Grades for the 2025 men's basketball coaching carousel
As inspired by our friends at Three Man Weave
Look, I gotta run a marathon on Sunday. It’s true.
On the off-chance you are also doing this event, please reach out and say hello. On the on-chance you are not, here’s my main piece of content for the next few weeks as I work on a much larger pair of pieces that have spun out of control a bit. (Neither of these are portal-related. You have an infinite number of choices out there if you would like to read TAKES and REACTS on the transfer portal. This is not one.)
I listen to precisely four sports podcasts with any regularity at all. I do not give free advertising, but one of them is Three Man Weave, which is a pretty good show about college basketball. They do a show every year around this time that I find very fun to listen to on a morning run. They give out grades for every single coaching hire, from A to F, in much the same way that any other site would or, topically, perhaps NFL Draft writers would about the NFL Draft.
However, they do one specific thing I really like: the usage of a bell curve to fit what is true about coaching search season. Some of these hires will work out well. A few will work out spectacularly for both school and coach. The majority, the overwhelming majority, will either be the same, worse, or far worse than what the school had before. This is true not just in college basketball, but in life. The average hire is, well, average. It’s not a B+.
This got me thinking during my run, and because there is no other college basketball content I care to write about at this time, I came up with my own grades and reasoning for all 53 Division I hires/processes/fits. I tried as best as I could to stick to a base system of 5% As, 20% Bs, 50% Cs, 20% Ds, and 5% Fs: a bell curve! Now, did I achieve that? No; this ended up being 6% As, 31% Bs, 37% Cs, 20% Ds, and 6% Fs. But a GPA of 2.11 is pretty close to average, and I can live with that being the final result.
What do these grades mean?
A: I believe you are not only the best possible hire, you’re an ideal fit and will perform well above program expectations, historically-speaking.
B: I believe you are either a very good coach or a very good fit, but perhaps not both at the same time. Alternately: good coach, good fit. You should perform to or a bit above program expectations.
C: Squarely in the middle: a good coach or a good program, but almost certainly not both. A lot of internal promotions or assistant hires get these because of incomplete data. My base expectation is that you will perform to the program’s historical standards or a bit below.
D: You could very well be a good coach in this tier, but you might have a really poor fit wherever you’re going. You could also be the representative of a bad hiring/firing process. I don’t know; all I know is that if you’re in this tier, I would expect this coach to be a step or two below the program’s general performance.
F: This is an all-systems failure by my view: a poor hiring/firing process, a hire that I think isn’t fully up to the task or is outright laughable, and a poor program, which probably is how you got to step one of this process. I expect this to go poorly for all involved.
Am I thrilled with some of these grades? Not really, because I am personally rosier on a good number of these than the grade would suggest, but odds are I’m too kind. But the upside, I guess, is I’ve provided reasoning for every single hire here and why I do or don’t like it or why I’m indifferent. Also, there’s a couple here that I simply do not know much about yet.
A MAJOR, OVERWHELMING DISCLAIMER I AM BEGGING YOU TO READ AT THIS VERY SECOND: These are not meant to offend in any way, shape, or form. If you’re a coach reading this, congratulations or I am sorry; nothing is meant towards you personally. Promise. They are my personal opinions developed from my personal research; having a fit in the comments or to my personal email is strongly discouraged. Reasonable disagreements may be raised, but fury will be dismissed. I do not have the time.
Also, these are alphabetical. Saint Francis did technically have a coaching change but they’re dropping to Division III, so they’re excluded. Lastly, no minuses or pluses, just whole letter grades.
Alabama A&M
Former: Otis Hughley, Jr.
Hire: Donte Jackson
Grade: B
Prior to this year, a real swing and a miss with a weird surge at the end, Jackson had beaten preseason KenPom expectations in six of seven seasons at Grambling. The SWAC is so flat that one hire really can change your program fairly quickly, and I believe in Jackson's ability to overperform. (The spending on both programs, at least as of the most recent reporting in 2022, is surprisingly near-equal.)
Alcorn State
Former: Landon Bussie
Hire: Jake Morton
Grade: D
I thought Bussie was a good coach for Alcorn's level, but this is less about his departure and more on his replacement. I have to admit a personal bias against guys who've been assistants at several places but never a head coach anywhere; generally it showcases a guy who is an ideal third staff member but not an ideal Guy up top. Morton was an assistant at nine schools over the last 26 years - including three different schools in the last four years! - before getting this job. No SWAC experience, and just two years of HBCU experience at Coppin a decade ago. Really meh hire, and I would wager it's indicative more of how little Alcorn spends (supposedly only MVSU spends less on athletics in the SWAC) than of a poor hiring process in a vacuum.
