The UPI College Basketball Coach of the Year was an annual basketball award given to the best men's basketball head coach in

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

Division I competition. The award was first given following the 1954–55 season and was discontinued following the 1995–96 season. It was given by

United Press International United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th ...

(UPI), a

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in the

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that rivaled the

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but began to decline with the advent of television news. The last winner was

Gene Keady Lloyd Eugene Keady (born May 21, 1936) is an American basketball coach. He is best known for his 25 years serving as the head men's basketball coach at Purdue University in Indiana. In his tenure leading the Boilermakers from 1980 to 2005, he went ...

Purdue Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...

, who led the Boilermakers to a 26–6 record and a berth into the 1996 NCAA tournament's second round.

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

claimed the most all-time winners with six (all of whom were John Wooden), followed by

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with three. Five additional schools claimed two winners apiece, while the rest only had one winner each. Wooden garnered the most UPI Coach of the Year awards, receiving six throughout his tenure at UCLA. Six other coaches received the award twice: Bob Knight,

Ray Meyer Raymond Joseph Meyer (December 18, 1913 – March 17, 2006) was an American men's collegiate basketball coach from Chicago, Illinois. He was well known for coaching at DePaul University from 1942 to 1984, compiling a 724–354 record. Meye ...

Adolph Rupp Adolph Frederick Rupp (September 2, 1901 – December 10, 1977) was an American college basketball coach. He is ranked seventh in total victories by a men's NCAA Division I college coach, winning 876 games in 41 years of coaching at the Univ ...

Norm Stewart Norman Eugene Stewart (born January 20, 1935) is a retired American college basketball coach. He coached at the University of Northern Iowa (then known as State College of Iowa) from 1961 to 1967, but is best known for his career with the Univers ...

, Fred Taylor and

Phil Woolpert Philipp D. Woolpert (December 15, 1915 – May 5, 1987) was an American basketball coach, best known as the head coach of the University of San Francisco Dons in the 1950s. He led them to consecutive national championships in 1955 Biography Bor ...

. The only coach whose team did not qualify for the

NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament The NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, branded as NCAA March Madness and commonly called March Madness, is a single-elimination tournament played each spring in the United States, currently featuring 68 college basketball teams from ...

was

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Leonard Hamilton James Leonard Hamilton (born August 4, 1948) is an American basketball coach and the current men's basketball head coach at Florida State University. He is a former head coach at Oklahoma State University, the University of Miami, and for the Nat ...

, who won the award in 1994–95 after leading the Hurricanes to the first round of the National Invitation Tournament (NIT). Hamilton is also the only recipient with a double-digit loss season; his 1994–95 squad finished 15–13.

Key

Winners

References

* {{UPI College Basketball Coach of the Year Awards established in 1955 Awards disestablished in 1996 College basketball coach of the year awards in the United States 1955 establishments in the United States