SALIM'SHEADBAND'S THIRD ANNUAL COACH POWER RANKINGS
It’s that time again. It’s been a year and change since the last power rankings, the “and change” explained in no small part because Ms. SHB and I added a little SHB and future Wildcat to the family this year. But now, at the dawning of a new age, at the beginning of the 2014-15 season, I have returned to you. My body is ready. My soul is prepared. It is a day of days.
As an aside: in the three years I’ve been doing this, I really, truly feel like it’s more about the journey for me than the destination. Every time I start out thinking “Eh, I’ll bang this out in a couple of days.” And then I start going, and I get to some random coach where I think “Ooh, that’s an interesting stat, let me look that up.” Like what is the most amount of wins a team has ever had without making the Final Four? Or which team had the most efficient offense AND the highest tempo over the last decade? Or wow, really, this coach has never lost fewer than 9 games in a season and I’m about to put him in the top 25? I enjoy it and learn a lot, and even if you disagree with me, I hope you learn something too.
Also, I don’t give a damn about page views or clicks so I’m not going to break this up into 10 chunks or a slideshow that are going to keep you coming back every for more. It’s like 11,000 words so read it all, or don’t.
The Premise:
For the uninitiated, the Power Rankings are the sum total of an elegant premise: Imagine yourself as an athletic director looking to make the best possible hire of a college basketball for your program. You’re unbiased, except to your own job security. You just want the coach who’s going to win you the most games, and the most important games, for the longest amount of time possible.
Because you are the AD of fictional Eastern State Tech University, money is no object, facilities are not a concern, and location is irrelevant because the coach is calling you up. He wants to work for you, in your program. (This means it doesn’t matter that certain coaches get mentioned every year for every job opening but never leave; one of them would be looking for a job if he was calling you.) He’s not promising he’ll stay forever, but again, he's calling you up because he wants to work for you, and he’s leaving wherever he’s at to come do it, so you can assume he’s going to be there for a while. He’ll probably retire around 70. You want him there for as long as you can keep him, because you want to build a legacy and keep your fans happy. Besides, coaching transitions suck.
In the time-honored tradition of Power Rankings everywhere, this isn’t about who is a better coach. There’s probably some coach in Division III or high school that knows more Xs and Os than all of these coaches combined. If you want to argue best pure coach, that’s a story for a different list. The idea is, if you had the coach ranked #20 on the line, and coach #2 called you, you’d hang up right away and get coach #2 in ASAP. Accordingly, this is about which coach you would hire right now, and why, and you need to take all the factors into consideration.
A slight tweak from the last two years: People, fairly, I think, complained that it was unrealistic to rank a coach who was 35 over a coach who was 60, simply because that 35-year-old coach might stay at his program for the rest of his career, when realistically 10 years is more than enough time to build a great program and probably as long as we can expect all but the best coaches to stay at the best programs. Therefore, for the purpose of the Power Rankings we are capping the number of years a coach will only expect to get our new coach for 10 years, and reduce it by one for every year he’s over 60. By the time he’s 70 we can expect that he may retire at any time and should factor that accordingly. Therefore, all coaches 60 and below will be weighed strictly on basketball-related principles. Clear as mud? Good.
So what matters?
This has not changed: Age does still matter. Maybe Coach K is the greatest coach of all time, but would you rather hire him right now with whatever he has left in the tank, or would you rather have 10 guaranteed years of Billy Donovan? As I said, if one coach is 45 and one is 55 and we presume they’ll still both have 10+ years of coaching in them, we will rate them strictly on basketball-related criteria. With that in mind…
Recruiting matters. If you think it doesn’t, I don’t know what to tell you besides I hope you’re keeping your resume updated. This is college basketball. Recruiting is as important as anything else your coach does. I’m not saying it’s the most important thing. But recruiting and coaching are like air and water: it doesn’t really matter which one is more important because you need both to live. If you don’t think recruiting matters, Gary Williams is still unemployed as of this writing, maybe you can hire him.
Finally, if you’re concerned about recruiting violations, call the NCAA. Otherwise, just hire the damn coach. There’s no point arguing about recruiting violations until such time as something is proven.
(Age in parentheses)
Who’s totally out from last year?
These guys are a bit stale and I want to get some fresh meat in there. What most of them have in common is that I would have no problem putting them in, say, the low 20s or high teens if they could just get (back) to a tournament, do some damage, and put a couple 25-win seasons together. Something. Here’s the thing: who, among these potentially successful coaches, would you still hire to coach your program? If you’re going to hire a coach who’s trending down you better get him very cheap or have a fan base with low expectations and a damn good explanation as to why you hired a guy who couldn’t make the tournament regularly at his last job.
Ben Howland (57) (still fired!)
Tubby Smith (63) (I honestly thought he was fired until I saw him wipe out on his motorcycle. I totally forgot that Texas Tech hired him last year. I have nothing more to add).
Travis Ford (44)
New Rule That I’m Making Up Right Now: If, at any point, your team loses seven straight games, you drop out of the Power Rankings the next year. I’m always ready to put him back if he can show that he continues to deserve it. He’s had five 20-win seasons at Oklahoma St., and this should be an interesting year for him, because right now the only thing keeping him from getting fired is his inexplicably massive buyout clause. Let’s just say he and Okie St. are staying together for the kids. Maybe they’ll find that loving feeling and rekindle the flame?
Andy Enfield (45)
See above. Andy may have a decent team at USC this year, and should definitely have one next year. I’m still bullish on him, but can’t justify him anywhere in the rankings until he can do something with a major conference program. Or even with USC.
John Groce (43)
See above. Still looks like a mole rat. Illinois really should be much improved this year from last year’s decent-to-mediocre team, and assuming they are, he’ll be in there. If they are not, we’re going to have to have a chat. With the mole rat.
Dana Altman (56)
Honestly he’s here because I have no clue who’s on Oregon’s roster, and I don’t think anyone else does either. Also, frankly, I don’t see how anyone could hire him to be a leader of young men right now. Fifty-fifty chance my son will be implicated in a gang rape or criminal conspiracy? Where do I sign? Either way, things are going to get worse for Oregon’s basketball program before they get better.
