OK, Kentucky basketball fans, let’s have a frank talk about Scott Drew

Scott Drew is not my first choice to be the new Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball coach.

If the UK coaching search lands on the incumbent Baylor head man, however, that would be a very good outcome for Wildcats hoops.

It has been widely reported that Drew and Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart are personal friends. For that reason, some elements of the UK fan base are treating UK perhaps turning to Drew as some kind of “buddy hire.”

That is wildly unfair to Drew’s coaching achievements at Baylor.

You evaluate a coach’s work in the context of the job in which they toil.

Before Drew went to Baylor in 2003, this was the sum of the Bears men’s basketball program’s historic achievements:

Baylor had gone to three — three! — NCAA tournaments in its history.

The Bears had enjoyed three 20-win seasons — 25-5 in 1945-46; 24-8 in 1947-48; and 23-11 in 1987-88 — all-time.

If taking on the head coaching job at a historic basketball wasteland was not enough, Drew went to Baylor to pick up the pieces after the Bears men’s basketball program had gone through, arguably, the most repellent scandal in NCAA sports history.

On June 12, 2003, one Baylor basketball player, Patrick Dennehy, was murdered by another Bears’ men’s hoops player, Carlton Dotson.

To make a grave matter even more distasteful, the incumbent Baylor coach, Dave Bliss, allegedly tried to orchestrate a cover-up that would portray the slain Dennehy as a drug dealer so as to prevent scrutiny of the Bears program that the coach seemingly knew would uncover improprieties and NCAA rules violations.

So in going to Baylor, not only did Drew go to a university that had long been a men’s basketball black hole, he did so when that program was serving severe penalties as a result of a sordid scandal.

From those ashes, Drew has built Baylor into a program that has played in 12 NCAA tournaments under his watch. Under Drew, Baylor has made five trips to the Sweet 16; three trips to the Elite Eight; and one Final Four — which yielded the 2021 NCAA championship.

It is, arguably, the most impressive rebuilding effort in men’s basketball history.

In evaluating Drew’s credentials to, potentially, become Kentucky’s head coach, you need to factor in how difficult a situation he chose to take on by going to Baylor.

Dealing with scholarship and recruiting limitations through his early years in Waco, it took Drew until his fifth season to produce a winning record and earn an NCAA Tournament berth.

In the current Kentucky men’s basketball coaching search, it seems likely that no realistic candidate is going to be a perfect fit for UK.

In Drew’s case, seven of his 12 NCAA tournament trips have ended in the first weekend, including Baylor’s last three visits to the Big Dance.

Given that one of the reasons Calipari lost his hold on the Kentucky job is that the Wildcats have not made it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament since 2019, that is a fair concern.

But it is also true that at least two of what I would characterize as dream coaching candidates who many Kentucky backers would love to have succeed Calipari have similar NCAA Tournament track records to Drew’s.

In 2000, Billy Donovan coached Florida to the NCAA Tournament finals.

Over the next five seasons, Billy D. and the Gators failed to get out of the first weekend of the NCAA tourney five times.

That stretch of relative futility was followed by back-to-back NCAA championships for Florida in 2006 and 2007.

Florida then missed the NCAA Tournament entirely in 2008 and 2009.

Meanwhile, Jay Wright coached Villanova to the Final Four in 2009.

Over the next six seasons, the “other” Wildcats went out in the NCAA tourney’s first weekend five times — and missed the NCAA Tournament entirely once.

That stretch of relative futility was followed by two NCAA championships, 2016 and 2018, in three seasons for Wright and Villanova.

As a general rule of UK men’s basketball coaching searches, it is a mistake to apply “Kentucky standards” to the records of coaches working at other programs. What you are trying to do is project, based off a coach’s career achievements, what that coach can achieve if given UK’s resources and advantages.

Another concern raised over Drew is that he does not have the “swaggy” persona that Rick Pitino and Calipari brought to their tenures as Kentucky head coach.

Fact is, when you hire a coach in a situation where people are unhappy with the state of a program, you usually see a contrast in personality in the new hire from the previous coach.

If Scott Drew came to UK and brought some “quiet competence” with him, that could be exactly what Kentucky needs in this moment.

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