Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Men’s College Basketball Coaching Tiers 2022: Who is now on top in the sport?


 Men’s College Basketball Coaching Tiers 2022: Who is now on top in the sport?

By Dana O‘Neil and Brian Hamilton The Athletic  Sept 28, 2022

 

https://theathletic.com/3619418/2022/09/28/college-basketball-best-coach-rankings-tiers/

The best men’s college basketball head coaches are the top Xs and Os savants. The best coaches are the best recruiters. Or the best player development gurus. Or the guys who win over the long haul. Or the coaches are those who can conquer the brackets in March and April.

Or, in a word? Yes. To all of it.

Welcome to The Athletic’s Men’s Basketball Coaching Tiers for 2022-23, our effort to sort out who does the best job across the college hoops landscape in the first season without Mike Krzyzewski and Jay Wright.

The criteria? Intentionally vague. Definitions of success vary from person to person. So we created a list and contacted multiple sources around the sport — from search firms to agencies to those involved in the game — and asked for input to arrive at something resembling a consensus.

“I think there are some really good young coaches out there, and some older guys who aren’t as good as they used to be,” one search firm source says. “That’s what makes this so hard. I’m sure you’ll hear from a lot of coaches. Good luck with that.”

Because tiering 350-plus coaches would be folly, we culled the list according to the following qualifications:

• All head coaches from the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC;

• Any head coach from a non-“power” conference who has led his team to the NCAA Tournament or won a regular-season conference title in the last three seasons (so high-profile names like Archie Miller and Steve Prohm actually don’t qualify);

• Must have already coached a full season at the Division I level (Jon Scheyer and Jerome Tang, et al., wait ’til next year);

• Must be an active Division I head coach.

Please read and review this multiple times before lunging into the comment section (or submitting a question for our forthcoming coaching tiers mailbag), because not everyone is of the exact same mind about any one coach, and there is bound to be disagreement and debate. There was within the people we called. There was within The Athletic’s staff. That’s the fun of it, no?

In fact, there’s only one certainty here.

“It’s a really hard exercise,” one coaches’ agent says. “You guys are going to get blistered.”

Tier 1

Tony Bennett

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-301-50x50.pngVirginia

John Calipari

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-547-50x50.pngKentucky

Scott Drew

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-387-50x50.pngBaylor

Mark Few

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-613-50x50.pngGonzaga

Tom Izzo

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-376-50x50.pngMichigan State

Rick Pitino

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-446-50x50.pngIona

Kelvin Sampson

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-285-50x50.pngHouston

Bill Self

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-385-50x50.pngKansas

Maybe this would be better classified as the “if you know, you know,” list because it is, perhaps, the one group of coaches everyone agreed with. “Overall, I don’t think you can argue with those eight guys,’’ one former coach says. This is, in essence, the dream team, the group that you’d cull from if you were an athletic director and you could hire anyone in the country.

It is also beautifully representative of college basketball. In what other sport could you have the Iona coach on the same list as the Kansas and Kentucky coaches and no one would argue? “If you polled every head coach in college basketball and asked them if they could have one coach to coach their team for one game, who would it be — I bet over 50 percent of them would say (Pitino),’’ one agent says. “The respect he has among his peers — even the ones that don’t like him — is pretty ridiculous.” In what other sport could two guys who’ve not won a national title (Mark Few and Kelvin Sampson) not only make perfect sense to be included, but earn votes from some as best of the best?  When asked whom he would rank first, one former coach says, “It’s Mark Few, but I’ll tell you what, Kelvin isn’t far behind.’’

If anything, this top tier shows that the term “blueblood” is no longer applicable to program; it’s about the coach. You can build a powerhouse anywhere if you have the right man.

No doubt John Calipari, Bill Self and Tom Izzo, the guys sitting in college hoops’ penthouses, rank as the no-brainers, but don’t mistake that for guys just running on cruise control. The battle for elite players is harder than ever, what with the alternate options of the G League and Overtime Elite available, and crafting consistency at the top might be harder now than ever. “For Bill Self to do what he did in that conference, and win it that many times in a row — it’s almost undoable,’’ one former coach says. Managing expectations is also no picnic. Calipari, who took UMass and Memphis to a Final Four, has coached in the fishbowl of Kentucky since 2009, which ought to be counted in dog years. He’s won one title and reached four Final Fours, and for the insatiable appetite of Big Blue Nation, that’s almost not good enough. “Everyone likes to say Cal’s not a good coach,’’ an agent says. “But he’s also like, what? Fifteen plays away from winning like five national championships.’’