Steve Lavin (49)
I like Steve Lavin. But this is a show-me year for him and St. John’s. Only JaKarr Sampson went pro early, and I guess things worked out for him (of note: if the 76ers want you on their roster, it’s not really a compliment). I know the Big East is still a tough conference but it’s not the Big East of old. They absolutely need to be competitive and make the tournament for Lavin’s second act to really drop anchor.
Frank Martin (48)
Narrowly missed our seven-straight-losses caveat, not that we probably would have put him in anyway because we're in year two at South Carolina and need to see something here. That plus the mounting evidence that he actually IS a supreme asshole and doesn’t just play one on TV, mean we have no idea how hireable he really is. If he can get South Carolina to respectability, we’ll talk.
Mark Turgeon (49)
Maryland is turning into Oregon east, not only through the beneficence and largesse of a famous alum-turned-super-rich-athletic-apparel-company-founding-booster, but with the comings and goings of everyone on their basketball team this year (if not for the same illicit reasons), because I’m not even sure who’s on the damn roster at this point. Here’s what I know: We’re in Year 4, Mark. This is it. I don’t care how hard the B1G is. Make the tournament or you reaaaaaaaaallly, probably should be fired. Williams never missed it 4 years in a row. I don’t care how bare the cupboard was when he left. You live in arguably one of the top 3 or 4 most fertile recruiting beds in the country. Make the tournament. Protect this House.
Anthony Grant (48)
Year six of the Anthony Grant era? Hello? Is this thing on? Oh where does the time go? If you are a Florida fan you should probably thank whatever god(s) you believe in every night that Grant did not end up as the head coach there. I freely admit that I am not as familiar with the intricacies of why Alabama did not have a good year as I could be, but 13-19 in last year’s SEC is terrible and as far as I see it it’s basically been getting worse for the last three years.
Lorenzo Romar (55)
We are now three years and counting without an NCAA tournament appearance. This
feels like it happened in 2004. I’m led to believe that he will have a decent team this year and is bringing in a quietly good recruiting class next year. I’ll believe both when I see them. He’ll be around for a while still, but it’s safe to say the thrill is gone from Count Basie. He and the Washington faithful are not really staying together for the kids, but firmly entrenched in the “We’ve been married for 20 years and it’s just too damn complicated to get divorced, so maybe we can still have sex once a month” phase. Would you hire him to rejuvenate your program if you were the AD anywhere but a Big South or SWAC school?
Matt Painter (44)
Dammit Matt Painter. Two years ago I forgot about you, so the next year to make up for it I overacted by putting you in the top 25 coming off a 16-18 season, and then you go and shit the bed again. So I’m dropping you out until you get your shit together. Rejoice Purdue fans, this probably means you’re in for a great season.
John Thompson (48)
I don’t even know what to do with you anymore JTIII. I know I’m dropping you lower than you probably deserve, but you lost to Northeastern, DePaul, and Seton Hall (TWICE!) last year. And this is after losing to every double-digit seed in the tournament for five out of the last six years. How am I supposed to keep you ranked after that? If the post-season didn’t matter they would just…end the season after the, um, season. How am I supposed to sell any member of my fan base who owns a computer and/or a TV on you? I still wouldn’t want you to coach at ASU but I’d love to play against you in the tournament (Arizona is now destined to lose to Georgtown in the 1 v. 8/9 game next year). I mean, I THINK you deserve to be in the top 25, but you’re not exactly grabbing the bull by the horns here.
Bob Huggins (61)
You’re not getting any younger, and have had crappy teams the last two years. You’ve promised to be better, but sometimes when you’re old and you haven’t exactly lit the world on fire in the NCAA tournament (pouring one out for K-Mart’s leg), a slump can just be the end.
Mike Brey (55)
I wasn’t super complimentary of Mike Brey last year and then Notre Dame got worse. A lot worse. Again, I like Mike Brey personally and I know Jerian Grant had to leave the team but . . . still. The Power Rankings will keep an open mind but I wasn’t high on him before and it’s going to be hard for Brey to fight his way back in there.
Who’s in: Rick Majerus Memorial Honorable Mention Division (in absolutely no particular order so don’t bitch about order)
Larry Brown (73!!!) / Steve Fisher (69) / Jim Boeheim (69)
Like a summertime fling (if a summertime fling ate dinner at 4 p.m. and could also get gout): You know it’s gotta end soon and you’re not gonna marry any of ‘em, but you’re going to enjoy the ride as long as it lasts. I don’t have much serious analysis on these guys. I respect the hell out of Steve Fisher, Larry Brown has done the impossible at SMU, and Jim Boeheim is a son of a bitch. I don’t really think anyone would hire any of these guys, but as long as they’re still active, they’ll have a spot in perpetuity in the Rick Majerus Honorable Mention Division of the Power Rankings. Why? Because it pleases me to see their names up there and think of their crusty faces. Boeheim in particular will probably hate-coach his way to 80 and die two weeks after he retires.
Jim Crews (60)
I briefly – very briefly – considered Crews for higher placement, but here’s the problem: he wasn’t a great coach before Saint Louis, he’s been a Mike-Rice-style dickwad in the past (forgot about that, didn’t you?), he’s basically just been the caretaker of what Majerus set up there, and Saint Louis is going to suck this year. If he somehow manages to keep them relevant we may revisit.
Johnny Dawkins (51)
Another Rule I’m Making Up On The Spot: Sorry Johnny Dawkins, but you don’t get to miss the tournament for five years and then get in after one appearance. Even if you do happen to make the Power Rankings happy by beating Kansas in the process. Fortunately for you, in so doing Stanford rewarded you with a 25-year contract extension.