Arkansas State
Former: Bryan Hodgson
Hire: Ryan Pannone
Grade: C
I've heard this called an Oats tree hire, which is technically true, but Pannone has a bizarrely deep international basketball background; he may pull more from what EuroLeague sides do than anything Oats would run. (He was Oats' OC the last two years but frankly if you're Nate Oats' OC, that feels more like a situation of being Andy Reid's OC where you really are just adding tweaks, nothing wholesale.) I like this hire more than a C indicates but given his background, it feels like the O/U for years spent here sits at 2 as a starter. He moves a LOT.
Bellarmine
Former: Scott Davenport
Hire: Doug Davenport
Grade: D
Scott is a legend; Doug is Doug. This is not a bad hire but I think it's a continuation of poor process, i.e. perhaps not being able to admit that what you've done recently may not work at the level you're aspiring to be at. The Davenport Method ran out of juice the last two seasons and I thought this could really use an ideological shakeup to fix things, which obviously wasn't happening. I could be very wrong here, of course, but I think I would have felt rosier if they had done this in 2023.
Bryant
Former: Phil Martelli, Jr.
Hire: Jamion Christian
Grade: F
Some stats for you. Christian has been a head coach for 10 seasons; he owns zero top-200 KenPom finishes and finished beneath the KP preseason projection in his four most recent seasons (7 of 10 overall). He owns Siena's fifth-worst KenPom season ever and three of GW's four worst. A truly bizarre pick when Bryant could capitalize on a potential Vermont down period. Christian was most recently seen coaching overseas in Italy and as far as I’m aware wasn’t rumored for other positions this cycle.
Campbell
Former: Kevin McGeehan
Hire: John Andrzejek
Grade: B
Of the two Florida assistants to get jobs I lean the untypable Andrzejek as the superior force; his arrival at schools most closely aligns with an improvement in performance at each stop. He's very analytically-wise and a quality tactician, and frankly, it's easier to get up to speed at Campbell than Columbia.
Central Michigan
Former: Tony Barbee
Hire: Andy Bronkema
Grade: B
This is a top-five hire for me and I came oddly close to giving it an A. Bronkema comes from Ferris State, where he owns nine of the program's 18 NCAA Tournament appearances *ever* in a 12-season run. Pretty good, I would argue. Ferris State is tremendous in football but has never really met that same mark in MBB or WBB; Bronkema got them closest to doing so. I think this is an unusually inspired hire from a college who has made their mark over the last 10 years in hiring the most boring people alive.
Chicago State
Former: Scott Spinelli
Hire: Landon Bussie
Grade: B
Bussie did a quality job at Alcorn and his record there is only marred by an inability to get over the SWAC Tournament hump, which is no shame. The SWAC Tournament is as roulette-based a thing as we've got in MBB. He owns three of Alcorn's four (4) top-300 KenPom finishes since 2003. It's Chicago State's fortune that Alcorn's investment is so poor. This was a near-A for me, but I do think there's unfortunately a firm cap on how high a guy can raise two atrocious basketball schools. Best of luck to him.
Cleveland State
Former: Daniyal Robinson
Hire: Rob Summers
Grade: D
Someone had to be a casualty to fall from a C to a D, so it's this guy, a seemingly well-liked assistant who nonetheless went 20-66 in his only prior coaching opportunity at the D2 level. Moreso this is a bit of a Copy of a Copy Theory going on; the further you go down the rabbit hole of trying to recreate the original (Dennis Gates in this case), the lesser the copies of your original become. Try it sometime with a copier, if they even have those anymore in offices. Hell if I know. I haven’t worked full-time in an office since March 16, 2020.
Colorado State
Former: Niko Medved
Hire: Ali Farokhmanesh
Grade: B
Farokhmanesh is a rapid riser, going from a grad assistant a decade ago to Niko Medved's right-hand man for most of the past few years. Continuity hires like this are understandable when the continuity guy 1) has a heavy hand in player development; 2) is young. Farokhmanesh fits both.