 

Mark Few remains in pursuit of his first national title but there’s little reason to doubt what he’s done at Gonzaga. (Jamie Schwaberow / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

Gonzaga, Houston, Baylor and Virginia are places where basketball expectations never consistently existed until their coaches came along and created them. Few has taken Gonzaga from little engine to locomotive, building a program with facilities that rival any in the country and results that rank at the top (no worse than the Sweet 16 since 2015, 30 of the last 69 weeks ranked at No. 1) save for the niggling missing piece of a national title. “He hasn’t won it all, but he will,’’ one insider says, parroting the opinion of many. Houston had its Phi Slama Jama days, and then a vast expanse of nothing until Sampson came in. Now the Cougars, who have gone Sweet 16, Final Four, Elite Eight the past three years, enter this year as a national championship favorite. Similarly, the Ralph Sampson wonder years were a minute ago when Tony Bennett arrived at Virginia. He brought a pack-line defensive scheme as the great equalizer for the Cavaliers in the competitive ACC. People hated it, and carped Bennett would never win in March with it, especially after he lost to UMBC. His answer? A national title the next year.

And then there’s Scott Drew. “It’s funny because, I know he belongs there with what he’s doing, but it still seems strange to me to see Scott Drew as a Tier 1 coach,’’ says one agent. That was the overriding sentiment of the Scott Drew Can’t Coach crowd, who have since been silenced as the coach completed his resurrection of Baylor not by gobbling up five-stars, but by taking sit-out transfers and unheralded recruits and winning a national title.

Team 2A

Dana Altman

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-524-50x50.pngOregon

Rick Barnes

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-556-50x50.pngTennessee

Chris Beard

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-388-50x50.pngTexas

Ed Cooley

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-342-50x50.pngProvidence

Mick Cronin

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-532-50x50.pngUCLA

Leonard Hamilton

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-308-50x50.pngFlorida State

Sean Miller

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-338-50x50.pngXavier

Eric Musselman

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-555-50x50.pngArkansas

Matt Painter

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-373-50x50.pngPurdue

Bruce Pearl

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-558-50x50.pngAuburn

The on-the-cusp group. Put a national championship on the resume of any of these names, and there’s almost certainly an addition to Tier 1. But there aren’t national championships on the respective resumes. Which left a lot of room for debate, as to who might deserve a spot among the highest echelon of men’s college coaches.

Take, for example, Chris Beard, who supercharged Texas Tech and was an overtime away from a national title in 2019. Beard has operated for only one season with the seemingly endless resources at Texas, with the sparkling Moody Center opening this fall as the Longhorns’ new home floor. “Chris Beard is really close,” an industry source says. “He’s really consistent. He seems all over the map, but the things that are really, really consistent with him are toughness, defense, work, preparation, recruiting personality. Watching film from last year, knowing about (Tyrese) Hunter, seeing how they improve, seeing what they could improve — he could win a national championship this year.”

Is Beard on the verge? It naturally depends on what direction Texas takes from here. “I’m a wait-and-see guy with Beard,” one agent says. “Not that he’s been bad. He hasn’t been at all. He’s been really good, but in five years are we going to be saying he underachieved at Texas?”

And yet the notion of national titles as a springboard to a place among the elite of the elite brought about some debate with other Tier 2 names, simply because a couple guys one tier up haven’t had the confetti fall on them in April, either. Purdue’s Matt Painter might have one of the best basketball minds in the country, and his program wins almost metronomically at this point. How does falling short in March affect the calculation? “What he has had to do is evolve, and he has evolved so many times,” an industry source says. “He’s evolved with his offense. He’s evolved with his players. He’s been able to have tough years and turn back around and win again. He’s done it consistently. He hasn’t had a lot of issues in his program He’s built that fan base and took it to another level. If Kelvin Sampson is on that list, and Few is on that list, then I almost think Matt Painter (has to be).”

Likewise, does the comparison game favor Auburn’s Bruce Pearl? “Kelvin has done a great job, but is he any different than Pearl?” an agent asked. Well, Pearl has won nearly 67 percent of his games with 11 NCAA Tournament bids and one Final Four appearance. Sampson has won 67 percent of his games with 18 NCAA Tournament bids and one Final Four. Eye of the beholder stuff.

Providence’s Ed Cooley may not immediately come to mind as one of the nation’s elite coaches, mostly because of the shadow cast by the Jay Wright-era at Villanova. But Cooley’s degree-of-difficulty points, relative to the results at Providence, earn him his spot. “When you look at some of the other jobs in these (top) tiers, Providence is not this great job,” one agent says. “And he’s been extremely competitive in the Big East. He’s a really good basketball coach that has done more with less for a long time.” What Cooley accomplishes now that he’s out of the aforementioned shadow pretty much will be legacy-defining. “He and (Danny) Hurley have to make a real jump now that Jay is out, because (Villanova) is going to change,” one industry source says. “It just is.”

A run at a long-awaited Final Four and national title is about the only missing element for Sean Miller, now back for a second stint at Xavier. “There’s really no weakness to what he does,” the industry source says. “He’s one of the top 20 coaches in the country. Easy. Maybe higher.” Or as one agent put it: “He’s a really good coach. He won at Xavier, won at Arizona and he’s going to win at Xavier again and never leave.”