Derek Kellogg (41)
That applies to you too Derek Kellogg, even though you’re younger and definitely have UMass trending up. For a while last year UMass was a team no one wanted to play, and then they became a team that everyone wanted to play. But he’s young and his teams truly play uptempo ball, even if they can be frustrating as hell to watch. Chaz Williams is gone but to listen to people around the program that’s probably a good thing. The always-competitive A-10 is usually good for four or five tournament teams, and if Kellogg can consistently guide UMass to being one of those teams I would expect someone to pull him away from his alma mater sooner than later.
Another thing - you always look sick Derek Kellogg. Get some sleep or shave or stay away from garlic. Something.
Ed Cooley (45)
I was all set to put Ed Cooley in the top 25 because I was sure he had made the tournament at Fairfield, and then I saw he hadn’t, and so I couldn’t break my Johnny Dawkins rule. But he’s right there. He’s a really, really, really great recruiter who has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with injuries and eligibility the last couple years and still pulled that team together enough to win the Big East tournament and get within a hair of beating Carolina.
Side note: if you do nothing else, please, please, please check out The Bryce Cotton Saga on Card Chronicle. It's a very fun read.
Saul Phillips (42)
Super young and did well at NDSU; has had good offenses; beat darling of the Power Rankings Lon Kruger in the NCAA tournament this year, and apparently is hilarious. Undoubtedly knew he was losing a ton of seniors and got out while the getting was good by going to Ohio this year. If he does well there you better believe a high-major AD will be calling Saul (sorry Bobcat fans and everyone who hates puns). Random fact per KenPom: Did you know NDSU had the lowest percentage of shots blocked on offense last year? If they’d played St. John’s and Oblockpa it would have been unstoppable object v. irresistible force. Or something like that.
Johnny Jones (53)
I’m intrigued. I want to see more than 20 wins at LSU and more than two tournament appearances ever but I’m intrigued. The recruiting is on point. I’ll be watching you Mr. Jones.
Leonard Hamilton (66)
I really like Leonard Hamilton. He’s 66, which I still find impossible to believe, but FSU’s good for beating Duke once every few years – always worth some points. I see them getting, I dunno, a 10 seed this year? I don’t think he’s work his way back into the top 25 short of a miracle but I like you Leonard Hamilton. Just wanted you to know.
Tommy Amaker (49)
Look, here at Arizona we understand all about reclaiming coaches who sucked at Michigan. The thing is, Amaker sucked (or was mediocre-to-bad) at Michigan for six years and never really got better. How does a guy not make the NCAA tournament in six years at Michigan and then make three at Havard? Whatever. What he’s done at Harvard is possibly the greatest building job any coach has done at any program in the last 30 years. I’ll take arguments, but they had gone to one – one – tournament ever before he got there, and it’s not like they added athletic scholarships.
So why just honorable mention? Some coaches are better suited for a certain type of job. I’m not 100% convinced that Amaker is cut out to coach at a high-major program. But Harvard is going to be good again this year; let’s see how far Amaker can push it.
Mark Gottfried (50)
You made three tournaments in three years at NC State Gottfried. We’re cool. There’s going to be a big changing of the guard in the ACC soon that you can take advantage of if you can just hold on a little bit longer. Get to another Sweet Sixteen or something soon and earn your $1.95M a year, and maybe even win NC State’s first ACC regular-season championship since 1989 (!) or tournament championship since 1987 (!!), because if, say, Archie Miller has another good season and you miss the tourney, your seat may be a tad uncomfortable.
Fran McCaffery (55)
He’s in his mid-50s but was well on his way to inclusion before his team, basically, collapsed down the stretch. Most of this was understandable, but the nadir was the particularly egregious loss to Northwestern in the first round of the B1G tournament. I know the B1G is brutal but I don’t think it’s too much to ask that I see him go above .500 in conference play before he can make the top-25?
Mike Anderson (55)
Last year, I told Mike Anderson to win a game away from home. So he won three (four if you count the neutral-site game). I feel like you are only minimally complying with my directives, Mike Anderson, and it’s vexing me a little bit. If we were in construction I would say you were built to code. Still, the team is undoubtedly improving, beat some decent teams last year, and much of last year’s team is coming back. Can I ask for 25 wins, top-four in the pretty bad SEC, and a tournament berth? As if you needed more incentive, a spot in the top-25 of the Power Rankings could be waiting for you if you can get there!
Greg McDermott (49)
I am not ranking you Greg McDermott. Your kid was a really good basketball player who you did not think was good enough to play for you on a team that was never above .500 in your four years there. While that may be a cute anecdote to some, assuming it’s not hyperbole, it actually kind of concerns me. Win some games without him first and we’ll talk.
Larry Krystkowiak (50)
Definitely #1 in the “coach who tries the most to look like their alma mater’s mascot” Power Rankings. Utah’s going to be a top-25 team this year and make the tournament, which is not remarkable given the history of Utah’s basketball program but really remarkable considering how terrible they were when he got hired there. Make the tournament and you’ll be in the top-25 of the Power Rankings. I’ll find a way.
Steve Masiello (37)
Look, all I want to know is . . . how do you walk-on for four years somewhere and not get a degree? That’s all I want to know. I don’t know anything about the Jaspers except they play like Louisville-lite, which obviously makes sense, but it looks like they’re going to lose some seniors and probably take a step back this year. Frankly, he probably got saved from career suicide by not being able to take the South Florida job. Between the fact that his team may be worse for a couple years and Degree-gate we may not hear from Masiello again until he’s 41 or so, at which time he’ll still be plenty young enough to take over a low-major or crappy high-major college program after he pays his penance. See you at DePaul in 2018 Steve.
Archie Miller (35)
Dayton was last year’s winner for team I was most likely to turn on, see their uniforms and play style, and think “I didn’t know we had a game tonight.” Am I overreacting to his Elite Eight appearance? Probably. But he’s suuuuuper young and a very good recruiter, with experience as a high-major point guard and all the chops of his brother. Realistically, you would need to see a couple more good years out of him but he’s well on his way there.
