SAN DIEGO – Though his team did not have the chance to compete in the NCAA Tournament, San Diego State head men's basketball coach Brian Dutcher has reached the final four. Dutcher is one of four Division I basketball coaches who has been named a finalist for the 2020 Werner Ladder Naismith Men's College Coach of the Year Award. The announcement was made at the Atlanta Tipoff Club this morning.
Dutcher is joined in the final four by Baylor's Scott Drew, Dayton's Anthony Grant and Florida State's Leonard Hamilton. While a win in 2020 will be the first for any of the finalists, for Dutcher, he would be the second winner from the Mountain West Conference and the second from San Diego State, joining Steve Fisher who earned the award in 2011.
Fans will be able to support their favorite finalist by visiting naismithfanvote.com between March 20-April 1 to cast their ballot, and the fan vote will account for five percent of the overall final vote. Then, on April 3, the 2020 Werner Ladder Naismith Trophy for Men's College Coach of the Year is scheduled to be announced. The award ceremony will be held on a later date.
Dutcher led the 2019-20 Aztecs to the best regular-season record in program history (28-1) and guided the only program in America to complete the regular season with just one loss. San Diego State won the Mountain West regular-season championship and earned the No. 1 seed in the Mountain West Tournament. With 17 league victories, San Diego State set a school and Mountain West Conference record for most conference wins in a campaign. San Diego State's 94.4 percent winning percentage (17-1) in league games is the highest ever for a Mountain West Conference team, eclipsing Utah's 13-1 mark (92.8 percent) in 2004-05.
Under Dutcher's guidance, SDSU was the last unbeaten team in the nation for more than a month, from Jan. 15 to Feb. 22, and finished the year as one of three teams in men's Division I hoops with just two losses. In addition, San Diego State was the first program to reach 30 victories this season.
The Aztecs clinched its conference's regular-season title before any other program in the nation and was the first, since the 2007-08 Davidson team of Steph Curry, to do so with four games remaining on its schedule. In addition, the squad was 16-1 in road/neutral games this year, was the only team with just one loss in a road/neutral game and was 10-1 in NET Quadrant 1 and Quadrant 2 games. Remarkably, 10 of those 11 games came either on the road or on a neutral court.
Dutcher has already been named the Mountain West Coach of the Year by the league's media members and its coaches, in separate votes. On Monday he was named the USA Today Sport's Coach of the Year and is the United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) District IX Coach of the Year.
The four finalists were chosen by the Atlanta Tipoff Club's national voting academy, comprised of leading journalists from around the country, current and former head coaches, former award winners and conference commissioners, all of whom base their selections on outstanding coaching performances during the 2019-20 regular college basketball season. The vote was tabulated and certified by Aprio, a premier CPA-led business advisory firm, headquartered in Atlanta.
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