And then there’s Eric Musselman, who has delivered at a high level both at Nevada and Arkansas … but maybe just not at the highest of high levels. The Razorbacks might be poised to do so in short order, however, which could change Musselman’s personal narrative. “Arkansas is one of the hottest teams in the country,” an industry insider says. “They’re on a rocket ship. They’ve really capitalized on NIL, and he’s a really, really good coach.” Like it or not, apparently. “He’s done a really good job, but I just wish for one game he’d act like he’s been there,” an agent says. “That stuff, it can count against you. If they had somehow beaten Duke and ended Coach K’s career, would he have run around like a moron? He would have been like the only guy who could make everyone like Coach K. But he’s a good coach.”

 

Jim Boeheim’s place in college basketball is of some question. (Brad Penner / USA Today)

Tier 2B

Jim Boeheim

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-309-50x50.pngSyracuse

Bob Huggins

West Virginia

More than 150 coaches made the final cut for this exercise. Two caused more discussion, argument, division and dissension than any others — Jim Boehiem and Bob Huggins. The folks The Athletic spoke to couldn’t come up with an agreed-upon landing spot. Polled for assistance, The Athletic staff couldn’t reach a consensus. Even the two people whose names appear at the top of this story disagreed. “Oooohhhweee, I went back and forth on that one,’’ says one grassroots coach, summing up the internal conversation for everyone. After much debate, we compromised, creating a separate wing for the two Hall of Famers.

From the outside, maybe it doesn’t seem so complicated. Boeheim is the winningest active coach in the business, with 998 wins* (the NCAA vacated 101 of them, so some might argue that number is 1,099). In 46 years at Syracuse, he’s had one losing season. He won a national championship in 2003 and has coached in four more Final Fours, the first in 1987 and the most recent in 2016. He made the Sweet 16 in 2021 and 2018. “If you had one game to play and you gave Jim the team, it’s going to be very, very hard to beat him,’’ an industry source says. “He as much as anybody else would have a tremendous opportunity to win, because of the zone, because he doesn’t overcoach the offense. It’s not complicated, but they are committed to what they do.”

Huggins has more than 900 wins on his resume, winning at places where that’s hard (Akron, Cincinnati and West Virginia). He took both the Bearcats and the Mountaineers to the Final Four, and both times a devastating injury (to Kenyon Martin at Cincinnati and Da’Sean Butler at West Virginia) left people wondering what might have been. Out of the last 26 NCAA Tournaments, Huggins has coached in 23 of them and just four years ago, he went to back-to-back Sweet 16s. “Not only look at what he’s done, but look where he’s done it,’’ one grassroots coach says “The fact that he’s still here, doing what he’s doing? C’mon. He’s at West Virginia doing this.’’

So what’s the problem? It boils down to longevity versus immediacy. “Is this a lifetime achievement award or not?” one insider says. For Boeheim, that one losing season came last year, the third season in a row in which the Orange failed to reach the 20-win threshold, and in that 2021 regional semifinal year, Syracuse entered the field as an unheralded No. 11 seed. “If his career was flipped, he’d be in Tier One, right? There’s just so many variables to how somebody could determine this,” one former coach says. Huggins, similarly, has had two losing seasons in the last four, and was bounced in the second round of the lone NCAA Tournament he made. In the Big 12, the Mountaineers have failed to finish above .500 in three of the last four seasons and last year won just four league games. “It might sound like recency bias, but Bob hasn’t been real good for a few years,’’ one insider says.

Tier 3

Randy Bennett

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-614-50x50.pngSaint Mary's

Mike Brey

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-304-50x50.pngNotre Dame

Hubert Davis

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-300-50x50.pngNorth Carolina

Jamie Dixon

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-393-50x50.pngTCU

Greg Gard

Wisconsin

Anthony Grant

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-323-50x50.pngDayton

Chris Holtmann

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-377-50x50.pngOhio State

Juwan Howard

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-374-50x50.pngMichigan

Dan Hurley

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-282-50x50.pngUConn

James Jones

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-437-50x50.pngYale

Tommy Lloyd

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-526-50x50.pngArizona

Thad Matta

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-343-50x50.pngButler

Fran McCaffery

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-370-50x50.pngIowa

Greg McDermott

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-340-50x50.pngCreighton

Niko Medved

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-496-50x50.pngColorado State

Porter Moser

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-384-50x50.pngOklahoma

Nate Oats

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-554-50x50.pngAlabama

Shaka Smart

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-344-50x50.pngMarquette

Kevin Willard

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-371-50x50.pngMaryland

Buzz Williams

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-549-50x50.pngTexas A&M

Brad Underwood

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-381-50x50.pngIllinois

Mike Young

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-310-50x50.pngVirginia Tech

Solid, reliable and consistent, or entirely unproven; very good, if not great or potentially great but not yet. That’s probably the best way to describe this group. This is a mix of guys who have been at it awhile and never disappointed but haven’t wowed yet either, and guys who rank among the most likely to be upwardly mobile were we to redo this exercise again. So rewarding for consistency, and predicting potential, if you will.

