For the second-straight season, George Mason men's basketball head coach Tony Skinn ('06) has been named a national finalist for the Ben Jobe National Coach of the Year Award.
 
Presented by CollegeInsider.com, the award recognizes the top minority head coach in Division I college basketball. The 2026 award will be announced in Indianapolis, the site of the men's Division I Basketball Championship.
 
For a full list of finalists, click here. 
 
The 2025 Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year, Skinn has put together arguably the best start to a coaching career in school history. He's set new program bests for overall wins (70), league wins (35), overall winning percentage (.693) and league winning percentage (.648) for a Patriot coach over his first three campaigns. What's more, Skinn's 69.3 overall winning percentage ranks 17th nationally amongst current Division I head coaches with at least seasons at the helm. 
 
Skinn is the first coach in school history to lead his teams to three-straight 20-win seasons. The fastest bench boss to 50 wins in program annals, Skinn has guided the Patriots to two consecutive NIT appearances, marking the first time since 2007-09 the program has reached back-to-back postseasons (NCAA or NIT). 
 
In 2025-26, Skinn guided the Green & Gold to the program's best-ever overall (18-1) and A-10 starts (6-0). Team 60 became the fastest in school history to reach 20 victories (22), shattering the previous mark of 25.
 
Despite returning just three percent of the previous season's scoring output and losing Preseason All-A-10 First Team selection Brayden O'Connor to a season-ending injury in the first game of the campaign, the Green & Gold reached 23 overall victories (t-5^th most in school history) and earned a spot in the NIT.
 
GMU earned home wins over three NCAA Tournament Teams (#25/24 Saint Louis, VCU, Penn) and the Patriots were the only school in the A-10 to defeat the top-3 programs in the league standings. The 29-point win over the Billikens marked the 14th-largest margin of victory by an unranked team over a ranked program since the AP poll began in 1949. 

About The Ben Jobe Award
The Ben Jobe Award is named in honor of one of the most iconic coaches in the history of basketball at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He is best known as the head coach of Southern University, a position he held for 12 seasons. He was also head coach at Alabama A&M, Alabama State, Talladega, Tuskegee, and South Carolina State.

His record at Southern was 209-141 and included four NCAA Tournament appearances. He also coached the Jaguars to one NIT appearance, five SIAC championships, 11 SWAC titles and two NAIA Tournament Championships. Perhaps his most memorable moment as a coach was leading No. 15 seed Southern to a 93-78 win over No. 2 Georgia Tech in the first round of the 1993 NCAA Tournament. It stands as one of the great upsets in the history of the event.

Coach Jobe passed away on March 10, 2017.

The recipient of the annual award is determined by a 10-member voting committee, which consists of current and former head coaches, as well as two senior staff members of collegeinsider.com.