Lutz’s Fit in Stillwater Goes beyond the Iba Tree, He Has Fit in a Lot of Different Places

STILLWATER — A lot has been made of Steve Lutz being a part of the Henry Iba coaching tree, and it’s true.

It goes from Iba to Eddie Sutton to Gene Keady to Matt Painter and now Lutz. But Lutz doesn’t necessarily belong to one tree. His story is one of a few steps out of his comfort zone to grow his coaching resume, and those steps out of his comfort zone play a part in what makes him such a good fit at Oklahoma State.

OSU football coach Mike Gundy said this week that OSU is a “different place to coach.” Any time there is an opening at a sport, it’s a wonder from the fanbase as to whether an “OSU guy” needs to fill it because the thought is one is more likely to succeed at Oklahoma State if they have a deeper understanding for OSU and Stillwater.

A fit in Stillwater seems more important than in most places, but over the years, Lutz has found out how to fit in under a few different circumstances.

Networking is important in coaching, as it is in most careers. But on a few instances, Lutz let his work speak for itself, getting jobs for people he didn’t know based off the recommendations of others.

Lutz said when he got his assistant job at SMU under Matt Doherty in 2006, he didn’t know Doherty from “the man on the moon.”

When he made the jump out of the state of Texas to Creighton in 2010, he said he didn’t know Greg McDermott. The story goes Lutz was out to eat with Pat Knight in Dallas when Knight, then the coach at Texas Tech (and son of Bob Knight), got a call from McDermott. McDermott was looking for an assistant who could recruit Texas. Knight told McDermott about the coach he was out to eat with. Not long after, Lutz was headed to Omaha, expanding his horizons under another coach he didn’t personally know all that well.

“You do not see this very often in coaching, where you get hired by somebody that you really don’t know,” Lutz said. “… I’m not a bragger by any means, but because of the job I had done and the reputation that I had, like-minded people, they suggested me to go work for those two guys. Even Matt Painter, I didn’t know him real, real well.

“I take pride in that. I take a lot of pride in the fact that I was able build a good enough reputation as a basketball coach and a recruiter and a father and all those sorts of things that people would hire me without knowing me. And then I did a good job for them, and they become friends for life.”

From McDermott and Creighton, Lutz then went to Painter and Purdue in 2017, finally connecting the Iba tree.

All along that journey, Lutz had seen colleagues make the jump from an assistant to a head coach. Lutz was a graduate assistant with Chris Beard at Incarnate Word in 1995. The two are the same age, but Beard’s path led him to being a Division-I head coach back in 2015. He shared McDermott’s Creighton staff with Darian DeVries. Not long after Lutz left Omaha for Purdue, DeVries got the Drake job in 2018.

Finally, Lutz got his shot as a head man in 2021 at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

“I hate to sound like a kid, but I’m not a hater,” Lutz said. “I wanted them to succeed. I wanted their families to evolve in the business and those sorts of things. I knew my time would come. I’ve always had a quiet confidence about myself, and I’ll always continue to have that. I want everyone to be happy and get what they deserve.”

Another impressive part about Lutz’s journey is he didn’t just jump from one spot to the next. Assistant coaches can pop around quite a bit in a short amount of time. He was at Incarnate Word for four years. He was at Stephen F. Austin for six. He was at SMU for four. He was at Creighton for seven. He was at Purdue for four. All the while, Lutz was rubbing elbows with guys climbing the coaching ranks and working under some of the best coaches in college basketball.

So, yes, Lutz is a part of the Iba tree, but if you’re looking for a reason as to why he could fit in Stillwater, forget any one tree that he is a part of. He has found a way to fit in a lot of different places working with a lot of different coaches while being successful all along the way.