May 11, 2025 By Jerin Steele 4 min read

Glenn Gutierrez last coached a basketball game in Washington County in 2015, but he’s never left the area.

Neither has his love for coaching.

It’s in his blood. The gym is where he belongs.

After a long stint as the Washington & Jefferson men’s basketball coach, he stayed involved in the sport and now is returning to the bench at Canon-McMillan.

Gutierrez was hired recently to be the Big Macs’ boys basketball coach. He takes over for Charles Murphy, who was not retained.

“When I took the W&J job in 2006, I’ve been here ever since,” Gutierrez said. “I was actually helping out South Fayette last year, coaching with the middle school program. In terms of the Canon-Mac job, my wife is a paraeducator in the district, so I had some familiarity from that perspective. It’s a (Class) 6A school, so you’re playing against the best of the best. It’s an opportunity to get back into a gym and work with a team, which I enjoy most.”

Gutierrez brings a ton of experience and a lot of it is at the collegiate level.

He was an assistant coach with Jim Boone for 18 years and with stops at California (Pa.), Robert Morris and Eastern Michigan. Other college stops for Gutierrez include Charleston Southern and Duquesne.

Gutierrez had a nine-year run as the head coach at W&J where he won more than 100 games and led the school to its first postseason championship in its history, the 2009 Eastern College Athletic Conference title.

He also coached at Summit Academy from 2016-18, so he has experience at the high school level. He guided the Knights to the playoffs in 2017.

Now he’ll try to turn around a Big Macs program that’s struggled in recent years.

Canon McMillan finished 5-17 overall and 3-11 in Class 6A Section 2, which was second to last place.

“The biggest thing that I bring is experience,” Gutierrez said. “Next year will be my 40th on the sidelines as an assistant or a head coach. I have experience in team building and developing a culture. We’re starting at square one. We’ve talked at open gyms about creating a foundation and building a positive culture. One with a strong work ethic and positive attitudes. Generating those traits will lead us forward.”

Gutierrez has learned plenty at the various college stops, but said it’s the same game no matter what level it’s being played.

“There’s a lot of philosophies in the approach to coaching basketball, but in the end it’s less about X’s and O’s and more about whose will is going to win out,” Gutierrez said. “It’s about putting the team first and doing what needs to be done. It may mean sacrificing some things individually. That’s the beauty in coaching. Building that team-first mentality through everybody and working towards one goal.”

When it comes to X’s and O’s, Gutierrez said he isn’t going to stray from what he’s liked to do in the past. It’s been a successful formula at other stops and is aiming for that to be the case at Canon-McMillan.

“We’ll run a motion offense and defensively we’ll predominantly be in man-to-man,” Gutierrez said. “That sounds simplistic in its approach, but the way we’re going to play is going to require guys to think, read and make decisions. We always say we’re teaching kids how to play, not how to run a play. On both ends of the floor they have to work together. They have the freedom to make decisions and do so through communicating as one unit.”