztecs head to second-place Utah State, which keeps on winning despite coaching turnover

LOGAN, Utah – The top two men’s basketball teams in the Mountain West this season – and for the past eight, too – meet Saturday morning in a CBS national television game.

San Diego State, the 2023 national runner-up, is one. But you already knew that.

The other defies prevailing logic: the Utah State University Aggies.

“They’ve done an amazing job,” Aztecs coach Brian Dutcher said.

They have because Logan, the site of Saturday’s game, sits in Utah’s rural Cache Valley with a population of 56,000. And the Aggies’ athletic budget annually ranks near the bottom of the Mountain West. And — and this is the craziest part — they’ve had four different head coaches in the past six years.

Since 2018-19, the Aggies have won 189 overall games and 98 in the Mountain West, second behind SDSU’s 191 and 104.

Last season, the Aggies became only the second program in history to reach three straight NCAA Tournaments with three different (non-interim) head coaches.

Twenty-four programs have played in five of the last six NCAA Tournaments. Eight had multiple head coaches. Utah State is the only one to do it with four.

SDSU’s success is predicated on continuity, 18 years of Steve Fisher followed by nine with Dutcher, his longtime lieutenant. Utah State subscribed to that formula when Stew Morrill retired after 17 wildly successful years (all of them winning seasons) and lead assistant Tim Duryea was promoted to head coach.

Didn’t work.

Duryea went 47-49 in three years and was politely dismissed.

Craig Smith was hired from South Dakota, went to three straight NCAA Tournaments and was snatched up by Utah.

Ryan Odom was hired from UMBC and lasted two seasons before VCU hired him away. He’s now at No. 17-ranked Virginia.

Danny Sprinkle was hired from Montana State and lasted one season before Washington offered him a six-year, $22.1-million deal.

Jerrod Calhoun was hired from Youngstown State and nearly left after one as well, a reported finalist for several jobs before signing a contract extension that makes him the second-highest-paid coach in the Mountain West behind Dutcher.

But he’s also a Cincinnati alum, and Bearcats coach Wes Miller is on the hot seat. The rumors are already swirling.

“Coach Calhoun,” Dutcher said, “they’re going to have to pay him a lot of money to keep him or he’s going to be somewhere else.”

So they’ve hired well, targeting a very specific profile — guys who have been head coaches at lower levels and worked their way up, mopping the gym floor, driving vans, doing more with less, instead of the flashy power conference assistant.

Craig Smith was NAIA coach of the year at Mayville State. Odom was at Division II Lenoir-Rhyne. Calhoun reached the Division II championship game at Fairmont State.

“Every coach who has been hired here has had a clear identity of what they want to do, and it’s worked at their previous stop,” Calhoun said. “We all had to climb up the ladder, from Div. II to low-major to now. You really learn on the job as you’re going through coaching at those lower levels.

“A lot of power (conference assistants) get jobs and don’t make it because they haven’t had to do all the things that a head coach has to do.”

It’s more than coaching, though.

“Everybody has played a big part of it — coaches, players, the Hurd (student section), the community,” Calhoun said. “Once you get here and get settled in and you have kids — I have three little kids — you realize the safety of the community, the tight-knit group. You can’t go to the grocery store or the gas station without realizing the Aggies are everything.

“People eat, drink, sleep Aggies sports. It’s a pretty neat experience.”

Utah State guard Mason Falslev (12) makes a basket against UCLA during the first half in the first round of the NCAA college basketball tournament, Thursday, March 20, 2025, in Lexington, Ky. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

It helps that the 10,270-seat Dee Glen Smith Spectrum sits at 4,783 feet and is regularly filled with 4,000 students, the largest and loudest section in the Mountain West (and all of the West, for that matter). There’s a dedicated practice facility next door. The coaching staff is well compensated. The team flies charter to about half its road trips.

Utah State has also adopted a unique nonconference scheduling philosophy rooted in analytics, pursuing games against top mid-major programs instead of power conferences and juicing their metrics with home blowouts in “buy” games against teams unaccustomed to the altitude and the attitude of the Hurd.

The Aggies are 17-3 this season, were the only Mountain West team to be ranked in the Associated Press poll and have the league’s best metrics despite a nonconference strength of schedule that ranks 124th nationally. Utha State is No. 25 in the NET and No. 30 in Kenpom. SDSU, by comparison, is 45th and 42nd.

In previous years, they leaned on older players who had been on a two-year church missions. Player retention, though, has become an issue even at Utah State in this transient era of college sports combined with the constant coaching turnover.

Sprinkle built a roster from scratch. Calhoun has had to land numerous transfers with a revenue-share budget in the $1.5 million to $2 million range, which he says ranks in the middle of the Mountain West.

That includes $150,000 he donated from his salary.

“We have to do a little more with less,” Calhoun said. “We have to be great with our evaluations. We have to have a clear identity and a culture that we know sometimes another team might have a little more talent, but we have to have more togetherness and a little more heart to beat them.

“It’s tough when you hear the numbers of some of these other schools in the league. … My only fear is, how do we keep up in this revenue-sharing space.”

They keep chugging along and now get the Aztecs (15-5, 9-1) in the Spectrum for a No. 1-vs.-No. 2 showdown in the standings but first vs. 10th in athletic budgets. Moments after Wednesday night’s 94-62 win there against Wyoming, star guard Mason Falslev leaned into the camera and screamed: “Hey bruh, Saturday.”

The Super Bowl is next weekend on NBC. Theirs is Saturday morning on CBS.

“Good team, good program, good history,” Aztecs guard BJ Davis said of the school nestled in the Cache Valley. “We know what to expect from them. We know what type of heavyweight matchup to expect.”