Among the first group of consistent, if not spectacular winners: Randy Bennett, Mike Brey, Jamie Dixon, Brad Underwood, Greg Gard, Chris Holtmann and Fran McCaffery. (It’s interesting that four guys from the Big Ten — Underwood, Holtmann, McCaffery and Gard — are here. Is that evidence to explain the Big Ten’s championship drought, or merely indicative of how hard the conference is?)

Brey is probably the best case study. Everyone likes Mike Brey. Everyone respects Mike Brey. Everyone knows that Notre Dame is a really hard job and maybe no one could do it better than Brey has. “He has mastered his system and basketball culture and the way they do it,’’ one industry source says. “They’re not going to over-practice. They’re not going to do a lot of complicated things. They’re going to get great ball movement. They’re going to be able to mix man and zone. He’s won a consistent period of time.” Brey took the Irish to back-to-back Elite Eights in 2015 and 2016 and has missed the tourney just seven times. But Notre Dame has come up against it recently, failing to make it out of the first weekend since that last regional final. He is not — and maybe at 63 years old and in his 27th year of coaching, should not — be an upwardly mobile coach.

Who is, or at least could be? Well, there are tiers to the tier, if you will — the guys who already have some evidence to support a likely jump, and guys who just need more time to prove it. Four years in, Nate Oats seems like a safe bet. Along with his success at Buffalo, Oats has made Alabama (!) care about basketball, with a Sweet 16 appearance and a first-round loss that has to include the asterisk, of what might have happened had Jahvon Quinerly not gotten hurt. Ditto Juwan Howard, whose NBA experience cannot and should not be discounted, and who most everyone agrees is a star in the making at Michigan.

With 12 years at Seton Hall under his belt, Kevin Willard doesn’t suit the traditional up-and-comer mold, but not all Power 6 jobs are created alike. “People don’t know how difficult that job is,’’ one former coach says. Yet Willard and the Pirates made five of the last six NCAA Tournaments and now he gets the financial backing he never had, via the Big Ten and Maryland. Insiders expect Willard to fare well in the flush D.C. area recruiting market. “He could definitely move up,’’ one insider says. “Definitely.’’

Then there’s the might-bes. Porter Moser might be. After making Loyola Chicago and Sister Jean household names, squeezed 19 wins and an NIT berth out of an underwhelming Oklahoma team in his first year. “What if Hubert had won?” asked one agent about the conundrum that is Hubert Davis. In his first year, Davis took North Carolina to within an Armando Bacot rolled ankle of maybe a national championship. He beat Mike Krzyzewski in both his final home game at Cameron Indoor and in the Final Four. He also entered the tourney as a No. 8 seed, having lost by 13 to Virginia Tech in the ACC tournament. That all happened in one year. Same with Tommy Lloyd. A sensational sidekick to Mark Few, Lloyd took over a team in disarray after the dismissal of Sean Miller, won 33 games, rose to as high as No. 2 in the nation and reached the Sweet 16. In one season. What does that mean? “He had a great year, but if you ask coaches, he walked into a loaded roster. You have to see what he can do over time,’’ one insider says.

Shaka Smart went to a Final Four with VCU and bypassed a ton of offers before jumping at Texas. He was not bad in Austin. The Longhorns went to the NCAA Tournament in three of his last five years (and probably would have made another were it not for COVID-19), before he opted out and headed to Marquette. There, Smart took a team that was largely dysfunctional amid roster churn and got it to the NCAA Tournament. “I know there’s a wide range of opinions on Shaka, but he has been to a Final Four,’’ one agent says. “He’s been to the NCAA Tournament every year but three that he’s coached. I mean, that’s pretty damn good. “

His successor at VCU, Anthony Grant, went through the same thing, parlaying his success with the Rams into a shot at Alabama. Alabama then is not the Alabama that Nate Oats has now; the administration has since turned over and given Oats far more support than Grant had. And Greg McDermott soared at Northern Iowa, bombed at Iowa State and is now at Creighton, sitting on a team that has a host of starters back.

Are these guys up-and-comers? Or are they came-and-wenters?

