Is that a pattern I see?

Quentin Daniels

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The 2013 NCAA tournament was one of the best (the best?) showing by mid-major teams ever. A full 11 squads made it to the round of 32 (12 if you count recently departed Temple) with 3 making an appearance in the Sweet 16, 2 in the Elite 8, and one in the Final Four.

It made me wonder, where do successful programs like these look when hiring a coach.

Well let's take a look where these coaches were immediately preceding their hire:

  1. St. Louis - Jim Crews, Asst. @ St. Louis
  2. Memphis - Josh Pastner Asst. @ Memphis
  3. Creighton - Greg McDermott, Iowa State
  4. Gonzaga - Mark Few, Asst. @ Gonzaga
  5. Wichita State (Final 4) - Greg Marshall - Winthrop
  6. La Salle (Sweet 16) - John Giannini - Maine
  7. Harvard - Tommy Amaker - Michigan
  8. Virginia Commonwealth - Shaka Smart, Asst. @ Florida
  9. San Diego State - Steve Fisher, Asst @ Sacramento Kings
  10. Florida Gulf Coast (Elite 8) - Andy Enfield, Asst. @ Florida State
  11. Butler - Brad Stevens, Asst. @ Butler
  12. Temple - Fran Dunphy, Penn

So of the teams above:
Four hired assistants internally
Two hired assistants from successful larger programs
One hired an assistant from a professional team (formerly a successful big conference coach)
Three hired successful smaller conference coaches

and just two hired a failed big conference coach
 
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GMUgemini

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The question is what happens to coaches when they get into the BCS and fail at that level? Hewitt had a .730 winning percentage at Siena and went to two postseasons in three years. He wasn't able to come close to that level of performance at either GT or GMU. I wonder what happened? Maybe this is the reason you see a lot of coaches staying out despite being courted by big time programs, if you've got something working why jump ship? Maybe the BCS grind and the deep pocketed fan over expectations beat some people down?

Tubby Smith is an interesting study. He was run out of both Kentucky and Minnesota despite having relatively decent success at both schools, but not living up to fan expectations. He's now at Texas Tech, we will see how he does in the Big 12.
 

Pablo

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The 2013 NCAA tournament was one of the best (the best?) showing by mid-major teams ever. A full 11 squads made it to the round of 32 (12 if you count recently departed Temple) with 3 making an appearance in the Sweet 16, 2 in the Elite 8, and one in the Final Four.

It made me wonder, where do successful programs like these look when hiring a coach.

Well let's take a look where these coaches were immediately preceding their hire:

  1. St. Louis - Jim Crews, Asst. @ St. Louis
  2. Memphis - Josh Pastner Asst. @ Memphis
  3. Creighton - Greg McDermott, Iowa State
  4. Gonzaga - Mark Few, Asst. @ Gonzaga
  5. Wichita State (Final 4) - Greg Marshall - Winthrop
  6. La Salle (Sweet 16) - John Giannini - Maine
  7. Harvard - Tommy Amaker - Michigan
  8. Virginia Commonwealth - Shaka Smart, Asst. @ Florida
  9. San Diego State - Steve Fisher, Asst @ Sacramento Kings
  10. Florida Gulf Coast (Elite 8) - Andy Enfield, Asst. @ Florida State
  11. Butler - Brad Stevens, Asst. @ Butler
  12. Temple - Fran Dunphy, Penn

So of the teams above:
Six hired successful big conference assistants
Three hired successful smaller conference coaches
One hired an assistant from a professional team (formerly a successful big conference coach)

and just two hired a failed big conference coach

I'm confused. The poster considers the schools enumerated above as mid-major programs as of the 2013 NCAA tournament. I'm not sure that I totally agree, but let's accept this premise.

Four of these schools promoted assistants at their own schools (St. Louis, Memphis, Gonzaga, & Butler). Yet, the poster includes these 4 former assistants in the count of successful big conference assistants. If these schools were still mid-major programs in 2013, shouldn't these coaches who were promoted within their own program be considered former mid-major assistants?
 
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gmutom

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I'm not really sure why Hugh didn't put this in the Hewitt thread that already exists, but can we not pretend like our program hasn't tried the respected assistant coach approach in the past?

First, we promoted Rick Barnes internally, and he used his one year at the helm as a launching pad to a better job at Providence (much like Pat Skerry will do soon at Towson). Then we hired Ernie Nestor — who was considered a great get for us after being an assistant at Wake Forest — and we all saw how that turned out.

And to Pablos' point about the four schools hiring from within, we obviously didn't have that option because our greedy coach took all of his assistants with him. Are there BCS assistants out there who could have done better than Hewitt. Perhaps. But finding them is not as easy as Hugh makes it sound in his initial post.

