Former Gonzaga assistant coach signs multi-year extension at Valpo

The coaching tree for Gonzaga under Mark Few remains a fruitful one, with yet another former Zag getting a vote of confidence from his new school.

Roger Powell, who served as an assistant at Gonzaga from 2019-2023, received a multi-year contract extension from Valparaiso, where he has been the head coach for the past three seasons.

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Powell took over for the Beacons in 2023-24, replacing Matt Lottich, who had gone 11-21 the previous year. Powell did not have early success, going just 7-25 and 3-17 in the Missouri Valley conference in year one, but that improved to 15-19 overall and 6-14 in league play in 2024-25.

Powell then broke through with a stellar 18-15 overall record in 2025-26, which included an 11-9 record and sixth-place finish in MVC play. The 11 conference wins set the Valparaiso record in the Missouri Valley, where they have been members since 2017-18, while the Beacons’ 18 regular-season wins represented the program’s most since 2019-20.

Powell came to Gonzaga after three years as the associate head coach at Vanderbilt in the SEC. Prior to that, he got his start at Valparaiso as an assistant from 2011-2016, his first coaching job after wrapping up a six-year professional career that included stops with the Utah Jazz, the Arkansas Rimrockers of the D-League, and overseas in Germany, Spain, France, and Israel.

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Gonzaga coaching tree

Powell is hardly the first coach to find success after moving on from an assistant role at Gonzaga. The most notable example is, of course, Tommy Lloyd, who spent 20 years serving under coach Few before leaving after the team’s national championship appearance in 2020-21 to take over at Arizona.

Apr 4, 2026; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Arizona Wildcats head coach Tommy Lloyd. | Robert Deutsch-Imagn Images

Lloyd has gone a ridiculous 148-36 (80.4%) in five years with the Wildcats, leading the team to the NCAA Tournament all five years and breaking through with a Final Four run this March that ended at the hands of eventual…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/former-gonzaga-assistant-coach-signs-182759610.html

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Publish date : 2026-05-18 18:27:00

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