BOSTON – Lamar University men's basketball coach Alvin Brooks has been named to the Ben Jobe Award Mid-Season Honors list announced CollegeInsider.com Thursday afternoon. Unofficially the mid-season watch list for the Ben Jobe National Coach of the Year Award, this marks the second-straight season that Brooks has made the mid-season list as he was a 2024 finalist for the award.
 
Named after HBCU coaching icon Ben Jobe, the award is presented annually to the top NCAA Division I minority coach. Jobe is best known for his accomplishments at Southern University, a position he held for 12 seasons. He was also a head coach at Alabama A&M, Alabama State, Talladega, Tuskegee and South Carolina State.
 
The award voting panel is made up of current Division I coaches, athletic administrators and senior CollegeInsider.com staff. The 2025 recipient will be announced in San Antonio during the Division I Men's Basketball Championships in April.
 
Now in his fourth year at the helm for the Red and White, Brooks has steadily built the program back seeing consistent improvement. Over the course of the previous two seasons under Brooks' guidance, the Cardinals have made a 17-win improvement. Big Red posted a 19-win season in 2023-24 on its way to a fourth-place finish in the standings.
 
The 2024-25 season has already seen the Cardinals post a five-game win streak – with four of those wins being on the road – including victories at UL Lafayette and Southern Mississippi. The Cardinals also jumped out to their best start in Southland Conference play since the 1999-2000 season.
 
Lamar returns to action Saturday when it travels to Lake Charles, La. to renew the Battle of the Border rivalry with McNeese. The game against the Cowboys is slated to tip off at 4 p.m.