Long Beach State Sports : Re: CSUN's 2nd Year coach

I've found that interesting as well. The Big West has been the model of coaches who stick around, probably because the league has had such parity, and also limited budgets/support to buy out guys who struggle.

Joe Pasternack had his two regular season and tourney titles in 2021 and 2023, surprised he didn't get hired anywhere after that run. But then was ehh last year and this. Doesn't scream excitement to boosters now. Plus young family.

Turner's wife has her own career path as a Doctor and his kids were growing up, maybe he would have left sooner. But then in the height of their run, he had that whole Queen comment issue at the NCAA game, and is generally a hot head on sidelines.

Dan was the same boat when he got hot with the Fab4 but also had young kids. He was a bounce back at that point, and that's a tough hurdle without taking a high assistant gig.

Overall, the Big West AD's have hired guys who want to stick around, most seem to have a family, maybe have done the high pressure crawling upward gigs, and realize they can live a good life without it.

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If you want to get to a P4 school you need to do more than just win in the BW, you have to go win games in the NCAAT. If you see a BW coach get there it probably involves an intermediate move through a conference like the MWC/WCC. Maybe I’m missing someone, but I can’t think of anyone going directly from the BW to one of those schools since Harrington (Morgan kind of Forrest Gump’d his way into the Iowa St. job as an Asst).

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Newman from Cal State San Bernardino is having success at CSUN in his 2nd season. In his first season last year, CSUN was 19-15 and 9-11 in the BW. Looks like CSUN found a really good coach. Will he stay at Northridge or get scooped up for a bigger payday by a P4 school in a few years? Looking at his current roster I only see only 1 former CSUSB player on it so he is likely a good recruiter of talent.

From today's OC Register about their win at UCI last night.
"CSUN (19-7, 11-4 Big West) also won its sixth in a row overall.
“I don’t want to jinx us but,yeah, we’re playing good basketball now and guys are starting to believe,” CSUN second-year coach Andy Newman said.“When these guys put their minds on the defensive end, we can beat anybody. We proved that tonight.”

Can Acker have success next year at LB with ample time to recruit? I don't see more than 4 or 5 players on the current roster who will be solid contributors next year. Most first-year Div 1 coaches have a tough go of it, and I hope Acker can turn this around and field a good team next year like CSUN did early in Newman's career. I believe Acker will have to get 3 or 4 talented players from the portal to right this ship.