Lutz Leaves Men's Basketball Staff
6/14/2006 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
June 14, 2006
NACOGDOCHES, Texas - After six years as the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjack basketball team's top assistant coach, Steve Lutz is leaving the program. Lutz, an 11-year veteran of the collegiate coaching ranks, was the lone assistant remaining from the original staff of current SFA head coach Danny Kaspar. Earlier this week, Lutz accepted an assistant's position on the coaching staff of new Southern Methodist head coach Matt Doherty.
"Steve has been a loyal and hard-working assistant for me for 10 years," Kaspar said. "He deserves this great opportunity to further his career and better his income. He's recruited some great players for us including Percy Green, Antonio Burks, Taylor Moore, Hank Rivers, Keith Hardaway, and Antuane Miller. We will miss him."
Lutz has been a part of one of the most consistent eras in Lumberjack history. When Kaspar and his staff first arrived in Nacogdoches for the 2000-01 season, SFA had won a combined total of 20 games in the previous three years. Six years later, the program is hardly recognizable. Lutz will leave following the winningest four-year stretch in SFA history. SFA is 93-76 since Kaspar's arrival and went 71-44 in the last four years.
The Lumberjacks posted back-to-back 21-win seasons in 2002-03 and 2003-04, the first time SFA had done that since the mid-1980s. In each of those years, SFA reached the championship game of the Southland Conference postseason tournament, falling one win short of earning the program's first bid to the NCAA Tournament. The Lumberjacks reached the SLC tournament in four of the last six years, including a berth in the semifinals this season.
Kaspar's coaching philosophy puts great emphasis on strong defense, and Lutz helped put together one of the nation's toughest defensive teams during his time on campus. The Lumberjacks ranked in the Top 30 in the country in scoring defense four times in the last six years, including finishing the year 18th in the nation in the 2003-04 season.
The 'Jacks have also been notoriously tough to beat at home in the last six years. Lutz has helped SFA post a 65-21 record in the William R. Johnson Coliseum, during that time span, including a 38-19 home mark against SLC foes. The Lumberjacks put together a 31-game home winning streak that spanned the 2003-04 and 2004-05 seasons. The streak was the longest active home win streak in the country when it ended early in 2004.
SMU will be the fourth coaching stop of Lutz's career. Before coming to SFA, he spent one year as an assistant at Garden City Community College in Garden City, Kansas. Prior to that stop, Lutz served on Kaspar's staff for four seasons at Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. Lutz spent a three-year playing career at Texas Lutheran University, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1995. He received a master's of education from Incarnate Word in 1997.
Lutz and his wife, Shannon, have two daughters, Caroline and McKenna.
- SFA -
