Steve Lutz, who served as head men’s basketball coach the past two seasons at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, was introduced as WKU’s newest head mens’ basketball coach Monday, March 20, 2023, at the Jack & Jackie Harbaugh Club before a packed house at Houchen/L.T. Smith Stadium. Lutz replaces Rick Stansbury, who resigned following this past season after serving as head coach for seven seasons.(Photo by Joe Imel/joe.imel@bgdailynews.com)

The mission is clear for Steve Lutz.

Western Kentucky’s first-year men’s basketball coach has a job to do – get the Hilltoppers back to the NCAA tournament.

It’s been 10 years since the Hilltoppers played on that stage, last reaching the tournament 2013 under then-head coach Ray Harper, and Lutz was hand-picked by Western Kentucky director of athletics Todd Stewart to end that drought.

“This past season, 54% of the tickets that we had out for our basketball games were unused, were not scanned,” Stewart said. “That, to me, is fans sending a message. When more than half of your tickets are not being used, that’s not a good place to be. So we had to restore belief.

“And I think when you look at Steve’s history, what I liked about him is first of all, he is experienced – he’s not someone who’s 28 years old who hasn’t been doing it for awhile. You look at the places he’s been and the head coaches he’s worked for – Creighton and Purdue in particular – but I look at the job that he did at (Texas A&M Corpus Christi).”

The 50-year-old San Antonio native has the right track record, having led a remarkable turnaround at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in his two seasons as head coach, flipping a team that went 5-19 the year before he arrived into the Southland Conference champions in his first year.

How’d he do that?

Lutz will tell you there’s no real secret to his success, a run of seven straight NCAA tournament appearances (two with the Islanders, four straight as an assistant coach at Purdue and another before that as an assistant at Creighton).

“I think a little bit of luck is always involved,” Lutz said. “Obviously the previous staff had played in a couple championship games and the ball doesn’t bounce your way and you don’t make the NCAA tournament – and that stinks, but that’s college athletics.

“Just managing your roster and managing your minutes, you need to be playing your best basketball in March and April, right? When you manage minutes over the course of the season, I think you’re able to keep guys fresh toward the end of the season. And we back off as the season progresses. We don’t practice nearly as long. We might practice more mentally than we do physically, but I try to be very cognizant of making sure that we’re playing our best basketball toward the end of the year.”

Lutz has shown a penchant for successfully getting productive minutes deep beyond the normal rotation. Part of that is player development in practice, another component is simply finding spots where his players can succeed in games.

“My job is to put the best players on the floor that help us win,” Lutz said. “If (current WKU guard/forward) Dontaie Allen can play 40 minutes and be productive and play at the highest level, then we’ll do it. But man, it’s really hard to play 40 minutes and play as hard as you need to, in my opinion.

“ … Especially in those games where maybe you have the game in hand, I believe in rewarding those people who work hard every day in practice and giving them opportunities. But with that being said and the guys will tell you the same thing, nobody is promised anything on this roster. If you do things the right way and you play hard, then you’re going to play. But if you’re having a bad day or you’re into your feelings or you’re not on the same page with us team-wise, I’m not going to play you. It’s a pretty simple deal.”

The Tops’ roster is still in a rebuilding phase with just four scholarship players retained from last season’s 17-16 squad that finished a disappointing 8-12 in Conference USA as the preseason No. 2 pick in the league. Lutz, who took over the program shortly following Rick Stansbury’s resignation after seven seasons as head coach, has been busy restocking the roster since he arrived on campus.

On Wednesday, Lutz added his sixth signee when 6-foot-11 Georgia Tech transfer Rodney Howard signed with the Hilltoppers. That’s 11 scholarships down, two to go.

In his first year at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Lutz had even more work to do in revamping a moribund roster. He rebuilt the Islanders from the ground up, bringing in 10 transfers.

New coaching staff, new system, new players – struggles were bound to ensue, right?

That didn’t happen – Lutz’s 2021-22 squad opened the season by winning nine of its first 10 games, posted a 23-12 overall record (7-7 in the Southland Conference), then won the conference tournament as the No. 4 seed capped by beating top-seeded Nicholls and No. 2 seed Southeastern Louisiana on back-to-back nights to earn the school’s second-ever NCAA tournament bid.

Then he did it again. This past season, Lutz’s more experienced squad won the regular-season title and looked primed for another run to the NCAA tournament.

Despite losing star guard and Southland Defensive Player of the Year and first-team all-conference pick Terrion Murdix to a season-ending injury just minutes into the tournament championship game against Northwestern State and falling behind by 16 points early in that game, Lutz’s team regrouped and rallied for a 75-71 win.

Still without Murdix for a First Four matchup against Southeast Missouri, the Islanders picked up their first-ever NCAA tournament win by an identical 75-71 score before their season ended two days later with a loss to No. 1 overall seed Alabama.

That postseason success, combined with Lutz’s demonstrated ability to rapidly reconstitute a program, drew Stewart’s notice as he opened his coaching search.

“Ever year’s a new year now. With the transfer portal, it’s never been harder across the board in my opinion for coaches to manage a roster than it is now,” Stewart said. “In pro sports, if you think about it, everybody has a contract. So you know who’s going to be a free agent and who isn’t and you can plan for that. College athletics, for the most part, everybody’s a free agent every single year. So you’ve got to have a coach that can flip a roster and build a roster and adapt to changes on a moment’s notice. And what he did at Texas A&M Corpus Christi was exactly that.”

Also on Stewart’s wish list for the new coach – tighten up the Tops defensively and ensure the team plays hard for 40 minutes every night.

Lutz’s Islanders were second in scoring defense (72.5 ppg), field goal percentage defense (44.6%) and steals (8.8 spg) in the Southland this past season. His squad also led the league in scoring (80.4 ppg), free-throw percentage (79%), 3-point field goal defense (33.1%), rebounding (36.9 rpg), rebounding margin (+3.6), assists (15.7 apg) and assist/turnover ratio (1.2).

“Our overall defensive scheme is you don’t want to allow the opponent to do their first and second options, right?” Lutz said. “You want to take what they do best away and make them go to options B, C and D and see if they can be successful with that. I wouldn’t say it’s rocket science, but at the end of the day it’s just like football or any other sport – if they’re a really good run team, we’ll take away the run and make them pass. I’m not going to try to let you throw the ball into the post every possession if you’ve got an All-American in there. But it’s an aggressive defense, for sure.”

Offensively, Lutz seeks to provide “equal opportunity” for his players and aims to avoid having one dominate the ball.

“I like versatility,” Lutz said. “There’s not a whole lot of difference between the point guard and say the four man in terms of the way we play because everybody can handle the basketball – 1, 2, 3 and 4, they can all handle the basketball and dribble, pass and shoot. That’s the way I like to play. I like to have somebody who can score at the rim, but those other guys need to be somewhat interchangeable.”{&end}