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The year college basketball's coaching carousel got weird

The fact that Greg Gard is, as of this writing, still the associate head basketball coach at Wisconsin is great news for the Badgers. It is bad news for the rest of college basketball, because it speaks to the nonsensical nature of the hires made in the sport.

Greg Gard cuts down a piece of the net after Wisconsin won the West regional in 2014. (Credit: UW basketball)
Greg Gard cuts down a piece of the net after Wisconsin won the West regional in 2014. (Credit: UW basketball)

Gard just completed his 14th season at Wisconsin, and has been with Bo Ryan since 1993. Gard gets first call on opponent scouting reports, and serves as the Badgers’ recruiting coordinator – and no school in the country has done a better job identifying unheralded players who become future stars. He is integral to a program that has won consistently all century, and has moved into the elite echelon in the last two years.

So, why is this man still waiting for his chance to be a head coach?

In a hiring-and-firing cycle that saw more than its usual share of strangeness, that question is more pertinent than ever. Trying to figure out what schools are thinking come hiring time seems to get more difficult every year, as proven assistants at big-time programs continue to not get hired.

The current trends seem to be:

Nostalgia is in.

NBA backgrounds are in.

Recent success is out.

Hiring high-major assistant coaches is out.

Of the seven jobs that opened in power conferences, exactly one hire would qualify as a no-brainer: Shaka Smart to Texas. Everything else comes with a question mark attached. The new guys come from odd places, and often after extended periods away.

Avery Johnson to Alabama? Zero college coaching experience. Hasn’t coached at all since being fired in 2013 by the Brooklyn Nets. Was 56 games below .500 as coach of the Nets. The Crimson Tide took a big swing at Wichita State’s Gregg Marshall, but the backup plan appeared to be lacking when he ultimately said no.

Avery Johnson's hiring at Alabama had observers scratching their heads. (AP)
Avery Johnson's hiring at Alabama had observers scratching their heads. (AP)

Bobby Hurley to Arizona State? That has the chance to work out well, but it’s a complete geographic start-over for Hurley, whose roots and coaching experience are in the Northeast.

Dave Leitao to DePaul? What, Joey Meyer wasn’t available? Ten years after leaving DePaul and six years after he was last a college head coach – there was a stint in 2011-12 as head coach of the NBA Development League Maine Red Claws – Leitao is back. Don’t everyone order your season tickets all at once.

Ben Howland to Mississippi State? On paper, Mississippi State hiring a guy with three Final Four appearances looks great. But beyond the odd cultural fit, there is the fact that Howland hasn’t coached in two years, and why that may be. Things did not end well at UCLA, and there is reason to question whether things are starting any differently in Starkville. One of Howland’s first reported moves was to visit junior-college forward Ray Kasongo, which indicates that the ties between Howland assistant Korey McCray and Kasongo “mentor” Brandon Bender – named in Central Florida’s NCAA violations a couple years ago – are alive and well.

Chris Mullin to St. John’s? Not to be outdone by DePaul in the Big East Nostalgia Sweepstakes, the Red Storm dialed back to the mid-80s glory days to give the 51-year-old Mullin his first-ever coaching job. The name is magic in New York – at least among parents and grandparents of prospects. Mullin did a smart thing by hiring ace recruiter Barry “Slice” Rohrssen away from Kentucky, but that’s only part of the equation. The X’s and O’s question will loom every bit as large.

Rick Barnes to Tennessee? For a school that spectacularly blew its last hire (the thoroughly-investigated, quickly-discarded Donnie Tyndall), the Volunteers may have lucked into an upgrade on the rebound. Barnes took the job about five minutes after being forced out at Texas. If he regains the motivation level he showed early in his time in Austin, this may work out splendidly. If not, then hiring a guy who recruited Final Four talent but hasn’t made the Sweet 16 since 2008 may not work out that gloriously.

Even on the next level down, there seemed to be abnormal interest in nostalgia hires, head-coach retreads and novelty acts. Holy Cross hired Bill Carmody, who is 63 and hasn’t coached in two years after being fired at Northwestern. Charlotte hired Mark Price, a former NBA player with no experience as a head coach and very little as a college assistant. Liberty borrowed DePaul’s DeLorean and went back to the future, hiring former head coach Ritchie McKay six years after he left the school to be an assistant at Virginia. Penn brought Steve Donahue back to the Ivy League, five years after he left Cornell and a year after he was fired at Boston College.

Will Rick Barnes' hire pay off for Tennessee? (AP)
Will Rick Barnes' hire pay off for Tennessee? (AP)

Some or all of those may work out well. But they’re examples of the fact that the old axioms about paying your dues as an assistant or lower-level head coach, working your way up from the ground floor, aren’t always true. Someone may come sailing out of unemployment or the NBA and take the job in front of you.

It’s true that top-level assistants now are paid well enough that they don’t have to jump at bad jobs – Kentucky’s Kenny Paine is making a reported $350,000 annually, and UK’s bench ace, John Robic, is making a reported $300,000. Plus bonuses.

But almost all of the high-major assistants who got head-coaching jobs this year are taking a risk. There are only seven of them total to date, and almost all of them had to go well down the food chain to do so.

Miami assistant Michael Huger went to Bowling Green; Florida assistant Matt McCall to Chattanooga; Minnesota assistant Dan McHale to Eastern Kentucky; Indiana assistant Steve McClain to Illinois-Chicago; LSU assistant Eric Musselman to Nevada; Alabama assistant John Brannen to Northern Kentucky; and California assistant Jon Harris to SIU-Edwardsville. Of that group, only Musselman is going to what can reasonably be called an NCAA tournament multi-bid league.

Which must leave the Greg Gards of the game frustrated and perplexed. What do they have to do to become a head coach?