Hall of Fame
Tubby Smith had a 79-43 record at Tulsa in his four years there, while leading the Golden Hurricane to 1993-94 and 1994-95 MVC titles with 15-3 regular season records. Tulsa reached the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 in both years. Smith’s teams recorded the league’s first two Sweet 16 appearances (after the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985). It could be argued that Tubby’s Tulsa teams provided the momentum for the league’s success which immediately followed. In the 13 years after Tulsa’s 1995 run, the MVC had 10 seasons with multiple bids to the tournament, which included five additional Sweet 16 trips.
Smith’s success did not end at Tulsa, taking the reins at Georgia where he accumulated a 45-19 record in two seasons. In 1997, Smith became Kentucky’s head coach and led the Wildcats to the 1998 national championship. He secured a 262-83 record with five Sweet Sixteen trips and 10 NCAA Tournament appearances in 10 seasons there.
In his 31 years as a head coach, Smith achieved 26 winning seasons, compiling a career record of 642-369 with head coaching stints at Tulsa, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Texas Tech, Memphis, and High Point. With Texas Tech’s invitation to the 2016 NCAA Tournament, Smith became only the second coach in history to lead five different teams to the NCAA tournament.
He also served as an assistant coach on the 2000 Gold Medal winning USA squad in Sydney. In addition to his national title with Kentucky, Smith won five SEC regular-season titles and five SEC tournament titles, plus his two MVC crowns. Smith was the AP National Coach of the Year, Naismith Coach of the Year and NABC Coach of the Year in 2003, a two-time MVC Coach of the Year, three-time SEC Coach of the Year and Big 12 Coach of the Year once. He also earned the John R. Wooden Legends of Coaching Award and Sporting News National Coach of the Year honors in 2016.
The former Panther standout was inducted into the High Point University Athletics Hall of Fame in 2016. In 2013, Smith was inducted into the University of Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame. He was an inductee into The University of Tulsa’s Athletic Hall of Fame class of 2021.