For every assistant that has done well, there are probably three like Nestor who were unsuccessful fronting a team. Where I give vcu credit is they created a pipeline of assistant coaches that fit their style of play rather than hiring a big-name assistant who didn't mesh with the existing players.
 
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Pablo

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For every assistant that has done well, there are probably three like Nestor who were unsuccessful fronting a team. Where I give vcu credit is they created a pipeline of assistant coaches that fit their style of play rather than hiring a big-name assistant who didn't mesh with the existing players.

As Bobby Knight would say: assistants make recommendations and head coaches make decisions. My preference is to hire someone who has experience as a head coach at some level.

I find that it's interesting many assistant coaches will not consider a head coaching position at a lower level. This wasn't true for Larranaga who was the head coach at American International after being an assistant at Davidson. I once suggested to a former Mason assistant that he consider a head coaching job at a low major D-I school or a D-II school. His response: No Way!
 
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gmujim92

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And to Pablos' point about the four schools hiring from within, we obviously didn't have that option because our greedy coach took all of his assistants with him. Are there BCS assistants out there who could have done better than Hewitt. Perhaps. But finding them is not as easy as Hugh makes it sound in his initial post.

This isn't exactly true. We could've easily hired any of Larranaga's three assistants -- most likely Caputo, who is a rising star in the business and will be a HC somewhere sooner than later.

Not saying we should've hired one of them. But it's not like any of the 3 would've turned down the opportunity to become a HC to follow Larranaga to Miami.
 

Pablo

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This isn't exactly true. We could've easily hired any of Larranaga's three assistants -- most likely Caputo, who is a rising star in the business and will be a HC somewhere sooner than later.

Not saying we should've hired one of them. But it's not like any of the 3 would've turned down the opportunity to become a HC to follow Larranaga to Miami.

I agree that any one of them would have taken the job, although the one who impresses me the most on his staff his Eric Konkol. Of course, I would have liked him to acquire head coaching experience first before becoming head coach here.
 
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MasonFanatic

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I always used to think Eric Konkol would be the pick to take over at Mason when Larranaga retired.
 

Patriot Lawdog

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I want the best person for the job, pure and simple. You cannot assure you are getting the best person for the job by eliminating a huge pool of legitimate candidates before the process has started. If assistants aren't given a chance, then how do they ever gain head coaching experience? And saying Ernie Nestor failed 20+ years ago is a ridiculous argument against them.
 

DeepValue

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My perspective is that the decsion makers are so risk averse that they will only hire super duper safe choices. Thus, you will never see a young Shaka Smart or Brad Stevens at Mason.
 

GSII

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What does everyome think of former wake forest star Randalph Childress as a HC in A 10?
 
None of the assistants would have been offered the job if you believe the reports that someone (sorry...don't remember who said it) put on the boards that the Mason job was going to be for someone who already had HEAD coaching experience.

So that eliminates any of Coach L's assistants. I do believe Konkol or Caputo will be a head coach within the next 5 years. I don't know if Huger has the same aspirations.
 

patriot2000

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I do believe Konkol or Caputo will be a head coach within the next 5 years. I don't know if Huger has the same aspirations.
I don't know anything about them anymore, but at Mason a few years ago, that definitely wasn't Huger's focus. Not saying he doesn't want to be a head coach, but he kind of relished his role as an assistant.
 

Pablo

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My perspective is that the decsion makers are so risk averse that they will only hire super duper safe choices. Thus, you will never see a young Shaka Smart or Brad Stevens at Mason.

I'm not sure that I agree with you. If Scott Cherry was still on the staff when Larranaga left, I believe that he may have gotten the job.
 
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Quentin Daniels

Quentin Daniels

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I'm not really sure why Hugh didn't put this in the Hewitt thread that already exists, but can we not pretend like our program hasn't tried the respected assistant coach approach in the past?

First, we promoted Rick Barnes internally, and he used his one year at the helm as a launching pad to a better job at Providence (much like Pat Skerry will do soon at Towson). Then we hired Ernie Nestor — who was considered a great get for us after being an assistant at Wake Forest — and we all saw how that turned out.

And to Pablos' point about the four schools hiring from within, we obviously didn't have that option because our greedy coach took all of his assistants with him. Are there BCS assistants out there who could have done better than Hewitt. Perhaps. But finding them is not as easy as Hugh makes it sound in his initial post.

For every assistant that has done well, there are probably three like Nestor who were unsuccessful fronting a team. Where I give vcu credit is they created a pipeline of assistant coaches that fit their style of play rather than hiring a big-name assistant who didn't mesh with the existing players.

Do you make things up to support your views in other portions of your life too, or just here?

