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
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
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
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Jim Boeheim
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 Syracuse
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Bob Huggins
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West Virginia
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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
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
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
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
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
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.