Richard Pitino (32)
Again, super, duper, duper young and more than just his last name. I don’t doubt that he can coach and recruit, but he didn’t win many meaningful games with a team that had a ton of upperclassmen. You might get his next ten years if you hired him, but you probably wouldn’t get his best ten years.
Dave Rose (56)
If I asked you what Dave Rose’s winning percentage was over the last nine years, you would probably say “Who is Dave Rose?” And then I would ask how many fewer games he’s won than Gonzaga in the last nine years, and you would ask “No, seriously, who is Dave Rose?”
The answers to those other questions are 77% and 36, helpfully padded by Gonzaga’s location in a much easier conference for most of that time. Why compare him to Gonzaga? Well they’re both (kinda) in the WCC now, and because it’s useful to see, as we rank Mark Few so highly every year, how many other mid-major coaches fly under the radar, including in my own Power Rankings where Rose has been absent the last two years. Also, because both programs have traditionally specialized in All-O-Mediocre-D over their current coaches’ tenures there.
Anyway, I don’t know if he’ll ever get over “the hump” at BYU, whatever the hump is, unless the next Jabari Parker decides to go to there. In fact, just talking about the hump at BYU is probably an Honor Code violation. Rose probably won’t ever get a 1 seed like Gonzaga so richly deserved got two years ago. His program and recruiting are too stratified. But Rose is good for 26-7 ever year; a good coach who’s made the tournament seven of his nine years at BYU and is going to win many more games while he’s there.
Cuonzo Martin (43)
Ascendant rival to Sean Miller in West Coast recruiting. Look, Cal fans, I know this is the section about Cuonzo Martin but I’m still irritated by Justin Cobbs’s shot last year and I’m going to talk directly and perhaps more harshly than I should to you:
We’ve seen this movie before. We’ve seen Kevin Johnson and Jason Kidd and Shareef Abdur-Rahim and the random Pac-(X) players of the year that you always seem to win. You could make a strong argument that you are the third-best program in Pac-(X) history. But this movie ends the same way every time: 22-12 or something like that, a Pac-(X) POTY that ends up playing 91 total minutes in the NBA over the course of his career, a fourth-or-better finish in the conference, and a victory over Oregon. Aggressively unremarkable. In fact, you have not won more than 24 games in a season in over 50 years, which seems literally impossible considering ASU, WSU, and USC all have within the last 10. That’s your glass ceiling unless you can find a coach to get you through it. Now, is Cuonzo Martin that coach? Let’s look objectively.
In fact, Cuonzo does appear to be a good fit within your statutorily mandated 24-win ceiling. He lost nine games in his best season and 12 or more in each of his five other seasons as a head coach. Tennessee had a team that stats geeks loved and eye-testers (including, apparently, the whole Vol fan base) hated. I am a bit of a stat geek so I respect the metrics. He WILL recruit well, and your team will play hard and probably be reasonably successful while he is there. His players loved and respected him enough to defend him for taking another job, which is basically unheard of. But is he a better coach than Montgomery ever was? You’re probably never getting to 30 wins with him, and you’re probably never getting past the Sweet Sixteen with him, and if you’re okay with that, that’s okay with me.
Tim Miles (48)
Nebrasketball! It’s a thing! Okay, so Tim Miles is a cool dude who revitalized (or just flat-out vitalized) a moribund program, but let’s not get too carried away here. That’s all he’s ever done, albeit multiple times. He’s kind of like a neo-John Beilein in that sense, except Beilein did it at better (or more prestigious or resourceful) programs and got way better results. In fact, Miles has won more than 20 games as a head coach only once at any level. Again, he’s coached at some places that were probably impossible to win at and has won at all of them. All I’m asking is, before he jumps into the top tier, we see a little more push from him. Otherwise he’s basically the Doug Collins of college basketball coaches.
Lon Kruger (62)
I wanted to put him in the top 25, but I just can’t. Sorry Winger. You can rhapsodize about him if you want, but he’s too old and he’s done a lot but not enough. He’ll be a steal at UCF when he’s 69.
Steve Alford (49)
Listen. The fact that you find him all the way down here does not mean Steve Alford is JUST outside the top 25. It just means I was putting this off as long as I possibly could. But I am not stupid, so here it goes: I was actually really impressed with the way Alford utilized the UCLA team he had at his disposal this year. To my knowledge, he had never seriously played zone, and did this year; he never had a great, or even really better-than-decent offensive team, and did this year; and he won the Pac-12 tournament (sigh) and made the Sweet Sixteen. I appreciate when a coach plays to a team’s strengths and adapts.
So what negatives are we still looking at? 1) Daddyball (TM BruinsNation – never change you cesspool of hate you); 2) A total changing of the guard this year; 3) Two Sweet Sixteens in 20+ years of coaching; 4) Rape apologist. Did I cover everything? They will PROBABLY not be great this year, but it doesn’t matter because he’s signed through 2042 and he’s bringing in a ton of talent basically every year, so he’s got that going for him. He is also guaranteed to piss me off at least once every two years by winning a game against Arizona, which is all the 400 Bruins fans in Pauley can really ask for (“But have you SEEN the traffic on the 405?”).
Now I need to go wash my hands.
LOS VENTICINCO
25. Rick Barnes
I'm back baby!
24. Josh Pastner (37)
Alright, hear me out. I thought long and hard about whether Pastner truly deserved to be in the top 25 over all the great coaches below (actually above, but you know what I mean) him, even with just getting the next ten years of his career, and not 33 or whatever, as I had weighted it before. I believe that he does. This is not because he’s an Arizona grad. If you are familiar with the relationship between Pastner and Arizona grads you know it’s not all roses and sunshine. Many of us could not stand him when he was here and cannot stand him now. Personally, I’m neutral edging toward annoyance. But leaving that aside, I think there is a strong argument for him over each and every one of those coaches that preceded him in these rankings.
First of all, which, if any, of those coaches are a better recruiter than him? None. Second, which, if any, of those coaches have a better winning percentage than him? None. Third, which, if any, have shown consistency and improvement every year as Pastner has? Probably several, but Pastner’s done everything that’s been asked of him: He won more games every year until he graduated to the AAC this year and took some lumps accordingly; he’s won a tournament game in each of the last two years; he beat four ranked teams this year.
