Country United States First awarded 2005 Official website Website | Presented by Collegeinsider.com Currently held by James Jones, Yale | |
Awarded for the nation's top mid-major men's head coach in NCAA Division I basketball | ||
The Hugh Durham National Coach of the Year Award (formerly called the CollegeInsider.com Mid-Major Coach of the Year Award from 2005 to 2009) is an award given annually to the most outstanding mid-major men's college basketball head coach in NCAA Division I competition. The award was established in 2005 and was renamed for legendary head coach Hugh Durham, who coached at Florida State, Georgia and Jacksonville. Among his many accomplishments, Durham is the only person to be the all-time winningest coach for three separate NCAA basketball programs.
Selection
The Hugh Durham Award is voted on by 20 members who are on a panel consisting of former and current head coaches. Durham himself is the chairman, and the award is presented at the Final Four to the top mid-major men's basketball coach.
Definitions of the term "mid-major" in the context of college basketball vary widely. For purposes of its "mid-major" awards and honors—the Durham Award for coaches and the Lou Henson Award and Lou Henson All-America Team for players—CollegeInsider.com has established its own definition of the term, which includes the following conferences, as well as any basketball independents.
Of these conferences, the only ones that sponsor FBS football are the MAC and the Sun Belt. All other FBS conferences, as well as the Atlantic 10 Conference (which has not sponsored football at all since 2006), have been excluded from the Collegeinsider.com list of "mid-majors" throughout the award's history. Following major conference realignment that peaked in 2013, the WAC, which dropped football after the 2012 season, was added to the eligible list, while both offshoots of the original Big East Conference—the FBS American Athletic Conference and the new non-football Big East—were excluded from eligibility