Columbia
Former: Jim Engles
Hire: Kevin Hovde
Grade: C
I'm not a Hovde hater, promise! I just think the process here was a bit weird. The final two candidates for this, widely publicized, were Hovde and NYU HC Dave Klatsky. Now, call me a prude if you must, but I'd perhaps rather have the D3 guy that just took a program with almost zero basketball history in the last 30 years to the national title game over the assistant who has yet to be an HC, both of which have more or less the exact same philosophical views on hoops. Hovde absolutely could be a star in the waiting, and learning under Kyle Smith and Todd Golden is a great way to do it, but I can't shake the feeling that this worked out in an incorrect manner. How is Hovde a head coach while Klatsky's back to being a D1 (albeit at UF) assistant? Great coup for Todd Golden, I suppose.
Denver
Former: Jeff Wulbrun
Hire: Tim Bergstraser
Grade: C
Of the major D2 → D1 hires I'm less thrilled by this. Bergstraser is a good, solid coach who did well in a very competitive D2 conference (the NSIC is kind of like the D2 Big 12), but he's signficantly less proven than a Bronkema, and hiring a guy who's never coached west of Minnesota to come to maybe the worst Summit League job with no real Rockies ties...ugh. Among D2 guys I would've been interested in seeing local Pryor Orser (CO School of Mines) getting a shot here, but perhaps they are turned off by the fact (ask around, people) that CO Mines regularly defeats Denver in their yearly scrimmage.
Drake
Former: Ben McCollum
Hire: Eric Henderson
Grade: C
Not a bad hire, just not an amazing one. Henderson is a good coach in a good spot to win at, and it is pretty hard to lose at Drake if you've got any talent at all. But as a program raiser...well, haven't seen it. It's not great to me that Hendo owns five of South Dakota State's nine sub-100 KenPom finishes since becoming eligible for postseason play in 2009-10. His best season (81st, '21-22) is also a lesser best season than Otz (78th, '17-18) or Scott Nagy (61st, '11-12). I still think he's a good coach, just perhaps a step down from the last three Drake has brought in.
Florida A&M
Former: Patrick Crarey II
Hire: Charlie Ward
Grade: D
This is objectively more of a C, and I couldn't give it an F on principle alone simply because Ward actually has spent a long time coaching at the HS level and learned the ropes. (He'll also bring in that sweet, sweet NIL.) But the way FAMU treated Patrick Crarey, who put together a great coaching job last year, was pathetic. I'm meeting in the middle at a D.
Florida State
Former: Leonard Hamilton
Hire: Luke Loucks
Grade: D
Loucks could well turn out to be the guy that turns FSU back around, and frankly in this particular era of ACC ball it won't be that difficult. But getting talent was not the problem under Leonard, so I'm unsure what hiring a supposed NIL Guy (presumably) does when you need more of a tactician to actually advance the talent forward. Frankly, I can't say that your big career move (being the defensive coordinator for the 23rd-best defense in the NBA) is...uh, inspiring? The upside here is that he either DOES work out or he doesn't and he's relatively cheap to get rid of.
Fordham
Former: Keith Urgo
Hire: Mike Magpayo
Grade: B
Mags is a quality head coach, and his very good job done at UC Riverside was perhaps overshadowed by the one-two tango of UC Irvine/UC Santa Barbara, not to mention this year's rise of UC San Diego. But Fordham is as Cleveland Browns-y as a job can be; you don't really advance from it, rather escape. I hope he does well enough to get out in three years' time.
Grambling State
Former: Donte Jackson
Hire: Patrick Crarey II
Grade: B
I figured that upgrading on a good coach in Jackson may be difficult but Grambling has possibly done it. Crarey has just the one year at the D1 level with FAMU a year ago, but what a year it was, going 23-7 ATS and putting together a great Eff You Season as FAMU refused to give him a second year. I'm a believer in his work, having done a tremendous job at a bad job in the NAIA level. It would really do him well to escape to a conference with more resources, but a simple jump from a lower-tier SWAC job to a upper-tier one is good for now. Let's see how he does.
High Point
Former: Alan Huss
Hire: Flynn Clayman
Grade: C
People are very rosy on Clayman, and far be it from me to shoot them down. I just think we need more data. Many claim that Southern Utah's rise to stardom was in tandem with Clayman taking on a larger role...but considering he only rose from an anonymous assistant role for one season, I'm not sure I see it. I still think he's likely a good coach, but someone had to lose out here and drop from a B to a C, and it’s going to be very hard to upgrade on the two years Huss just put together.
