Men’s Basketball Coach Rick Barnes to Receive USBWA’s Good Guy Award

University of Texas at Austin men’s basketball head coach Rick Barnes has been selected to receive the Good Guy Award from the U.S. Basketball Writers Association (USBWA). The award honors both coaching excellence and cooperation with the news media.
 
Barnes will be presented with the Good Guy Award Friday, April 1, at the USBWA’s annual college basketball awards breakfast. The breakfast, held in conjunction with this year’s NCAA Final Four in Houston, will also honor the Oscar Robertson Trophy and Henry Iba Award winners as well as Rice University’s Arsalan Kazemi, the USBWA’s Most Courageous Award winner. In addition, the event will pay tribute to the University of Houston’s legendary “Phi Slama Jama” teams.
 
Barnes joins Tom Brennan (former coach at Vermont), Gene Keady (former coach at Purdue and special assistant/adviser at St. John’s), Tom Izzo (Michigan State) and Ron Hunter (IUPUI) as past winners of the Good Guy Award given to media-friendly coaches.
 
Since arriving at the university 13 years ago, Barnes has moved the Texas program into one of the nation’s elite. He is the winningest coach in Texas history with a 322-123 record and has led Texas to a school-record 13 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances, including one trip to the Final Four (2003), three “Elite Eight” appearances (2003, 2006 and 2008) and five “Sweet 16” appearances (2002, 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2008). UT is one of just nine schools to have advanced to at least the “Sweet 16” of the NCAA Tournament in five of the last 10 years, joining Duke, Kansas, Connecticut, Arizona, Kentucky, Michigan State, North Carolina and Pittsburgh.
 
In 2009 Barnes received the John Wooden “Legends of Coaching” Award, given to coaches who exemplify Wooden’s high standards of coaching success and philosophy, personal achievement, character and graduation rate of student-athletes.