 

Penny Hardaway got Memphis to the second round of the NCAA Tournament earlier this year. (Troy Wayrynen / USA Today)

Tier 4

Mark Adams

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-390-50x50.pngTexas Tech

Casey Alexander

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-512-50x50.pngBelmont

John Becker

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-294-50x50.pngVermont

Tad Boyle

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-529-50x50.pngColorado

Mike Boynton

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-392-50x50.pngOklahoma State

Darian DeVries

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-490-50x50.pngDrake

Brian Dutcher

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-491-50x50.pngSan Diego State

Andy Enfield

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-525-50x50.pngUSC

Steve Forbes

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-313-50x50.pngWake Forest

Joe Golding

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-418-50x50.pngUTEP

Penny Hardaway

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-286-50x50.pngMemphis

Ray Harper

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-517-50x50.pngJacksonville State

Eric Henderson

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-593-50x50.pngSouth Dakota State

Shaheen Holloway

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-339-50x50.pngSeton Hall

Chris Jans

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-557-50x50.pngMississippi State

Robert Jones

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-470-50x50.pngNorfolk State

Kyle Keller

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-570-50x50.pngStephen F. Austin

Eric Konkol

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-284-50x50.pngTulsa

Matt Langel

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-540-50x50.pngColgate

Jim Larranaga

Miami

Jeff Linder

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-498-50x50.pngWyoming

Grant McCasland

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-420-50x50.pngNorth Texas

Ritchie McKay

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-363-50x50.pngLiberty

Matt McMahon

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-548-50x50.pngLSU

Wes Miller

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-283-50x50.pngCincinnati

Chris Mooney

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-331-50x50.pngRichmond

Scott Nagy

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-429-50x50.pngWright State

TJ Otzelberger

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-389-50x50.pngIowa State

Steve Pikiell

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-382-50x50.pngRutgers

Mark Pope

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-615-50x50.pngBYU

Mike Rhoades

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-324-50x50.pngVCU

Leon Rice

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-494-50x50.pngBoise State

Mark Schmidt

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-326-50x50.pngSt. Bonaventure

Mike White

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-551-50x50.pngGeorgia Bulldogs

Mike Woodson

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-372-50x50.pngIndiana Hoosiers

The mushiest of all tiers, is probably the best way to say it. Ascendant coaches with yeah-buts. Winners with nevertheless mixed reviews. It probably skews as a more upwardly mobile group as a whole, but also, in some cases, there’s not sufficient evidence to rule out a backslide into anonymity.

It’s about what you’d expect in the squishy middle. Everything can go either way.

What to do, for example, with Penny Hardaway? He hasn’t won fewer than 20 games as Memphis’ coach. He also has gotten in his own way on occasion — “He had a loaded team this year, and it got away from him for a while,” an industry insider says — and he’s produced roughly the same results as predecessors Tubby Smith and Josh Pastner. The rocket ship has not launched, but neither has it teetered over and fallen to pieces. “The thing I like about Penny is he wants to be better,” a former coach says. “He wants to be good at this. He’s not resting on his laurels. He’s trying to be a better coach. I think he’s a little too sensitive with criticism. He brings a lot of that upon himself. He’s got all of the support he needs locally, from his university, his fans. He doesn’t need to worry about that stuff. He should be above it.”

Andy Enfield at USC? He’s coached top 10 teams. He’s reached the last two NCAA Tournaments and it probably would’ve been three straight but for COVID-19. So … good, right? “West Coast bias there,” the insider says. “He won at Florida Gulf Coast and he’s been really good at USC. He’s not the same guy as Penny, or Mike Boynton. He’s just not.” Or … maybe not, considering what Enfield works with? “I don’t think they play close to hard enough,” an industry source says. “He’s a little like a modern-day Bill Frieder, where Bill always had a lot of talent and had really good teams, but they never got over the hump because they weren’t quite tough enough.”

Mike Boynton? Another yay vs. nay guy for winning 54.4 percent of his games and reaching one NCAA Tournament in five years at Oklahoma State, operating under the cloud of infractions for a while as he did so. “I just think he’s the right person,” one agent says. “He will have success there, and when he does, he’ll get a really big job.” Counterpoint? “I don’t know,” an industry insider says. “He’s kind of fallen off a bit.”

In the sub-category of coaches who might be viewed differently had their circumstances been different, we find the likes of Wake Forest’s Steve Forbes and Rutgers’ Steve Pikiell. Forbes has only been a Division I head coach for six seasons, but the turnaround in Winston-Salem has been remarkable and people tend not to forget the wins he accrued at other levels. “Forbes has more to prove, but he’s in a really tough place,” a former coach says. “I think he’s doing good stuff. I really do.” Pikiell, meanwhile, did the presumably un-doable and led Rutgers back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since the early 1990s. “He beats you with less,” one industry source says.

“I know they’ve put more money in the program, but for how many years did people say it was a dead-end job?” A former coach says. “Because it was. Who would have thought they could win in the Big Ten?”