Indiana
Former: Mike Woodson
Hire: Darian DeVries
Grade: B
Is it alright if I just say that Indiana made a good hire, got a good coach, and now has a floor-raiser as opposed to a ceiling-limiter? Is that enough for now?
Iona
Former: Tobin Anderson
Hire: Dan Geriot
Grade: D
Of the various NBA assistants or hangers-on trekking into D1 basketball this year, Geriot perhaps has the richest dad of any of them. That may well go a long way, and Lord knows it's not exactly difficult to get Iona to win the MAAC. But railroading a good coach in Tobin Anderson leaves me feeling ill, and Geriot's own career has been...okay? I have to note my alarm in seeing him depart the Cavs right before they became awesome, and his work at the G-League level was fairly nondescript. I can certainly see this working but I'd argue it will take a year for him to really adjust to how different the NBA and college games are right now.
Iowa
Former: Fran McCaffery
Hire: Ben McCollum
Grade: A
Kinda like giving Abbey Road or, like, 2001: A Space Odyssey an A. You did it. You hired the right guy. You need me to say more than that?
La Salle
Former: Fran Dunphy
Hire: Darris Nichols
Grade: C
Nichols is a good and solid coach, and his hire seemed to upset reliable barometers of poor judgment that will go unnamed, so I wonder if I'm perhaps underrating this entire process. I guess I just don't think Nichols is this star-in-training that some seem to believe in? Radford went 33-33 in conference play under Nichols, their worst four-year stretch since 2011-2014. Obviously, following up the illustrious Mike Jones (who?) is no easy task, and he did finish top-200 twice, but when you're in the spot La Salle is, I guess I'd like to see you hire a proven analytical overachiever instead of a guy who's been fine-but-not-amazing.
Lipscomb
Former: Lennie Acuff
Hire: Kevin Carroll
Grade: C
Default grade here. Lipscomb's hires have been quality for a while now, and generally I trust that they see something in guys like Carroll even if the resume may not match up. I do think he deserves a bit more credit for even squeezing out 35 wins in two seasons at Trevecca Nazarene, a school with no MBB history that has under 2,000 undergrad students.
Longwood
Former: Griff Aldrich
Hire: Ronnie Thomas
Grade: D
Shockingly young to the point that he's not even the first Ronnie Thomas you see on Wikipedia. (There was a NASCAR driver many years back with the same name.) 32 and never a HC before, this is an interesting experiment and follow-up to the unconventional hire of Aldrich, but at least Aldrich had the sell of being a key part of the UMBC staff that beat UVA. Thomas is seemingly A Guy with little to go off of, and given their success/funds I figured they might be able to aim a bit higher. I hope he works out; I like his bowtie.
Louisiana
Former: Bob Marlin
Hire: Quannas White
Grade: B
Nearly a C because I did think Bob Marlin was generally an above-average coach, but I lean B because of Quannas' guard development over the years at Houston. I think that may only matter if he's able to get in multi-year players at ULL, which is no guarantee if they're going to be any good, but of the hiring capacity a school like ULL has this is a good get.
Louisiana-Monroe
Former: Keith Richard
Hire: Phil Cunningham
Grade: F
For one, he was fairly weak at Troy, which is not that hard of a place to win games in the sport of your choice. For another, why would you hire an assistant off of the staff of a guy you've prayed for the money to get rid of for four years? Awful process, nondescript hire, bad, bad, bad. At least they hired a good football coach.
Maryland
Former: Kevin Willard
Hire: Buzz Williams
Grade: B
I toyed with an appropriate comparison for about 20 minutes on my run this morning for Buzz. Is it Carlos Beltran? Beltran was never the greatest player of his generation (albeit a 9-time All-Star), and honestly, he was never that amazing in any one individual season. But it seemed like every couple of years, he would get traded to a contender of his choice, where he would proceed to rake for his new team during that year's playoffs. He also never lasted more than six full seasons with any one team and ended up playing for 25% of the league. Basically, Buzz is Señor Octubre: you're not gonna have him for a long time, but you're probably gonna have him for a good time.
McNeese
Former: Will Wade
Hire: Bill Armstrong
Grade: C
This one is fine. I think anyone will suffer by comparison for not being Will Wade, and I can't really find anything that indicates Armstrong being the core reasoning for a staff's success at his previous assistant roles. (It's cool that he won the HS championship with Link Academy, but...eh. It doesn't matter that much for this specific job, I wouldn’t think.) Basically, keep the money rolling in and no one will care.
