The basketball coaching carousel: Coaches with controversial pasts prove irresistible
For my money, the three most-interesting segments of every men’s college basketball season are 1.) Selection Sunday; 2.) The NCAA Tournament; 3.) The coaching carousel.
The first two are in the books for 2023 but the back-room dealing and job hopping of “carousel season” remains fresh.
Even as the college hoops game of musical chairs continues to play out, here are some winners and losers:
▪ Stock up: Diminished, old-school Big East brands. Georgetown and St. John’s, once Big East Conference luminaries, appear to have at last hired coaches capable of revitalizing their programs’ fallen hoops status.
Georgetown, which has gone 13-50 over the prior two seasons, was able to lure Ed Cooley away from conference rival Providence. Cooley, 53, inherited a Friars program that was on a seven-year NCAA Tournament drought and went on to lead Providence to seven NCAA tourney trips in 12 years as head man. Cooley should have the charisma to again make Georgetown a major factor in recruiting the talent-rich “DMV” region.
St. John’s overlooked the scandal-packed final stint of Rick Pitino’s Louisville coaching tenure and tabbed the renowned program builder and now-former Iona coach to try to reinvigorate a Red Storm program that has made only three NCAA Tournament appearances in the past 20 seasons.
It will be entertaining to watch Pitino, who will turn 71 on Sept. 18, make a coaching return to Madison Square Garden, where he led the NBA’s New York Knicks from 1987-89.
▪ Stock down: Ole Miss. Let’s stipulate that Chris Beard is a high-level basketball coach, one who probably would not have been available to a historical hoops also-ran such as Mississippi had he not been sidelined by (self-created) controversy.
It is also true that what had been a felony charge against Beard arising from an alleged domestic-abuse incident involving his then-fiancée — an event that cost him the Texas job — was dropped in February.
Still, it would seem that a university with Southeastern Conference resources and a modern, well-designed arena should have been in position to attract a coaching up-and-comer with no objectionable off-court baggage rather than hiring Beard so soon after the alleged incident that led Texas to oust him.
▪ Stock up: Notre Dame. From here, the Fighting Irish landing ex-Penn State head man Micah Shrewsberry looks like the best hire of the cycle. In only two seasons at Penn State — historically, one of the most-challenging basketball jobs in a power conference — Shrewsberry inherited an 11-14 team and led the Nittany Lions to their first NCAA Tournament in 12 seasons and first March Madness victory since 2001 by his second year.
Shrewsberry, 46, has deep roots in Indiana basketball, having grown up in Indianapolis, graduated from Hanover College and worked as an assistant under both Brad Stevens at Butler and Matt Painter at Purdue.
This feels like a coach and a job that are uniquely well-suited.
▪ Stock down: Schools replacing coaching legends. When Syracuse promoted assistant coach and former Orange star Adrian Autry to follow the venerable Jim Boeheim, it continued a surprising trend. Syracuse became the third ACC school in three seasons to replace a Hall of Fame head man with an assistant with no prior head-coaching experience.
Two seasons ago, North Carolina promoted Hubert Davis to replace Roy Williams. Last year, Duke tabbed Jon Scheyer for the unenviable task of trying to follow Mike Krzyzewski.
All three hires may work out, but it’s fairly amazing that the choices to replace three such venerated coaches have all been completely unproven as head men.
▪ Stock up: The Nate Oats coaching tree. Whatever reputation damage the Alabama head coach may have suffered this season due to his often-tone-deaf response after one of his players was charged with capital murder, there has clearly been no harm to the coaches who were working under Oats on the Crimson Tide’s 2022-23 staff.
In filling head coaching vacancies, three schools during the current coaching carousel have hired Alabama assistants. Georgia Southern chose Charlie Henry; Arkansas State went with Bryan Hodgson; and Kennesaw State tabbed Antoine Pettaway.
Clearly, athletics administrations remain intrigued with Oats and his heavily-metrics-influenced playing style.
Stock down: The ex-Cats coaching tree. When the 2019-20 season tipped off, there were a whopping eight — count’ em, eight — former Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball players serving as NCAA Division I head coaches.
In alphabetical order, there were Allen Edwards (Wyoming); Travis Ford (Saint Louis); Walter McCarty (Evansville); Steve Masiello (Manhattan); Scott Padgett (Samford); John Pelphrey (Tennessee Tech); Mark Pope (BYU); and Sean Woods (Southern).
Since then, the number of ex-Cats as D-I head men has been halved. This season, a late-season swoon (3-7 in the final 10 games) by Southern preceded former UK point guard Woods getting the pink slip as Jaguars head man. Edwards, McCarty, Masiello and Padgett had all previously lost their head-coaching positions.
The only reason the number of ex-Cats serving as Division I head coaches is holding at four is that ex-Wildcats walk-on guard Dwight Perry was tabbed as Wofford head man after serving as interim head coach for the Terriers for most of 2022-23.
Assuming no further turnover, Perry will join Ford, Pelphrey and Pope as the only former Kentucky players serving as NCAA Division I head coaches in 2023-24.
