Wednesday, March 23, 2011

BOSTON, Mass. - CollegeInsider.com announced the finalists for four NCAA men's basketball national coaching awards and three Atlantic Sun coaches made the cuts for the various honors.

Belmont head coach Rick Byrd 2011 made the cut of 16 for the Skip Prosser Man of the Year award, the Jim Phelan National Coach of the Year award and the 2011 Hugh Durham National Coach of the Year award. ETSU's Murry Bartow joined Byrd on the finalist list for the Skip Prosser Man of the Year award. Jacksonville's Cliff Warren landed on the list of 16 up for the 2011 Ben Jobe Award.

The Skip Prosser Award was established in 2008 to honor those who not only achieve success on the basketball court but who display moral integrity off of it as well. Prosser posted a career record of 291-146 in 14 seasons as a head coach. During his time at Wake Forest, his teams averaged 21 wins per season while playing in arguably the nation’s most difficult league, the Atlantic Coast Conference.

The award is named after Jim Phelan who coached his entire career at Mount Saint Mary's University. He led the Mountaineers to the 1962 NCAA Men's Division II Basketball Championship. When he retired in 2003, after coaching for 49 years, he amassed 830 wins (overall record of 830-524) in over 1,300 games in all divisions. In those 49 years, 19 of his teams amassed 20 or more wins in a season.

The Ben Jobe Award is presented annually to the top minority coach in division I men’s basketball. Coach Jobe is an icon 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 has also head coach at Alabama A&M, Alabama State, Talladega, Tuskegee and South Carolina State.

The Hugh Durham award, which is presented annually to the top mid-major coach in division I college basketball, is named after Hugh Durham who is the first and only coach in the history of NCAA Division I basketball to lead two different schools to the NCAA Final Four for the first and only time in each school's history (Florida State University in 1972 and University of Georgia in 1983).

Durham is the only coach in NCAA Division I history to be the all-time winningest coach at three different Universities. His career spanned five decades at Florida State University, the University of Georgia, and Jacksonville University. He finished is his career with 634 wins.