Miami (FL)
Former: Jim Larrañaga
Hire: Jai Lucas
Grade: C
I was at a D on this for a while but I've moved up to a C. Lucas is very likely not going to run some sort of forward-thinking offense, and his reputation as a defense-first coach is a serious clash with what the Miami fanbase traditionally looks for in their sports programs. But Lucas is an elite recruiter, will have a ton of money connections, and will be able to build quality rosters more often than not. I think he'll figure out the Xs and Os side of it eventually. I do wish Miami would've hired someone with more experience but I've grown to be more tolerant of this one since it happened.
Minnesota
Former: Ben Johnson
Hire: Niko Medved
Grade: B
Boring one to dissect. This is a destination job as long as Minnesota actually bothers to invest literally anything at all, which they did not for poor Ben Johnson. I don't know much of Medved as a major money-raiser but he builds good rosters and runs tremendous stuff offensively. Is it a guarantee that Minnesota will get back to their 1993-1997 heyday? Of course not, the Big Ten's a good bit better now. But this is the rosiest any Minnesota fan should have felt since...man, 1997? Maybe 2017?
Murray State
Former: Steve Prohm
Hire: Ryan Miller
Grade: C
Money connections thanks to his brother (Mike), and in Miller's defense, he has an extensive career as an assistant where he's built up a lot of connections. My problem is somewhat similar to an earlier callout: a lot of assistant roles without ever being seriously considered for head coach. The quality of the coaches worked for has really varied, too: John Calipari, Greg McDermott, Jamie Dixon...but also Tony Barbee, Vance Walberg, etc. Murray is a place that is very easy to win at, so he should be fine, but I don't know if it would really tell us much in either direction about how good he is or isn't.
Navy
Former: Ed DeChellis
Hire: Jon Perry
Grade: D
Saved from an F because I do think it's uniquely hard to hire a great MBB or WBB coach at a military school. But, uh...could you have perhaps not hired a guy from the previous staff when that staff was not seen as anything special? Bruce Pearl loves the troops. He probably could've sent you Steven! That would've been fun.
NC State
Former: Kevin Keatts
Hire: Will Wade
Grade: A
Duh. I still think it is in William's best interest to continue skipping town every 3-4 years a la Lyle Lanley, but what he will do in those 3-4 years is better than what any other option for this job would've most likely done in the same span of time. I look forward to 6 seed NC State in 10 months.
New Mexico
Former: Richard Pitino
Hire: Eric Olen
Grade: A
He took UC San Diego, whose uniforms look as if they were created by ClipArt, to a top-40 KenPom finish, a 12 seed, and a three away from a Round of 32 visit in their first-ever bite at the apple. I mean. (Also, the very best ATS coach over the last two years and top five in the last three. He's really damn good.)
North Texas
Former: Ross Hodge
Hire: Daniyal Robinson
Grade: C
In a vacuum, Robinson is a quality coach with a solid track record and could potentially make sense here...but I was actually closer to a D than a C, because I find this fit really odd. The Texas recruiting infrastructure is maybe the most insular of all the 50 states, which is problematic to me when Robinson was responsible at Iowa State for recruiting the Midwest and Big Ten country...not Texas. He does have three years of experience a decade back as a Houston assistant under Tom Penders, but I'm not sure how relevant that is here. Again: winner, seems smart, just a weird fit.
Oral Roberts
Former: Russell Springmann
Hire: Kory Barnett
Grade: D
An instant issue I had with this hire: is he even the best Kory on his own staff? Kory Barnett has been an assistant for over a decade at a variety of quality schools, most recently West Virginia, and he has an earned reputation as a Steve Alford guy. Fine. He also hired Kory Alford, Steve's own son, who just turned around NAIA Huntington in four seasons to the tune of the school's best sustained period of success in 20 years. There's a very weird push-and-pull here where Barnett is actually quite renowned as a defensive mind but is entering a horrendous defensive league where his skillset is probably less suited for what's to come than the assistant he brought in to be his right-hand man. IDK.
Penn
Former: Steve Donahue
Hire: Fran McCaffery
Grade: C
Fran is a very good head coach who ran out the clock at Iowa. I have seen several people note that it's pretty wild a coach of Fran's quality is now the head man at Penn. Sure. It’s his alma mater. But Fran is 66 years old and this is pretty clearly a retirement gig to me. Should do fine and at least drag Penn back to respectability, but I would be surprised if he touches anything like the heights of the Fran (Dunphy) before him.
