After leading the program to its best season since joining the Missouri Valley Conference, Valparaiso University head men's basketball coach Roger Powell Jr. has been named a finalist for the 2025-2026 Ben Jobe Award, which is presented annually to the top minority head coach in Division-I college basketball.
 
Year 3 of Powell's head coaching tenure at Valpo saw the Beacons take a major step forward. After he inherited a rebuilding project that saw the team go 3-17 in league play in Year 1, double its MVC win total to 6-14 in Year 2 and finish Year 2 with an MVC semifinal appearance, the Beacons nearly doubled their league win total again, finishing at 11-9 in Year 3.
 
Valpo finished the 2025-26 season with its highest winning percentage in league play since joining The Valley prior to the 2017-2018 campaign. This marked the program's first winning season in MVC play. Overall, Valpo won 17 regular-season games in 2025-2026, the program's highest regular-season win total since its final season in the Horizon League in 2016-2017, Alec Peters' senior year.
 
From Feb. 15 to Feb. 25, Valpo put together a four-game winning streak, the program's longest since a five gamer during the 2018-2019 campaign. Valpo tied its longest winning streak in league play since joining the Missouri Valley Conference, matching the 2018-2019 team, which started 4-0 in Valley play.
 
Regardless of what transpires in St. Louis this week, Valpo has clinched a winning record, the team's first since 2019-2020. Prior to the Feb. 28 regular-season finale at Evansville, Valpo had won six out of seven games, the program's first stretch with six wins in a seven-game span in conference play since joining the Missouri Valley Conference. All told, Valpo enters the league tournament after going 6-2 in its final eight regular-season games.
 
Valpo finished with a 13-4 home record this season, which marked the team's highest home win total since 2016-17.
 
Although the Missouri Valley Conference only released the top five in the MVC preseason poll, Valpo Athletics can confirm that the Beacons were voted last in the 11-team league in the preseason survey of head coaches, sports information directors and media members. Valpo finished tied for sixth and just one game out of a tie for third in a tightly-packed MVC this season.
 
The Ben Jobe Award is named in honor of one of the most iconic coaches in the history of basketball at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He is best known as the head coach of 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.
 
The 2026 award will be announced in Indianapolis, site of the men's Division I Basketball Championship.