Note: This is Part III of our seven-part NIT Final Four preview. Parts I and II are linked below. Parts V and VII will be published at www.thebarkingcrow.com as Tuesday’s games get closer. Parts IV and VI will be released on Monday and Tuesday as episodes of our podcast, Free Hoops.
- Part I: The Programs
- Part II: The Schools
- Part III: The Coaches
- Part IV: Free Hoops! (expert commentary)
- Part V: The Players
- Part VI: Free Hoops! (head coach interviews)
- Part VII: Final Thoughts Before It All Goes Down
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In Parts I and II of our seven-part NIT Final Four preview, we covered the basketball programs in this year’s NIT Final Four and the schools they represent. In Part III, we turn our attention to the coaches.
In further rotated order:
Russell Turner, UC Irvine
Career NIT Record: 3–4 (as a head coach)
A Virginian by birth and a Hampden–Sydney alum, this is Russell Turner’s 15th season coaching UC Irvine basketball. Originally brought to California as a Stanford assistant under Mike Montgomery, Turner was on staff with the Golden State Warriors when UCI gave him the call. It was a good call by the people in Orange County. In Turner’s third year, the Anteaters won 21 games. They’ve at least matched that total in nine of the twelve seasons since. Turner’s won five Big West titles outright, beaten Kansas State in a tournament this blog doesn’t respect, and made five NIT’s, this fifth of which has been his most successful so far.
But before all that…
Before all that, Russell Turner was an assistant at Wake Forest under Dave Odom. Yes, that Dave Odom. The Wake/South Carolina Dave Odom. The NIT GOAT.
Russell Turner’s won an NIT. It was just as an assistant in 2000.
Ross Hodge, North Texas
Career NIT Record: 4–1 (as a head coach)
Hodge also won an NIT before his head coaching days, but that’s a little better-remembered. It only happened two years ago. The longtime Grant McCasland assistant (a Larry Eustachy assistant before that) was billed as the defensive coordinator on the Mean Green’s 2023 title team. Promoted after McCasland left, Hodge is looking to repeat the McCasland performance this week, winning an NIT in his second attempt while en route to a Big 12 job. (Texas Tech for McCasland; West Virginia for Hodge.)
The hard-nosed, defense-first identity fits Hodge’s path to the power conference world. A player at Paris Junior College and Texas A&M–Commerce (now East Texas A&M), Hodge wound up a juco head coach less than four years after graduating. Before joining Eustachy at Southern Miss, Hodge spent five years back at the juco level as a head coach, guiding Paris to an Elite Eight and Midland to a runner-up finish in the NJCAA Division I Tournament. He knows how to build an identity within a team of short-term guys. He knows how to win basketball games.
Drew Valentine, Loyola Chicago
Career NIT Record: 3–1 (as a head coach)
Drew Valentine grew up a coach’s son in Lansing, Michigan, playing his own college ball at Oakland under Greg Kampe. After two years as a grad assistant under Tom Izzo (coaching his little brother, Denzel Valentine), he returned to Kampe’s staff, where he was not only part of Oakland’s first-round upset of Clemson in the 2017 NIT, but reached the Vegas 16’s one and only championship game.
Loyola hired Valentine to Porter Moser’s staff ahead of the 2017–18 season, the one that ended with a whole country knowing about Loyola and Porter Moser. When Moser left for Oklahoma in 2021, Valentine was the obvious internal promotion.
This is Valentine’s second NIT appearance in two years. Last year, his Ramblers bowed out against Bradley in the first round.
Dan Earl, Chattanooga
Career NIT Record: 3–0 (as a head coach)
Dan Earl played in the NIT. Not only that, but Dan Earl made an NIT Final Four.
A high school phenom in New Jersey, Earl spent six seasons at Penn State, using a medical redshirt to get that sixth year. His crowning achievement in our eyes? Starting 31 games for the 1995 Nittany Lions, a team who won the NIT 3rd Place Game over Canisius at Madison Square Garden.
Penn State made another strong NIT run with Earl in the building, reaching the 1998 championship, where they lost to Minnesota before Minnesota vacated all of its wins. Earl was hurt for most of that season. Had he been healthy, Minnesota might have needed to vacate one fewer win.
After a pro career in Roanoke and Europe, Earl came home to State College. There, as an assistant, he finally won an NIT. The year? 2009. That was the Talor Battle era, and Jamelle Cornley had a big game in the championship, if I recall.
From Penn State, Earl took on an associate head coaching position at Navy, one which made him a natural fit for the VMI job a few years later. VMI brought him to the Southern Conference, where Chattanooga jumped at the chance to hire him in 2022.
One last thing to watch: Dan Earl’s first name might be Milan. As in, the Milan High School Indians, 1954 Indiana state champions, the team upon which Hoosiers was partially based. We’ll try to look into this more in Part VI of our seven-part NIT Final Four preview.
Summing It Up
Great crew this year. But it’s a great crew every year.
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