In fact, put Mississippi State’s Chris Jans in the same company. Thoroughly successful in his second chance at coaching life at New Mexico State, and now an SEC job offers him a chance at undeniable legitimization. “The only reason he’s not higher is because he got in trouble at Bowling Green and lost his job,” the industry source says. “Chris Jans would be a Big Ten coach by now if he’d never got in trouble at Bowling Green. Nobody really knows how good a coach that guy is.”

Up-and-comers? Take your pick. Seton Hall’s Shaheen Holloway, Iowa State’s T.J. Otzelberger, Wright State’s Scott Nagy — all were lauded. Two of the more interesting calculations were Indiana’s Mike Woodson and Norfolk State’s Robert Jones — a pair at opposite ends of the attention spectrum. Woodson has only one year in the books at Indiana, but the professional track record must be considered. “I mean, I would take him over Penny Hardaway any day of the week,” one agent says.

Jones, meanwhile, requires a deeper dive than just a pass through the win-loss column. His teams have dominated in MEAC play (114-34 in his nine years) and have now made consecutive trips to the NCAA Tournament. “You gotta remember you can’t count the ‘buy’ games on his schedule that he loses every year,” one grassroots source says. “Take them out and go look at his record. And look at where he’s doing it, and what he’s doing without.” It’s a fantastic point, and certainly something athletic directors looking to hire a coach next offseason should consider.

Tier 5

Mike Anderson

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-346-50x50.pngSt. John's

Jeff Boals

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-459-50x50.pngOhio

Jon Coffman

Purdue-Fort Wayne

Bryce Drew

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-624-50x50.pngGrand Canyon

Dennis Gates

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-559-50x50.pngMissouri

Todd Golden

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-550-50x50.pngFlorida

Earl Grant

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-314-50x50.pngBoston College

Jared Grasso

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-510-50x50.pngBryant

John Groce

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-456-50x50.pngAkron

Darrin Horn

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-433-50x50.pngNorthern Kentucky

Martin Ingelsby

Delaware

Ben Jacobson

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-485-50x50.pngNorthern Iowa

Ben Johnson

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-383-50x50.pngMinnesota

Terrence Johnson

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-611-50x50.pngTexas State

Joe Jones

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-538-50x50.pngBoston University

Mike Jones

UNCG

Pat Kelsey

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-408-50x50.pngCharleston

Andy Kennedy

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-413-50x50.pngUAB

Tod Kowalczyk

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-462-50x50.pngToledo

Rob Lanier

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-280-50x50.pngSMU

LeVelle Moton

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-476-50x50.pngNorth Carolina Central

Ryan Odom

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-499-50x50.pngUtah State

Lamont Paris

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-546-50x50.pngSouth Carolina

Joe Pasternack

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-398-50x50.pngUC Santa Barbara

David Richman

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-597-50x50.pngNorth Dakota State

Todd Simon

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-357-50x50.pngSouthern Utah

Pat Skerry

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-406-50x50.pngTowson

Byron Smith

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-592-50x50.pngPrairie View A&M

Kyle Smith

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-535-50x50.pngWashington State

Jerry Stackhouse

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-552-50x50.pngVanderbilt

Rick Stansbury

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-423-50x50.pngWestern Kentucky

Ross Turner

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-395-50x50.pngUC Irvine

Drew Valentine

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-488-50x50.pngLoyola Chicago

Brian Wardle

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-489-50x50.pngBradley

When you start to dip this low and you have a Power 6 gig, the question is why? What are you doing here? The answer is time, just measured differently.

In the case of Kyle Smith, for example, it’s a matter of time — as in people don’t expect him to dwell in Tier 5 (or maybe at Washington State) too long. The job is borderline impossible, and yet Smith this year took the Cougars to the NIT semifinals. “I think he’s for real. He’s very, very good offensively. They play very solid defense, he takes a lot of guys from different parts of the world or the country and they fit in well, he plays to his personnel,’’ the industry source says.

Another guy folks think could be on the move is Jerry Stackhouse — whether that’s on an upward trajectory with Vanderbilt or back to the NBA is the question. People are impressed with the work Stackhouse has done at a really hard job, getting the Commodores to 19 wins and an NIT quarterfinals. “A really, really good coach. Runs really good offense,’’ an industry source says. “They got better during the year, they stopped beating themselves. When you make a jump from losing close games to winning close games, you’re on a good run. I like him.’’

For other guys, it’s time not yet served. Todd Golden was good at San Francisco. Dennis Gates was good at Cleveland State. Both coached all of three years at those jobs — coached well, yes, but still, it’s a small sample size. Lamont Paris spent five years at Chattanooga but earned just one postseason bid in that time. And now they’ve all jumped to bigger gigs, anointed as the hot names on the list of guys to hire. Can they live up to it? “I’m not buying the Todd Golden hype. You do OK at San Francisco and all of a sudden you’ve rewritten the rules on basketball and you’re gonna win four national championships in the next four years? I don’t think so,” one agent says.