KenPom wrote “In defense of Josh Pastner” which was not really a defense of Josh Pastner but more an indictment of the fallacy that two points here or there – the difference between a win and a loss in games against ranked teams – makes or breaks a coach. Josh Pastner is a 37-year-old coach and prodigious recruiter with 130 wins, a 74% winning percentage, and four tournaments to his name. Maybe Miles or Martin or someone else would have done the same thing in his position, or maybe he would have done worse from a different starting point, but . . . they didn’t, and we’ll never know, and this is where we are. If you are what your record says you, Josh Pastner’s record says that he (together with his aged spirit animal Rick Barnes) deserves to once again ring in the Power Rankings.
23. Tom Crean...
I wrote this all before everything else happened, and then all that bullshit happened. You’re done Crean. The only questions are who’s going to be replacing you and when.
23. Bo Ryan (66)
This is not sour grapes, I promise you. He’s just too old, and before this year, there wasn’t a lot to suggest that he would ever do more than lose in the Sweet Sixteen.. Again, I don’t care how subjectively “good” of a coach he is in a vacuum. He was either incapable or unwilling to recruit superstar talent to Wisconsin, and even if he was just incapable of doing it we don’t really have anything to judge him on. Would you rather have 4-6 years of Ryan (starting over, mind you – he doesn’t get to bring Kaminsky and Dekker with him) or 10 years of Boyle? Ten years of Cronin? Etc. He’s a great coach who has time to do some great things at his current program, but I don’t know that he’d be able to revitalize yours.
22. Tad Boyle (51)
My man! If attitude reflects leadership, as Julius Campbell told us before he turned to a life of crime in West Baltimore, Colorado’s leader is a bit of a whiner. Dinwiddie says Arizona's not elite; Xavier Johnson says we'll lose by 20 in Boulder; Josh Scott likens playing in McKale to playing at Colorado St. Sure. And that comes from somewhere. Even if that's what you believe, keep it in house, prove it on the court, and take your lumps like a man. Moving forward, it was a crushing blow for Colorado to lose Dinwiddie last year and disappointing for the whole conference, as the team was going to be extremely good before that happened, with wins against Kansas, Oregon, and Harvard, and losses to still-intact Oklahoma St. and Baylor. Instead they plateaued at simply pretty good.
Just to dispel one myth: friends don’t let friends tell people that Boyle plays uptempo. I think most people, especially those of us who watched his first season, expected his offenses to be better than they’ve been. He looked for all intents and purposes like he was cut from the same cloth as Roy Williams in that offensive mold, but neither his tempo nor his offensive possessions have ever been anything remarkable, and besides that one year and outside of transition, his efficiency and half-court offenses have actually been quite bad. On the other hand, his teams’ defenses have been quite good. He’s been a fine, not great, recruiter, although he doesn’t have much of a regional base to draw from and he’s had to overcome the inherent disadvantages that building a program entails. Regardless, I think Boyle’s a very good coach, but there is no objective reason to rank him over the next guy in the list, although there is still plenty of time for him to do great things at Colorado.
21. Mick Cronin (43)
Mick Cronin has done an exemplary job at Cincinnati, basically getting better every year, which I maintain is all you can ask of a coach. He’s been to a Sweet Sixteen and a four straight tournaments overall. But damn do his teams suck on offense. I mean they’re just really, really bad. And they don’t even look pretty like Colorado at least does sometimes. If you’re betting on Cincinnati, take the under. Free money.
I don’t want to hear any crap about his defense – I know his defenses are good, but it’s not about having good defense, which they always do, or being deliberate, or whatever. It’s “real” basketball. It’s not “superior” basketball. It’s just bad offense.
And here’s the problem with that. You see, if I’m an AD and I’m investing millions of dollars in a coach to save my program, you better believe that I’m spending $20 on KenPom to check some offensive efficiency. Cronin’s offenses have NEVER been good. I might be inclined to rank him higher if he had ever demonstrated a capacity for better offense. Sean Miller and Tony Bennett are the two packline coaches who are not exactly known as offensive gurus, but both at least have shown flashes of real offensive success. Bennett’s had two offenses in the top-30, while Miller’s had three in the top-10 and five in the top-20, never dipping below 90.
Cronin, on the other hand. The BEST AdjO he’s had for any team he’s coached has been 53rd. Yeesh. Why does this matter? Because history has not been kind to teams that have those splits when they get to the tournament. In fact, it’s been very, very bad. Your ceiling is almost certainly a Final Four, and even then everything has to break perfectly. More realistically you’re going to be the 4 getting beaten by the 13 in the first round. And that sucks. Good defense, tough-minded basketball, some conference championships here and there because everyone knows everyone’s styles and you can really gum up the works, but realistically, not a ton of tournament success. That’s what I see with Mick Cronin until I see otherwise.
20. Jamie Dixon (48)
I try not to say the same things about these guys every year, but goddamn does it get hard looking over Jamie Dixon’s record year after year and seeing the same shit over and over again and having to come up with fresh material. To steal a line from Bill Simmons about John Stockton, having Jamie Dixon as your coach is like 20 straight years of missionary-style sex with your wife. Yeah, you’re getting laid regularly, but you’re not exactly bragging about it to your friends either. He never plays anyone out of conference. He never makes any noise in the tournament. He looks exactly the same as he did 10 years ago. And I think slowly, slowly, those jobs that he might have been offered once upon a time are going to start drying up. I’m not saying Pitt has to be a stepping stone - he’s obviously cool with just being the head coach there. But I either want him to go to a Final Four next year or lose 25 games. Go Hollywood.
Turn heel. Break bad. Start doing cocaine and wearing sunglasses indoors. Something. No news is bad news. Make me interested Jamie Dixon.