Radford
Former: Darris Nichols
Hire: Zach Chu
Grade: C
I'll admit a minor bias on this hire: I hope it goes extremely well. Funky hire, getting a guy who's essentially just done spreadsheets or Tableau reports to run an actual basketball team. Frankly I want to give it an A, because Radford has functionally hired Will Warren, and if I tell my dad that he may stop asking if Dairy Queen has responded to my application yet. This is also a pretty perfect level to try a hire like this out at. The Big South is a mid-pack league, and Radford (mostly) has been a mid-pack program. Maybe Chu sucks and he bombs out in 2-3 years. Or, maybe, this hire ends up being a huge win for unusual thinking processes and for nerds who are struggling to break into the college game thanks to the world's most insular hiring process.
Sacramento State
Former: Mike Czepil (interim)
Hire: Mike Bibby
Grade: F
This is the single worst hire of the cycle. Sacramento State following this up by hiring Shaq to be GM is a little too perfect. This is 2025's TikTok Program of the Year. By February, Hoopify will have various clips of Jason Williams or whoever in courtside seats dapping up Bibby, an in-arena DJ blasting the greatest hits of 2014, and Mike Bibby screaming into the abyss as Portland State beats them by 27. Portland State. Not even Montana. Maybe the football program can hire Priest Holmes next. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It makes me so mad every time I look at it. J.E. Skeets was right.
Samford
Former: Bucky McMillan
Hire: Lennie Acuff
Grade: B
Sorry, coming back down from getting riled up. This is a very good hire because I think Lennie Acuff is a very good coach. Nothing flashy, really; he just runs good offense and gets good players that fit well together. I don't think Samford will be nearly the NBA League Pass team they were the last two seasons but they may win more games on the whole.
South Dakota State
Former: Eric Henderson
Hire: Bryan Petersen
Grade: C
I will put my hand up and admit I know nothing about Petersen. Like all things Jackrabbits, I’ll assume it ends up fine.
South Florida
Former: Amir Abdur-Rahim
Hire: Bryan Hodgson
Grade: B
Shark is a great hire anywhere he goes, and plucking Tobin Anderson to be on staff to help him out is pretty smart stuff. (This is where I drop that while waiting to meet someone I saw Tobin and Hodgson talking in a San Antonio hotel lobby. I suppose this is what that was about.) But...I mean...ugh. Not about his personal background! Just that they didn't manage to win the Sun Belt in either season with arguably the most talented roster each time around. '23-24 is very understandable given how good JMU was, but this past year really should've been the season for Ark State to surge forward. They didn't. They were still good and probably the best all-around team in the league, but I expected a little more from them. USF's made quality investments in MBB and I think he'll thrive there, though.
Stephen F. Austin
Former: Kyle Keller
Hire: Matt Braeuer
Grade: B
You hire from the McCasland tree, you get an automatic thumbs-up from me. McCasland's assistant hires are non-stop bangers and I figure this one likely ends up as good as the rest of them.
Texas
Former: Rodney Terry
Hire: Sean Miller
Grade: B
I pondered a C here but ultimately went with a B. I do not think of Miller as this unstoppable force the way some do; the end of his tenure at Arizona was actually very underwhelming, and I would argue he underachieved pretty heavily in two of his three Xavier seasons. Still, he will be given a budget the size of Mars, and it will be very hard for him to not win a lot of games when given a lot of money. I don't think it will be as good as his peak Arizona days were, but it will be a significant step up from Terry, which is why this got a B: it will be better. So help me God if erstwhile Austinite Elon Musk appears at a game.
Texas A&M
Former: Buzz Williams
Hire: Bucky McMillan
Grade: D
The problem is that this is a talent and fit game. We have had this discussion a lot in the past about rosters; we have had it less so about coaching searches. The 3MW boys noted on the podcast that they might have given a McCollum/Indiana marriage a B, whereas a McCollum/Iowa marriage was always an A. One was a superior fit to the other. I think this is a horrid, horrid fit for one Bucky McMillian.
Bucky Ball is a very entertaining watch, and if Bucky is still running anything resembling Bucky Ball by year 3 in the SEC either I am horrifically off in my estimates of play styles like this translating upwards or he's about to get fired because of stubbornness. Samford's biggest strength the last two years was playable depth; Bucky's 9th man was roughly as good as his 4th on that '23-24 team.