I simply posted every mid-major/non-BCS conference that made it to the round of 32 and where their coach came from immediately. But of course you knee-jerk reaction to defend Paul Ball causes you again to say foolish things.

We couldn't have hired an Assistant because our coach took them with him? 13th Amendment knucklehead - they were free to do as they liked. Not hard to imagine one of them turning down an Asst. job for the head coach gig for more money.

A successful former Assistant will leave us? Well I'll take that over a mediocre re-tread as it requires success to occur first. I also love the "perhaps" following the BCS assistants doing better the Hewitt. Because yeah - we've really seen the past 3 teams overachieve. Great point!!!!

And vcu hired no name assistants? Maybe Capel, but hiring the head assistant from the team that won back-to-back national championships, or his replacement that had been hired from another ACC program - you're not exactly finding unknown names.

Of course there's no guarantees and you can crash and burn like Nestor - congratulations again on defeating the argument nobody made. But there's a heck of a better chance on discovering a start with one then squeezing magic out of a failed retread.
 
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Quentin Daniels

Quentin Daniels

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I'm confused. The poster considers the schools enumerated above as mid-major programs as of the 2013 NCAA tournament. I'm not sure that I totally agree, but let's accept this premise.

Four of these schools promoted assistants at their own schools (St. Louis, Memphis, Gonzaga, & Butler). Yet, the poster includes these 4 former assistants in the count of successful big conference assistants. If these schools were still mid-major programs in 2013, shouldn't these coaches who were promoted within their own program be considered former mid-major assistants?

I'd be interested in what schools you don't consider mid-majors. The comment about identifying where the Assts. came from however is a fair point and I've corrected.
 

gmutom

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Do you make things up to support your views in other portions of your life too, or just here?

Says the guy who lies awake at night and posts yet another needless thread at 2 in the morning about our coaching hire.

And why should it shock you that TOC hired a coach with head coaching experience? He did the same thing with Larranaga instead of going with a so-called hot assistant, and I recall many fans questioning the decision back then as well. Some here tend to forget, but he only won 54-percent of his games at Bowling Green, he only won 20 games once and he had never taken them to the NCAAT.

Like I said, for every assistant who gets hired and does well, there are numerous ones who don't (hence my Nestor example since it actually applied to us regardless of how long ago it was). Hewitt might not have been the best choice amongst candidates with head coaching experience, but it should come to no surprise to anybody here that head coaching experience was one of the prerequisites TOC was reportedly looking for when he made the hire.

If your point is that we should have at least considered assistants, I do agree with you. Then again, I was lobbying for Courtney to get the job, and judging from how he is doing at Cornell, there's a good chance we'd be in the same situation we are if not worse.
 

gmujim92

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Why should it shock you that TOC hired a coach with head coaching experience? He did the same thing with Larranaga instead of going with a so-called hot assistant, and I recall many fans questioning the decision back then as well. Some here tend to forget, but he only won 54-percent of his games at Bowling Green, he only won 20 games once and he had never taken them to the NCAAT.

Again, not exactly correct. You're right about Larranaga's credentials -- he was kind of a WTF? hire -- but TOC didn't pick him. TOC preferred Jim Baron, but was overruled by a university search committee that settled on Larranaga.

TOC obviously gets credit publicly for Larranaga's success, so it looks like his record is one sensational hire and one (so far) mediocre hire. In reality, he alone made the call on Hewitt and that's not looking like such a great call at this point.

If we wind up back in the market for another new coach in the next couple years -- meaning, most likely, that the Hewitt hire didn't work out -- I hope Cabrera is smart enough to put together another search panel.

TOC's insistence on hiring only guys with prior DI head coaching experience means that we'll never have any chance to land the next Smart or Stevens.

It's a closed-minded, and frankly pretty stupid way to go about it, considering how many excellent young assistants would jump at a job like ours -- and bring a lot more energy to our program than a re-tread on his way down the coaching ladder.
 

MASONscott

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Whether it is 1,3, or 5 years from now when we hire a new Coach, I hope we thoroughly exhaust the program through vcu. At a loss on its name, Villa 5?

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk
 

Pablo

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I'd be interested in what schools you don't consider mid-majors. The comment about identifying where the Assts. came from however is a fair point and I've corrected.

Well, I wouldn't consider schools like Memphis, Gonzaga, and Wichita State as mid-major programs anymore. And, of course, Creighton and Butler are now Big East schools. IMO, schools like Memphis & Gonzaga that consistently are nationally ranked and earn bids to the NCAA tournament (irrespective of whether they earn the conference automatically bid) should not be considered mid-major regardless of conference affiliation.

I also believe that a conference that consistently earns multiple bids to the NCAA tourney like the A10 shouldn't be considered as a mid-major conference. Frankly, I believe that the term mid-major is now irrelevant.
 
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