19. Mark Few (51)
See: Dixon, Jaime. Had the 1 seed two years ago that everyone said they deserved and gakked. Gakked hard in 2006. Gak gak gak. Make an Elite Eight or you’re out, Mark. Your OOC is unusually poopy this year, but you’ve got SMU. You’ve got UCLA and Saint Joes. We’ve got a date on December 6th. You have your deepest, best team since you’ve been there. Cut the bullshit and make a damn Elite Eight.
18. Jay Wright (51)
Hey Jay Wright! After the last two years I wasn’t sure if we’d be keeping you around. Nah, never mind that you lost to UConn, no one else did either. I won’t hold that against you. You’ve still got your recruiting chops and I actually thought last year was one of your finer coaching jobs; I mean you basically had a team of midgets that could beat anyone but Creighton, apparently. I just don’t know that your teams ever do anything REMARKABLY well. Does that matter? I crushed Cronin above for being a “splitter”. You’ve had a couple good runs in the NCAA tournament and I would be mildly surprised if you never made another Final Four.
17. Fred Hoiberg (42)
I’m probably going to rustle some jimmies over the order here but look, I know the prevailing wisdom is that Hoiberg is, like, the greatest coach in the world, and will hand pick his NBA job when he deigns to, and will dominate the world of basketball from now until a time hitherto unknown, and we will circle-jerk over him until we run out of coconut oil, but let’s slow our rolls here a little bit. In four season in the Big 12, he’s never finished better than 3rd. He got a 3 seed last year and who knows if he would have gone farther if Niang hadn’t gotten hurt and spared us all a lot of UConn-fan chest-thumping, but he didn’t. UConn beat Florida and Michigan St. and Kentucky, and even though they definitely caught a break with Niang being out, I’m still not prepared to say it would have been anything more than 50-50; forget seeds and rankings, both teams were almost perfectly in equipoise in their metrics before that happened. Either way, Niang was hurt and UConn won, so we’ll never know.
Here’s what we still don’t know about Hoiberg: 1) Can he build a sustainable program with four-year players? I mean the guy sits on a throne of transfers, and he’s been either very good or very lucky with them so far, but you only have to whiff on one to have it completely tear apart your season. 2) Can he actually recruit? Non-transfer recruiting thus far? Lackluster. If you want to talk about Xs and Os, I’d ask: 3) Will his teams play defense ever? This is a fair question. The offense has been sublime, but 54th was Iowa St.’s best ranking in AdjD in 2012. A super-duper-great coach should be able to handle both sides of the ball, right? Moreover, if the underlying problems have to do with recruiting, that still goes back to him, doesn’t it? And finally, 4) Was he the only member of the 2002-03 Chicago Bulls who did not smoke pot? As yet unanswered.
Just so we’re clear, I think Hoiberg is a great coach; I have him ranked 17th for a reason. Besides that, in our fictional AD world, we’re not worried about him going to the NBA for about 10 years or so, so that’s not really a consideration, but you still need to see these objective factors and there are a lot of questions for a guy who seems to be almost universally considered to be one of the greatest coaches in college basketball today. I would like to see those questions answered before I move him much past this point in our rankings.
16. Scott Drew (44)
Ugh, I don’t have the strength to defend Scott Drew anymore, so I’ll try to make this brief and objective: Great on offense, mediocre-to-inexplicable on defense. Two Elite Eights and maybe a “lucky” charge call away from a Final Four (Don’t believe me? Ask Brian Zoubek). Objectively just as good as or better than Hoiberg in every statistical category (including wins and tournament wins and appearances). Now, his recruiting seems to have fallen off a bit – maybe the word’s out on him being a “bad” coach? As far as actual tournament performance he’s like the Star Trek movies: all the odd ones suck, and because this is an odd year (and, more seriously, because he lost a lot of players and because his new recruits won’t be great) I expect him to miss the tournament. If he does and otherwise keeps trending downish I promise I’ll drop him, otherwise let’s just agree to disagree and move on.
15. Tony Bennett (45)
So fresh and so clean clean. Tony Bennett is always so well put-together, isn’t he? I love his no-tie look, open at the throat. He’s great. You know we went up to Wazzu in 2007 and Washington St., perennial Pac doormat before (and since, quite frankly) beat us in OT. Then they beat us at home later in the year! And I thought to myself, "This guy can really coach. He still plays his dad’s defense but they can score now too."
When he took the Virginia job I thought “Really?” It seemed like a recipe for career suicide. I mean, Virginia’s certainly had some success in the past, but for about ten years when most of his recruits’ parents were probably ten. Competing with Tobacco Road in your conference and with Maryland and Georgetown regionally for recruits is a whole different story. And that’s when I sort of forgot about Tony Bennett.
But wouldn’t you know, he won the ACC regular season and tournament championship this year and went and got a 1 seed. I wasn’t totally surprised that they lost in the Sweet Sixteen. Usually you have to knock on that door a couple times before it opens for you, but it will for him. He’s bringing in a higher level of talent than he’s arguably ever coached, with players who contend for ACC player of the year every year, amazing defense, and enough offense to get the job done. There will be a changing of the guard in the ACC in the next few years: Roy, K, Pitino, and Boeheim will all be gone. Which coach and program are best poised to take advantage of it? Every empire falls, and in my opinion, smart money for the next great success among current ACC coaches and programs is on Tony Bennett and the Hoos.
14. Roy Williams (64) / Mike Krzyzewski (67)
These are the two guys I always hear the most about. Let me say this again:
THIS IS NOT A LIST OF BEST COACHES. THIS IS A LIST OF WHAT COACHES YOU WOULD HIRE RIGHT NOW. STOP TELLING ME MIKE KRZYZEWSKI IS THE BEST COACH OF ALL TIME AND YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW HE’S NOT NUMBER 1 ON THIS LIST. I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW YOU CAN’T READ. STOP DOING IT. I DON’T CARE. MAKE YOUR OWN LIST. THANK YOU.