That is WAY harder to do in the SEC, where everyone has infinite money, every coach plays exactly eight players when it matters, and no extreme defensive presses last very long because the athletes exploit them with ease. I'm aware that it was unlikely Bucky would stay at Samford forever, but it was an ideal marriage for him. This is more like a shotgun wedding that I feel will not last very long.
UC Riverside
Former: Mike Magpayo
Hire: Gus Argenal
Grade: C
No one available here is an upgrade on Magpayo, but Argenal is well-respected and did a fine job at the D2 level after years as a Muss assistant. I assume the latter will help him attract talent, if not fit.
UC San Diego
Former: Eric Olen
Hire: Clint Allard
Grade: C
Continuity hire. I know nothing substantial on Allard so will refrain from leaning in any direction.
UNLV
Former: Kevin Kruger
Hire: Josh Pastner
Grade: D
Pastner apparently really wanted this job. For such a deeply religious man, I find it humorous for anyone's three most recent public-facing jobs to have been in Memphis, Atlanta, and now Las Vegas. A true 1-of-1 figure in the college landscape.
If I were assigning grades on how personally likable a coach is, Pastner would get an A every single year from here to eternity. Yet this was a bizarre left-field choice, and little about what Pastner has done as a coach suggests an ability to achieve beyond his means, which he will have to do at a UNLV job that has a lot less money than the average person thinks.
Utah
Former: Craig Smith
Hire: Alex Jensen
Grade: C
Jensen got moved from a D to a C because several NBA types whose opinions I trust are huge fans of his. Jensen has nearly gotten an NBA HC job a time or two before, and he was involved in Utah's search that resulted in getting Craig Smith a few years ago. He'll presumably have a very progressive basketball ideology, and I'm sure the money won't hurt. I can't go above a C because of incomplete data and because I still remain a big fan of Craig Smith, but this is one of the better NBA hires out there.
VCU
Former: Ryan Odom
Hire: Phil Martelli Jr.
Grade: C
Odd one to me. Martelli the younger did a quality job at Bryant, though as usual one can argue how much or how little he did versus how much or how little Jared Grasso did prior to losing his job thanks to ALLEGEDLY illegal substances ALLEGEDLY. Considering a dying dog could win 18 games at VCU, it is not at all hard to imagine Martelli having success there. I just have a harder time imagining him going above and beyond your standard VCU success stories, i.e. a couple 12 seeds and a bounce up to a Big Ten job.
Villanova
Former: Kyle Neptune
Hire: Kevin Willard
Grade: C
I had a friend propose to me many years ago his Jay-Z Theory: that Jay-Z was either the worst great rapper or the best bad rapper to ever exist. Willard sort of exists in a similar quandary for me: is he the worst great coach or the best bad one? That being the resume for the next Villanova coach does not rile me up with excitement, but given Villanova's resources, he should win plenty of games before tiring out his welcome around 2030.
Virginia
Former: Tony Bennett
Hire: Ryan Odom
Grade: B
As The Fall once said, this was totally wired. It makes sense, and sure, I'd love to give it one of my three As. My one reservation: he has done it all at really good jobs relative to their respective conferences so far. We haven't seen him do it at a truly bad one. UMBC is closest, but they do have respectable resources for their league (or did at the time). I still expect big things here.
West Virginia
Former: Darian DeVries
Hire: Ross Hodge
Grade: B
Great hire. Only missed on an A because I gave out just three. I think he'll break out of McCasland's shadow pretty soon, though he really needs to find an offensive mind the way McCasland managed to find one for himself.
Xavier
Former: Sean Miller
Hire: Richard Pitino
Grade: B
Rick Jr. has really improved as a coach for me since his Minnesota days; I think the way he runs his defenses can really stress out an opponent and make for a tremendous viewing experience. I still do not believe in him all that much as an offensive coach, which could be really problematic if Xavier doesn't have the severe athleticism advantage UNM was able to build in the backcourt the last 2-3 seasons. I like this hire and think it should go well, but a path does exist to a few underwhelming offenses and some frustrating early exits.
That’s it. Wish me luck in the marathon, and please do not email me if you find yourself annoyed by any of these. It’s an opinion piece! Anyway, off to run 3:45 or better.
Dude, Fran melting down at Ivy League refs in a half-empty Palestra is going to be pure theater. A+ hire for the juice.
Very excited to see if Kevin Willard can use the resources at Nova to outplay his NCAA Tournament seed, something he has never done once in 15 years as a head coach.