Another industry source points out that the pool that all three are swimming in — namely the SEC — is decidedly different. They have not recruited that caliber of player before, and certainly not dealt with the intricacies of NIL. They have not faced the level of scrutiny, nor the level of competition. “They’ve got their niches,’’ the industry source says, “but I’m not sure those niches are going to work. I don’t know if they have any idea what they’re headed into. It’s not going to be night and day, but it’s probably noon and night. It’s really not what kind of coach you are. It’s how you’re going to navigate all the other things. Because the guys in that league can coach and they’ve got a lot of resources.”

Finally, there are the guys who have given a lot of time … without a lot of results. Rick Stansbury has six seasons under his belt at Western Kentucky, and brought in some eye-popping talent. The Hilltoppers have yet to make an NCAA Tournament. “When’s the last time he’s achieved, let alone overachieved, with that group?” an industry source says. “He’s got really good players. Whatever criticism he gets, he really deserves.’’

Mike Anderson has never had a losing season in his career, going all the way back to his days at UAB. But he’s never had a great season either, and unlike the folks tiered above him, he’s had jobs with ample resources and opportunity. Arkansas is a very good basketball job. Always has been. The Razorbacks, under Anderson, never made it out of the first weekend. St. John’s is not what it was back in the day of Looie, but in a reconfigured Big East and with all of the players in the Northeast, there is potential. The Red Storm have yet to realize it under Anderson (maybe that changes in a hurry this year, with Andre Curbelo and Posh Alexander).

Tier 6

Griff Aldrich

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-366-50x50.pngLongwood

Brad Brownell

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-306-50x50.pngClemson

Landon Bussie

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-586-50x50.pngAlcorn State

Mark Byington

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-405-50x50.pngJames Madison

Jeff Capel

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-307-50x50.pngPittsburgh

Austin Claunch

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-581-50x50.pngNicholls State

Bill Coen

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-410-50x50.pngNortheastern

Chris Collins

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-379-50x50.pngNorthwestern

Kermit Davis

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-553-50x50.pngOle Miss

Ed DeChellis

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-537-50x50.pngNavy

Matt Driscoll

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-315-50x50.pngNorth Florida

Joe Gallo

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-716-50x50.pngMerrimack

Jerod Haase

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-533-50x50.pngStanford

Mitch Henderson

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-439-50x50.pngPrinceton

Fred Hoiberg

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-378-50x50.pngNebraska

Johnny Jones

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-583-50x50.pngTexas Southern

Kevin Keatts

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-312-50x50.pngNorth Carolina State

Dustin Kerns

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-610-50x50.pngAppalachian State

Steve Lutz

Texas A&M-Corpus Christi

Carmen Maciariello

Sienna

Mark Madsen

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-627-50x50.pngUtah Valley

Bashir Mason

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-448-50x50.pngSaint Peter's

Nick McDevitt

Middle Tennessee State

Paul Mills

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-599-50x50.pngOral Roberts

Josh Pastner

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-311-50x50.pngGeorgia Tech

Micah Shrewsberry

Penn State

Takayo Siddle

UNCW

Craig Smith

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-527-50x50.pngUtah

Preston Spradlin

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-515-50x50.pngMorehead State

Zach Spiker

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-411-50x50.pngDrexel

Tony Stubblefield

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-345-50x50.pngDePaul

Dedrique Taylor

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-402-50x50.pngCal State Fullerton

Chris Victor

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-626-50x50.pngSeattle

The crux of the debate about a few of the names in Tier 6 is best summarized by one bit of insight from an industry source. “On any given night those guys can beat whoever they’re playing against,” the source says. “Not everybody else on that list can do that.”

The source was referring to Northwestern’s Chris Collins and Ole Miss’ Kermit Davis, specifically, but it could apply to quite a few notable names in this group. Respected coaching minds. Good — and sometimes great — results in jobs where success isn’t built-in. But it’s been a slog in recent seasons. And several of them might have to win, and win big, to remain at their current school beyond 2022-23. So how do you judge the coach you might hire before a lot of names in this exercise, but who also might be looking for gainful employment in a few months?

Davis, particularly, might be one of the most complicated assessments. “His team can lose a lot of juice by the end of the year,” the industry source says. “I think he’s a very hard coach. He’s a very demanding coach. But I think he’s a really good coach.” The results over the last half of his Middle Tennessee State tenure — six regular-season championships, two conference tournament championships, three NCAA Tournament bids — back that up. “He’s a really, really good basketball coach,” a former coach says. “I wouldn’t want to play for him for five minutes. Screams and yells at them. Tough on them. I can’t imagine it’s much fun. But one losing conference record at Middle in 15 years. Four of his last seven years they were top 50 in KenPom. That’s darn good when you don’t have the kind of schedule that the Power 6 have.”