I figured I’d just write about these guys together since their careers are so intertwined at this point. You would definitely hire one of these guys to coach your program, but you wouldn’t hire them over any of the next thirteen guys. K is just too old. Unless you’re hiring for USA Basketball, he’s probably not going to give you enough years. No lock for a Final Four at this point (“only” one in the last 10 years); in fact, fewer Elite Eights than first round losses in the last 10 years, if you can believe that. The one-and-done trend has not been kind to him (see: Rivers, Austin; Parker, Jabari), and what happened to that defense we knew and loved so much? God knows the Dukies were annoying slapping the floor, but damn if they weren’t effective. Maybe he’ll buck his one-and-done trend luck this year with Okafor/Jones/Winslow, but if he doesn’t have time to build, and he doesn’t win with one-and-dones (or without LeBron James), where does that leave you? Hiring a legend, but probably not in time to make the difference anyone would hope he could.
As for Roy, again, we’re just looking at a decline with no evidence suggesting he’ll pull out of it. What’s that, you fairly ask? He’s only 64, there’s still time, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and you may be right. But for him to win a national championship, he would be bucking an unkind trend: only three coaches 64 and older have ever won a national championship. Their names are familiar and they are legend: Calhoun (68), Allen (66), Wooden (64) (K was 63 in 2010). A veritable who’s who of the greatest coaches of all time. Roy is certainly right up there with them but here’s the problem: each of these coaches had been established at his respective program for at least 25 years at this point. Even if you go further down the list – Olson, Smith, Tarkanian – it doesn’t change. Coaching is a young man’s or an old legend’s profession. Roy could still win another national championship at Carolina, but he would be unlikely to win one at your school, which is really the rub.
Please, please, please don’t misunderstand me. I have all the respect in the world for both of these coaches and their legacies. I sure wouldn’t want to meet either of them in, say, the Elite Eight. I think both of them were absolute Zen-level masters at one particular half of the basketball court, K on defense and Roy on offense. Roy’s 2009 team, in particular, I think could make an argument for being the best offensive team of the last 25 years, and I base that both on what my eyes told me at the time and what the stats tell me now. K’s 2002 team makes a strong argument for best team to never win a title. But we’re now into coaches ranked 14th and higher. If you are hiring this coach, the ceiling needs to be national championship, and I am not convinced, based on both the historical data and the slight downward trend for each over the last few years, that either K or Roy could provide that at any school other than their current one.
13. Shaka Smart (37)
The first casualty of our ten-year rule (as opposed to having the coach for life, which gave really young coaches like Shaka a huge boost). What are you waiting for Mr. Smart? Louisville? That’s my bet. Remember when you were going to be the next coach at Marquette? Those were the days. Right now, we're just kind of waiting, waiting, waiting for the next big thing to happen. Let's shore up that half-court offense and make another Elite Eight Shaka.
12. Buzz Williams (42)
What happened last year Marquette fans? I honestly can’t tell. I know you guys lost a few players but at least a couple outlets had you picked to do well in the new Big East, so it wasn’t as though it was a complete rebuilding year. It looked like you guys played tight in almost every game, you lost a bunch of OT games that obviously could have gone either way, and your metrics weren’t horrible? It’s not necessarily…typical…for an elite coach to just randomly have a season like that, but most of the best have been afflicted at one time or another so I’m not going to hold it against him too much.
Oh, by the way, it was really, really weird when Buzz Williams got hired by Virginia Tech. Really weird. We can all agree on that I hope. I get it, there was some AD stuff, low expectations, etc. That’s all fine. But it was still weird as hell. Past that, basically everything I wrote about Tony Bennett goes here for Williams. Why is he higher than Bennett? Better seeds, better tournament success. And one more thing:
Between Marquette’s forgettable season and Buzz taking over at Virginia Tech, I anticipate we won’t be hearing much from Buzz in a while. So consider this maybe a bit of an overranking, and he’ll drop for a few years, and then one day we’ll look up and Buzz will have Virginia Tech rolling and be winning a shitload of games 49-45 and be 22-5 and on his way to a three seed in the tournament and we’ll all say, “Oh yeah, that dude can coach.”
Unless the Texas job opens first.
11. John Beilein (61)
“Okay,” now you’re thinking, especially if you’re a Duke or Carolina fan, “Now you’re really pissing me off. You’ve got Beilein ahead of K and Roy? He’s only three years younger than Roy is!" Fair, totally fair. Here's why I would hire Beilein over Roy Williams RIGHT NOW to coach my team: a proven recent history of 1) rebuilding programs to an elite level, and 2) he is putting dudes in the NBA left and right. The longer he coaches the more he reminds me of Olson, with his offenses and proliferation of talent, and I see many more great things heading his way if he sticks for a bit.
10. Gregg Marshall (51)
Ok, you may fairly ask, why is Gregg Marshall behind Sean Miller and Bruce Pearl? A just question. Here’s why: Yes, Gregg Marshall has a Final Four, but he did it as a 9 seed, and then next year turned that around and lost as a 1. Most importantly, the Big South and Missouri Valley Conference are not big boy basketball, and if you compare what Miller and Pearl have done at power conferences, and the teams they've beaten to do it, in addition to their recruiting prowess, I think you have to put Miller and Pearl first. Sean Miller has a better career winning percentage despite coaching in the A-10 and Pac-12, and a better tournament winning percentage, that Final Four notwithstanding, even if you throw out ALL his first-round losses at Winthrop (and keep the win over Notre Dame). Pearl's is literally one one-thousandth behind Marshall.
Of course, you chime in with the undefeated season. I get it, I get it, the undefeated season was special, and if it were that easy, everyone would do it. Heard it before. On the other hand, Wichita St. played in a really crappy conference and lost the only game that really mattered to them to the only really good team they played.
Don’t misunderstand me, Wichita St. fans! I like your program! You and your coach needle the Jayhawks, which is always a plus in the eyes of the Power Rankings! This is a matter of degrees and shades. I have no doubt Marshall would be fantastic at a power conference - I would never, ever, ever want him coaching at UCLA, or God forbid, ASU gets their shit together and throws like $2.5 million at him. But the bottom line is, he hasn’t done it in a power conference, and while there’s still time for him to be the next John Beilein or Lute Olson, there’s also still plenty of time for him to be the next Phil Martelli too.
