The coaching carousel in college basketball is still spinning out some hires at the mid-major and low-major levels, but the whirl of activity in the power conferences has come to an end. This might feel like a look-ahead to the 2015-2016 season, but it’s more of an attempt to take the just-completed season and mention what might change as we settle into the spring and summer.
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The first and most obvious effect of the college basketball coaching carousel is that it has upgraded the SEC. If last year’s carousel boosted the ACC by bringing Buzz Williams to Virginia Tech and Danny Manning to Wake Forest, this year’s winner is clearly the SEC. Avery Johnson is the questionable hire in the bunch, but Rick Barnes to Tennessee and Ben Howland to Mississippi State are hard to view as anything other than substantial improvements for those programs.
The SEC always needed a coaching boost in order to become a better league. Johnny Jones, Mark Fox, and Billy Kennedy have a lot to prove, but much of the conference is now guided by above-average coaches: John Calipari and Billy Donovan — the clear kings of the conference — are now joined by Barnes, Howland, Bruce Pearl, Frank Martin, Mike Anderson, and Kevin Stallings. Everyone on that list has made an Elite Eight with the exception of Stallings… who would have made an Elite Eight at Vanderbilt in 2007 if traveling had been called on Jeff Green of Georgetown in the Sweet 16.
Andy Kennedy — given the lack of success Ole Miss has enjoyed in its hoops history — can be called a decent coach, though I wouldn’t go anywhere beyond that. With Johnson being a question mark at Alabama, the only other coach we haven’t mentioned is the weakest link in the conference, Kim Anderson at Missouri. He will show us in the next three seasons if he’s able to build back that program.
All in all, the 14-member SEC has a majority of quality coaches — that’s not fact, but it would be hard to refute the opinion that the eight coaches mentioned above are not particularly good at what they do. Fox might generate some debate, akin to Andy Kennedy; what Fox is good at doing is scheduling well and making the RPI his friend. That, not his Xs and Os, got Georgia into the NCAA tournament this past season.
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Continuing our survey of the altered conference landscape as it pertains to coaching, the other conference which rates as a particularly interesting case study is the Pac-12.
The Pac-12 is conspicuous in that it offers a mixture of ascendant and decaying coaching situations. Bobby Hurley should improve Arizona State — it was clearly one of the best hires from the 2015 carousel season. The only question is to what extent Hurley will raise the bar in Tempe.
Last year, Oregon State finally cut the cord with Craig Robinson and brought in Wayne Tinkle from Montana. The hire looks like a masterstroke. If Tinkle can bring in quality recruits and coach them as well as he guided last season’s makeshift roster, Oregon State should return to the NCAA tournament in the next few years. Some Pac-12 programs are headed in the right direction thanks to coaching moves.
On the other hand, three situations in the Pac-12, also addressed in this piece from Tuesday morning, are crying out for solutions that don’t seem to be emerging. Johnny Dawkins at Stanford; Lorenzo Romar at Washington; and Andy Enfield at USC are all failing to meet expectations. Romar, of course, enjoyed a golden period in Seattle, a land flowing with milk, honey, and Sweet 16 appearances, but those days are long gone, and he needs to find a way to rejuvenate his program, something Rick Barnes couldn’t do after accumulating a lot of time at Texas. The Pac-12 is witnessing some of its programs take forward steps by jettisoning coaches who couldn’t produce dynamic results in extended tenures (beyond five seasons). Enfield hasn’t been on the job very long at USC, but Dawkins and Romar are established figures in Palo Alto and Seattle. If two of the three crisis programs — Stanford, U-Dub, and USC — can’t improve next season, the Pac-12’s long-term interests in men’s basketball will be well served by multiple coaching upgrades.
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The SEC and Pac-12 represent the heart of the redrawn conference map in a post-carousel climate. The other power leagues haven’t experienced nearly as much turnover during this spin of the carousel.
The ACC is stacked with credentialed coaches, and the only move resembling a surprise from the carousel is that Brian Gregory wasn’t terminated. Even then, the financials of Georgia Tech’s situation make his retention a completely understandable and logical occurrence.
The Big 12’s smaller size (five fewer teams than the ACC) intensifies the pressure being felt by its weaker links — Travis Ford and Bruce Weber. Shaka Smart going to Austin should improve Texas and counterbalance the deficits faced by Oklahoma State and Kansas State.
The Big Ten might be the most fascinating Power 5 conference other than the SEC and Pac-12. In the Big Ten, a dynamic similar to the Stanford-Washington-USC trio has emerged: Programs are sticking with coaches who have fallen short instead of pulling a quick trigger. Penn State will go another season with Pat Chambers. Illinois is running out of patience with John Groce, but will (rightly) wait to see what he can do in a make-or-break 2015-2016 campaign. Indiana and Tom Crean will remain married for another season, despite all that “booster buyout fund” noise which emerged in early March.
At Rutgers and Minnesota, Eddie Jordan and Richard Pitino are trying to figure things out at relatively early stages in their respective tenures. These situations are not as advanced or as calcified as Penn State and especially Indiana, but they do reinforce the idea that the Big Ten — once you get past the coaching powerhouses at the top (Tom Izzo, Bo Ryan, John Beilein, Thad Matta) — has a lot of programs that are on the cusp of finding out if their coaches can take the next big step or not.
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The SEC clearly made the coaching upgrades it has needed to make for some time. The Pac-12 is making some upgrades while waiting to find out what some of its other more established coaches can do to repair their respective programs. The ACC and Big 12 are relatively stable, while the Big Ten could be one year away from a coaching upheaval if various bench bosses can’t get the job done.
The coaching carousel has spun. Now, it’s on to the offseason, where the wheels are turning for several coaching staffs under pressure to perform.