And yet: two sub-.500 seasons in the last three at Ole Miss, and a lot of uncertainty entering this year. Collins, going into Year 10 at Northwestern, cuts a similar profile. Turning that program into an NCAA Tournament team for the first time is no small feat. But his teams haven’t finished above .500 in any season since 2017. “You have to be both really good and pretty lucky at times when you get a job that’s tougher than the people you’re playing against in your league, to get past all those guys to win a conference or get past just enough of them to win an NCAA Tournament,” a former coach says. “It’s just different than what a guy like John Calipari has to do.”

Kevin Keatts was an immediate success at UNC Wilmington (two NCAA Tournament bids in three years) and hadn’t endured a losing season as a head coach until 2021-22. Multiple sources The Athletic spoke to maintained he’s a better coach than even that record suggests. “He did a really good job at UNC Wilmington,” one agent says. “He’s also been handcuffed by (issues with former coach Mark Gottfried) more than I think people know. Problem is, he made two tournaments at Wilmington, he made the tournament his first year at NC State, and then it’s been kind of downhill. He plays this fun, up-and-down pressing style similar to what Rick (Pitino) plays — but he really just hasn’t had the horses.”

And yet: An 11-21 season in Raleigh has its price. “He better be good this year,” one former coach says.

Heck, there’s even been a bit of a Tier 6 ripple effect into the mid-major ranks, when considering the plight of Middle Tennessee State’s Nick McDevitt, who succeeded Davis in that gig. McDevitt’s teams posted 24 combined wins across his first three seasons before a 26-win breakthrough in 2021-22. The 43-year-old might be at the precipice, in which his team succeeds again and he continues along an upward trajectory … or a backslide costs him after five seasons in Murfreesboro. “Nick McDevitt did a good job at (UNC) Asheville and really took a tough job when Kermit left Middle,” a former coach says. “He left nobody. And Nick’s a guy that really wants to do things right. That was a tough assignment. It was a tough one, because if you go in there and that stuff matters to you, that you do things by the book all the time, it was just a tough turnaround for anybody.”

Tier 7

Isaac Brown

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-481-50x50.pngWichita State

Juan Dixon

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-479-50x50.pngCoppin State

Dan Engelstadt

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-505-50x50.pngMount St. Mary's

Patrick Ewing

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-341-50x50.pngGeorgetown

Mark Fox

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-530-50x50.pngCal

Mike Hopkins

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-528-50x50.pngWashington

Bobby Hurley

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-534-50x50.pngArizona State

Dan Monson

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-396-50x50.pngLong Beach State

Wayne Tinkle

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-531-50x50.pngOregon State

Andy Toole

https://cdn-team-logos.theathletic.com/team-logo-509-50x50.pngRobert Morris

Darrell Walker

Arkansas-Little Rock

Not a whole lot of explaining necessary here. If you find yourself in Tier 7, it’s likely because you haven’t produced or impressed consistently, over a long or short period of time, and no one The Athletic spoke to rushed to your defense.

Is it a bit of West Coast Bias that puts a Pac-12 quartet near the bottom, though? Well, upon close inspection, Mark Fox made two NCAA Tournaments in nine years at Georgia, coaching in an SEC that was not nearly as cutthroat as it is currently. The success at Nevada is well in the rearview mirror, and the results at Cal have been three straight losing seasons. “During his time at Georgia, he won half his games in the SEC,” a former coach says. “Most of us would’ve thought he was well below .500 because he got fired and had to move on. He had a great record at Nevada, just hasn’t done anything at Cal yet. He’s a good coach and a good guy. I’m sure if I were Mark Fox and saw this list, I’d think I deserve to be higher, but there’s gonna be about 90 that think that. At least.”

That probably includes his conference peers. Bobby Hurley was a definitive success at Buffalo, but the results at Arizona State haven’t matched the talent on hand. Effectively handing over the program to Josh Christopher, and the debacle that followed, overrides the very real COVID-related issues that tripped up the Sun Devils a couple years back. If Arizona State wasn’t dealing with a mess on the football side, Hurley might be out of a job right now. Mike Hopkins has one NCAA Tournament appearance in five years at Washington, but his team finished sub-.500 in a season with Isaiah Stewart and Jaden McDaniels on the roster. Wayne Tinkle hasn’t had easy jobs, and Oregon State made the Elite Eight in 2021 … but he’s only a touch better than .500 (.546) over 16 seasons and, well, a 3-28 season in 2021-22 is massively problematic. There are arguments to bump each one a notch, for sure. But the combination of little-to-no job security and ho-hum recent results is hard to ignore, too.

On the other coast, there’s Georgetown. “That’s why Patrick Ewing is in there at all, right? Because you had to put him in there?” the former coach asks. Anywhere else, and Ewing is no longer a sitting college head coach. Who knows how much slack the former Hoyas legend will get. But the results have not been what anyone expects, and it’s not been close.