9. Bruce Pearl (54)
BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE! I know, he's really divisive, but let's please not forget that he's also a really good basketball coach, a hilarious dude, a giant killer, and a monster recruiter. Arguably his best season was torpedoed when his best player got cancer, and he came within 1.8 seconds of a Final Four in 2010. I don't have a lot to say because he's like Hillary Clinton at this point - people who love him love him, people who hate him hate him, and there's nothing we don't know about him. He is who he is. Personally, I love him, and I'd be ecstatic to hire Bruce Pearl to coach my program, whether it was Arizona or anywhere else.
8. Sean Miller (45)
This is always the toughest one for me. How do you fairly evaluate your own school’s coach, whom you know so much better than any other coach? Is this even a fair spot for him? Is he too high or too low? Is he just a recruiter? (Funny, because I remember when he was “just a coach” too.)
Here’s the thing. If I were the neutral, non-U of A graduate AD of State Tech, and I told my president or fan base that I’d hired Miller over any of the guys below him, they’d should properly be thrilled. If I told them I hired Miller when Izzo/Ollie/Matta/Pitino, etc. was available, they’d probably say something like “Oh, we could have gotten Izzo…?”
And that’s fair. That’s totally fair. Because the reason Sean Miller is still behind these other seven guys is that, at the tender age of 45, he is now saddled with the coaching equivalent of the franchise tag: the label of “Best Coach to Never Make a Final Four.” How do we feel about that, Coach?
“I actually embrace it[.]”
How do you not love that? He said the same thing about Arizona being ranked number 1 for so much of the year last year. No BS coachspeak about how they don’t pay attention or how they don’t care or how it doesn’t matter, and on the other hand, none about how it’s the most amazing thing ever. It exists, we acknowledge it, and it doesn’t change anything that we do. Honor the process and be grateful for what you obtain through honoring the process.
As the article Sean Miller was quoted in notes, you cannot possibly get closer than Sean Miller has been to the Final Four without making it. A blowout loss in the Elite Eight against UCLA in 2008 with Xavier was his first taste, and two one-possession losses with Arizona in 2011 and 2014. Outside of the Elite Eight we have the near-upsets of 4+ higher seeds of Ohio St. in 2007 and, um, Ohio St. in 2013, plus the shellacking of Duke in 2011. Trust me, you don’t want any part of Miller in the NCAA tournament. So unless you think Sean Miller is cut from the same cloth as Gene Keady (who never won more than 30 games in a season, something Sean Miller has already done three times) and John Chaney (who spent the last half of his career basically treading water in the Atlantic-10), he’s going different places than those guys ever did. Miller’s already done more than Keady did in his first 13 years at Purdue, and at the point in Chaney’s career at Temple where he basically started to go downhill, Miller appears to just be getting started. Better analogies would be Bill Self or Jim Calhoun, both of whom had to knock on the door a few times before getting through, and both of whom are doing or did just fine when their time finally came.
I’ve posted “Sean Miller facts” in other fora. You can look them up for yourself or you can take my word for it, but the facts are these: Sean Miller is on statistical pace to become one of the greatest coaches in the history of college basketball. He has coached teams with both elite offenses and defenses (although, regrettably, not at the same time). He has coached All-Americans and role players, five stars and three stars to the NBA. I guess two or three people out there might say Sean Miller “chokes,” except before this season he’d never lost to a lower seeded team in the NCAA tournament, in the Elite Eight and even this was the thinnest of upsets by the slimmest of margins to a great coach, a great team, and without a key player. To say that is intellectually lazy.
A more pointed criticism might be: If Arizona has the best recruiting this side of Kentucky, where are the three Final Fours that Kentucky has had in the last 4 years? Trust me, we’d like them too. Until you actually look at the rankings and the talent differential between the 1 and 2 recruiters and you understand that the classes Miller has brought in, while great, didn’t have Anthony Davis and John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins. Now, in the last two years, Miller has actually had better seasons than Cal has had with his talent at Kentucky (save that little national title appearance). So maybe the difference isn’t so great as we’re lead to believe; this season will be interesting to watch unfold as far as that goes.
Is Miller too tight? Does he need to just let his players play, whatever that means? Here’s what I’d tell Miller if I hired him: don’t change a damn thing. Miller knows pressure. He embraces it. He was born and bred for this. He knocked on the door in 2008. He pounded on it in 2011. He almost bashed it in in 2014. He’s 45, he’s the second best recruiter in the country, and soon, I believe with all of my heart, he’s going to blow that door off its hinges and make everyone forget we had this conversation.
Until then, though, I can’t rank him in front of any of the next seven guys.
7. Tom Izzo (59)
Michigan St. fans, I have some bad news for you: Tom Izzo has stopped recruiting (TM Winger). I mean this isn’t really true. Obviously he was in on Jabari Parker, James Young, and others I’m sure I’m forgetting. But really, Michigan St.’s recruiting has taken a serious dive. He’s only had two players drafted in the last seven years. And while you can’t really complain about the on-court product, I feel like Izzo’s slowly turning into Gary Williams. Don’t forget how much talent was on his three straight Final Four teams. There’s just too many good coaches in the B1G and in the rest of the country; you can only “outcoach” everyone for so long.
Like I said, you can’t really complain about the on-court product – we’re only two years removed from a national title game and another Final Four besides that. So it's all good. He’s fine, we’re fine, everything’s fine. Probably.
6. Thad Matta (47)
I really feel like Thad Matta is the Rodney Dangerfield of elite coaches among the common man/fan. I mean what more does the guy have to do? He’s got a .768 career winning percentage; he’s been to two Final Fours; he’s an incredible recruiter; he’s done most of this in no worse than the second best basketball conference in the country; he’s got 377 wins in 14 years of coaching and he’s 47 years old. I'm not going to say anything else about him, but what more do you want?
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