Belmont’s Sustained Excellence

(St. Louis, MO) – Sustaining excellence is something that is close to impossible. Somehow, year-after-year, Belmont University basketball coach Rick Byrd pulls it off. The Bruins are the regular season champions of the Ohio Valley Conference’s East Division (20-9, 12-3) and own the best record overall. They will be the top seeded team at next week’s conference tournament.

Unlike other mid-major programs, the ‘hot young coach’ stayed put and has achieved incredible things. Now in his 30^th year on the Bruin sideline, Byrd who helped Belmont through the transition from NAIA power to mid-major icon, has won 639 games at Belmont (731 overall), and with this year’s title, the Bruins have claimed eight regular season conference titles since 2006. Belmont has now won 20 or more games in ten of their last 11 seasons.

This is not some ‘cute and cuddly mid-major’ story. In recent years the Bruins have knocked of the Big East’s Cincinnati, the Pac 12’s UCLA and North Carolina from the ACC. While Belmont is yet to win an NCAA Tournament game, they are 3 and 3 in other postseason tournaments, and they graduate players that excel in the classroom.

They lead the NCAA with 12 academic all-American selections since 2001 and sent Ian Clark to the National Basketball Association. Clark is a member of the reigning champion Golden State Warriors.

This current Bruin squad has done some special things. They are currently 19^th nationally in scoring at 82.3 points per game, 10^th in field goal percentage (49.2%), sixth in three-pointers per game (10.4) and 15^th in assists (17.1). Evan Bradds leads the nation in field goal percentage at 70.4% and guard Austin Luke is sixth in the nation for averaging 6.2 assists per game.

Heading into Music City Madness the Bruins remain the standard of excellence in the OVC.

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