Sprinkle spent just one season at Utah State but it was a massively successful year. The Aggies won the Mountain West regular-season title after being picked to finish ninth in the preseason poll. Utah State reached the semifinals of the Mountain West tournament and won its first NCAA Tournament game since 2001 when it beat TCU in the first round.

Leaving Utah State after just one season probably wasn’t in the plans for Sprinkle, but turning down a chance to take over at Washington likely couldn’t be passed up, especially considering his family connection. Sprinkle’s father, Bill, played football for the Huskies in the 1960s.

Sprinkle will replace Mike Hopkins, who was let go with one year remaining on his contract. Hopkins spent seven seasons at Washington and made the NCAA Tournament only once.

Hopkins’ tenure was defined by a frustrating stretch of mediocre results, an inability to put Washington back into the elite of the Pac-12 and with the Huskies moving to the Big Ten starting next season. Washington went 17-14 overall this season and finished 9-11 in Pac-12 play. Hopkins was 118-106 overall, but just 62-72 in conference play during his time at Washington.

Sprinkle will be walking into an odd situation without a permanent sitting athletic director. Troy Dannen unexpectedly left Washington to take over at Nebraska last week, leaving a void as the Huskies attempted to complete the hiring for one of its most prominent positions.

Dannen conducted interviews and put together an offer that was waiting for Sprinkle once the Utah State season came to an end. The uncertainty was whether Sprinkle would accept it and take the job not knowing who his boss would be.

But the draw of coaching in a power conference was too much to turn down. Sprinkle spent four seasons as the head coach at his alma mater of Montana State before taking the head job in Logan. Sprinkle has coached in the NCAA Tournament in three straight seasons, earning back-to-back bids his final two seasons at Montana State before guiding Utah State to an unexpected bid this season.

Sprinkle also has significant connections in Southern California after spending a decade as an assistant at Cal State Northridge and Cal State Fullerton.

Sprinkle’s career move comes on day after No. 1 seed Purdue beat his Utah State team 106-67 in Indianapolis.

Purdue big man Zach Edey had 23 points and 14 rebounds and Trey Kaufman-Renn added 18 points and eight boards.

Great Osodor, the Mountain West Player of the Year, had 14 points and six rebounds for Utah State. He followed Sprinkle to Utah State from MSU and has one season of eligibility remaining.

The biggest reason for Utah State’s exit was Edey, who turned in another impressive showing in Indianapolis, just 60 miles southeast of campus.

Just two days after he produced the first 30-point, 20-rebound NCAA Tournament game since 1995, Edey was 8 of 11 from the field and 7 of 8 at the free-throw line. The 7-foot-4, 300-pound center also had three blocks, three assists and two steals in 26 1/2 minutes.

He became the first player with three consecutive NCAA tourney games with at least 20 points and three blocks since Shaquille O’Neal for LSU in the 1991 and 1992 tournaments, according to OptaSTATS.

“Zach Edey, he’s special,” Sprinkle said. “There haven’t been many players like that in college basketball history. That’s why I think they can just take it to another level. We told our guys, yeah, Zach Edey is obviously a national player of the year, but they’ve got other really good players and that can’t go unnoticed.”

Sprinkle was the Mountain West Coach of the Year after taking a team with three returnees — none of whom scored a point in 2022-23 — to the regular-season conference title. One of the players he brought with him from Montana State, point guard Darius Brown II, had four assists to break a tie with Kris Clark for the Aggies’ single-season record. Brown finished with 228.

“To me, everything feels kind of like a storybook ending,” said Brown, who played in two straight NCAA tourneys with two different teams.