NCAA Weekly, Vol. 1: Iyanla, Fix My Program
Local Man Proposes Unusual Solution For Your Problems: Hire Good Coaches
Rooting for a coach to lose his job is not something anyone enjoys doing. These are real people with real families and real at-home responsibilities. This is the job they’ve always dreamed of doing. As such, articles like these are not meant as Haterade towards the coaches themselves. It’s as simple as this: some marriages don’t work out. A lot of basketball marriages don’t work out. It happens.
Over the offseason, I looked to identify a few programs that need a coaching change or a program philosophical shift desperately. There’s more than ten in America, but these are the ten I felt most comfortable analyzing. Five programs are analyzed in-depth, while five more get quickie write-ups at the end.
The point of the exercise is this: yes, many a basketball marriage doesn’t work out. The issue is that athletic directors continue to make it rocket science and hire based off of name appeal than hiring actual basketball coaches. Would any of these suggested changes be a guarantee to work out? Of course not. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t very confident at least a few of them would.
The first five are below; the first one is free, then the remainder are for paid subscribers.
PITTSBURGH
THE PROBLEM: Pittsburgh’s more or less been on an irreversible downward spiral since the moment Jamie Dixon jumped to TCU to both go to his alma mater and reset his contract clock. Pittsburgh had a few different options to go with at the time; they chose Kevin Stallings, who made it two seasons and went 4-32 in ACC play. There’s a real argument that Stallings is the single worst hire by any Big Six school in 20 years.
The thing that makes this worse is that they followed up Stallings with a hire that may also belong on a Worst Hires Ever list. Jeff Capel was a Duke assistant for seven seasons prior to jumping on board at Pitt, but he did have some amount of coaching experience: four years at VCU, five years at Oklahoma. Capel went 79-41 at VCU and 96-69 at Oklahoma; neither of those are obviously bad records. Unfortunately for Capel, two things make his tenures look less shiny than on paper:
The VCU team the year after Capel left immediately made the Round of 32.
The only two Oklahoma teams Capel made the Tournament with had Blake Griffin on them. You may have heard of him.
Through four years at Pitt, Capel has done nothing to really distinguish himself in a positive way. Pitt’s best ACC finish is a tie for 11th; he’s 21-53 in conference play and his best KenPom finish was 97th in the COVID year. For perspective, Capel’s best finish would’ve been Pittsburgh’s worst from 2001 to 2017.
This is not a pushover program like some of their ACC or regional counterparts, at least historically. Pitt’s made the NCAA Tournament an impressive 19 times in the 37 it’s been held in the 64/68-team era. They own six regular season conference championships. They’ve been to the Sweet Sixteen five times in the last 20 years. This is far from an impossible job to win at; the football program’s ascension last season should make that clear enough.
THE SOLUTION: The first thing you’re gonna do is fire Capel the second the season ends. Capel seems to only be here because of an insane buyout that would’ve been $15 million after the 2021-22 season ended. Reporting says that said buyout drops to $5 million after 2022-23; I would deem that reasonably affordable for Pitt. Unless Capel makes the NCAA Tournament - the bare minimum of an expectation at Pitt - he should be let go.
What you’re gonna do next is call Matt Langel, currently at Colgate. Langel attended Penn, spent seven years coaching in the state of Pennsylvania, and is all of 44 years old. Those things are important. What’s more important is that Langel has won 176 games and three Patriot League championships. Prior to Langel’s arrival, Colgate was 129-184 in the 11 years previous. They’d never topped 192nd in KenPom. They’d made two NCAA Tournaments in the 1990s; other than that, they had no history.
Langel has merely gone 66-18 in conference play the last five years, made the last three NCAA Tournaments, and fully expects to make a fourth this year as the best team in the Patriot League. Langel’s offenses are routinely among the best nationally in three-point shooting and rarely turn the ball over; his defenses are less notable, but that’s something that can change with better quality of athletes. Colgate - COLGATE UNIVERSITY - has finished higher than Pitt in KenPom three of the last four years.
If Langel says no, which is possible, Pitt has other intriguing options. Wes Miller (Cincinnati) would be worth a try and would show a level of seriousness Pitt has not showed in years, but I don’t think Miller would jump. Anthony Grant (Dayton), same thing. John Becker (Vermont) has spent his entire life in the Northeast and is surprisingly only 54. I'm interested in Aaron McKie (Temple), Chris Mooney (Richmond), and maybe Mark Schmidt (St. Bonaventure), all of whom are regionally appropriate, but all of whom either feel too old or too young to take it. The off-chance that Pitt hires a current assistant exists, but I can’t think of an obvious one that fits.
BELOW THE LINE: the other nine programs we’re fixing ($)