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Pete Thamel, ESPN
Utah State is finalizing a five-year deal to hire Youngstown State‘s Jerrod Calhoun as the school’s next head coach, sources told ESPN.
Calhoun led Youngstown State to back-to-back 20-win seasons for the first time in school history. He went 118-106 in seven seasons there, winning a Horizon League regular-season title in 2022-23 and the only NIT bid in school history.
Utah State moved quickly to replace Danny Sprinkle, who left the program Monday for Washington after one season in Logan. First-year athletic director Diana Sabau ran an efficient and targeted search that prioritized head-coaching experience.
According to sources, Utah State plans to give Calhoun a strong commitment to a staff salary pool. In the wake of the Aggies’ regular-season Mountain West title and first-round NCAA win over TCU, the school is aiming to keep the roster intact and the momentum going to stay atop the conference.
At 42, Calhoun has experience beyond his age. He led Youngstown State to the school’s only conference title as a Division I program. His winning percentage (52%) is more than 10 percent higher than the school’s all-time win percentage, a sign of how he defied historical norms during his time there.
Before Youngstown, he spent five seasons as the head coach at Division II Fairmont State, and that included four NCAA tournament appearances in five seasons and a 124-38 record. In his final season there, Fairmont State went 34-3 and finished as the NCAA D-II runner-up.
Perhaps the most well-known part of that successful run at Fairmont State was that Joe Mazzulla, now the coach at the Celtics, worked for him for three seasons as an assistant. Mazzulla later took over at Fairmont, and he has long maintained that Calhoun played an integral role in his development as a coach.
Calhoun also worked at West Virginia as an assistant coach in 2011-12 and also had a stint as WVU’s director of basketball operations. He was part of the WVU staff that reached the 2010 Final Four and 2008 Sweet 16 with Mazzulla as a player.
Calhoun will take over a job at Utah State with a proud tradition, as USU has reached five of the last six tournaments that have been played. (They were 26-8 in 2020 before that tournament was cancelled.)