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Cincinnati brings Jerrod Calhoun back home to Ohio as new Bearcats head coach
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- Cincinnati brings Jerrod Calhoun back home to Ohio as new Bearcats head coach
Cincinnati has hired Utah State's Jerrod Calhoun as its next men's basketball head coach, multiple sources confirmed to USA TODAY Sports on Monday, March 23.
The move comes one day after Calhoun's Aggies team lost to No. 1 seed Arizona 78-66 in the second round of the 2026 NCAA Tournament. Utah State finished the season 29-7, winning the Mountain West regular-season and tournament titles.
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Over his two seasons with the Aggies, Calhoun's teams went 55-15 and made the NCAA tournament twice.
REQUIRED READING: March Madness winners, losers spawn Big Ten dominance entering Sweet 16
Calhoun is an Ohio native who graduated from Cincinnati in 2004. He served as a student assistant under Bob Huggins from 2003-04 and later coached under Huggins as an assistant at West Virginia from 2007-12.
The 44-year-old Calhoun was previously the head coach at Youngstown State, where he went 118-106 from 2017-24, and Fairmont State, a Division II school in West Virginia where he went 124-38 from 2012-17, which included a national runner-up finish in 2017. One of Calhoun's assistants for three seasons at Fairmont State was current Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla.
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With Calhoun's departure, Utah State continues its recent standing as a way station for top mid-major coaches in the sport. Calhoun is the fourth coach in the past six years who has left the Aggies for another job, three of which were in power conferences, joining Craig Smith (Utah), Ryan Odom (VCU) and Danny Sprinkle (Washington). Despite that turnover, Utah State has made the NCAA tournament in six of the past seven years in which it was held. During that stretch, it went 201-71 and won at least 25 games six times.
The Aggies will be heading to the reformed Pac-12 after this season. Given the recent track record of their coaches, they'll instantly become one of the more attractive job openings in the sport.
At Cincinnati, Calhoun will inherit a program that has two national championships to its name and that was a national powerhouse under Huggins during the 1990s and 2000s, but has gone seven years without an NCAA tournament appearance, the program's longest such drought in more than 30 years.
He'll replace Wes Miller, who was fired earlier this month after going 100-74 in five seasons. Since joining the Big 12 ahead of the 2024-25 season, the Bearcats are 37-31 overall and 16-22 in conference play.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Cincinnati basketball hires Jerrod Calhoun from Utah State as new coach
