March 30, 2023

HOUSTON, TX -- Vanderbilt’s Jerry Stackhouse is the recipient of the 2023 Ben Jobe National Coach of the Year award.

Picked to finished 12th in the Southeastern Conference, Stackhouse led Vanderbilt to 22 wins, the most since the 2010-11 season.  The Commodores also won 14 home games, their most since the 2014-15 season and finished tied for 4th place in the SEC.

“It has been very impressive to watch Coach Stackhouse have success in perhaps the toughest and deepest conference in college basketball,” said Angela Lento, Vice President of CollegeInsider.com. “Vanderbilt played its’ best basketball over the final six weeks and turned in the best season in over a decade. There were a lot of doubters when he was hired, but winning has a way of silencing that.”

Vanderbilt played its best basketball at the end of the season, going 12-2 over the final month-plus of the regular season. The Commodores beat Kentucky twice in a 10-day stretch in March, including a road win at Lexington in UK’s final home game of the season. Vandy advanced to the semifinals of the SEC Tournament, for the first time since 2017, and made its second straight appearance in the NIT advancing to the quarterfinals.

The 2023 SEC Coach of the Year, Stackhouse is the first Vanderbilt coach to win that honor since 2010.

The Ben Jobe Award is named in honor of one the most iconic coaches in the history of basketball at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He is best known as the head coach of the Southern University, a position he held for 12 seasons. He was also head coach at Alabama A&M, Alabama State, Talladega, Tuskegee and South Carolina State.

His record at Southern was 209-141 and included four NCAA Tournament appearances. He also coached the Jaguars to one NIT appearance, five SIAC championships, 11 SWAC titles and two NAIA Tournament Championships. Perhaps his most memorable moment as a coach was leading No. 15 seed Southern to a 93-78 win over No. 2 Georgia Tech in the first round of the 1993 NCAA Tournament. It stands as one of the great upsets in the history of the event.

Coach Jobe passed away on March 10, 2017.

The recipient of the annual award is determined by a 10-member voting committee, which consists of current and former head coaches, as well as two senior staff members of collegeinsider.com.

2023 BEN JOBE AWARD FINALISTS

Note: Some of the content from the press release came directly from Vanderbilt University media releases.