Believe it or not, Utah State was/is a pretty decent basketball program. Sure, they did a lot of their winning in the old Big West and WAC, I get that. And Smith has done a great job there, nothing can be taken away from him. He didn't take over directly from the longtime, winning coach. He took over for the first guy who did that, and had a fairly poor three year run.
And of course San Diego St is a very strong program, which Dutcher simply took over directly when it was already going pretty well.
Compare that to Niko: first three years building up Furman, a low-major program with I believe little historical success, then that fourth years I mentioned where they had a chance but choked in the SoCon tourny (no idea why, disappointing no doubt), then the next year he took over at Drake which was really bad the years before that and got them back to respectable, then took over for Colorado St, which had been meh since Tim Miles left for Nebraska. Spent two years rebuilding them, which brings us to this year.
I don't think it's quite fair to compare them as apples to apples. But you also can't take anything away from Smith. He had success right away at Utah St, and has continued to do so. He's due for a P5 job after this year, I think, no matter what.
Only question I think is: will it be Minnesota, or will it be somewhere else, like say U of Utah?