March Madness Observations: The importance of an elite head coach….and the over rewarding of the Cinderella story coach

I believe that great head coaches have a significant impact in college basketball, and in the NCAA tournament specifically. I think there’s a strong correlation between coaches that have been with their current program for a longer period of time and the success of those teams in the tournament. Below are some specific examples of this on display in the 2023 Sweet 16:

· Tom Izzo- 28 years as the Michigan State head coach

· Mark Few — 24 years as the Gonzaga head coach

· Greg McDermott — 13 years as the Creighton head coach

· Mitch Henderson — 12 years as the Princeton head coach

· Jim Larranaga — 12 years as the Miami head coach

· Kelvin Sampson — 9 years as the Houston head coach

· Rick Barnes — 8 years as the Tennessee head coach

That’s 7 out of the 16 teams (44%) in the 2023 Sweet 16 that have coaches with current tenures of 8 years or more with their team. Obviously, there are many different variables to consider, but out of all 30 NBA teams, only 4 teams (13%) have a current coach with a tenure of 8 years or longer with their team:

· Gregg Popovic — 27 years with the Spurs

· Erik Spoelstra — 15 years with Heat

· Steve Kerr — 9 years with Warriors

· Michael Malone — 8 years with the Nuggets

This year, four specific coaching storylines stuck out to me that highlighted the importance of a long-tenured hall of fame caliber head coach:

· Tom Izzo brought Michigan State into the NCAA tournament with a NET ranking of 33, and yet Michigan State is onto the Sweet 16, at least. This is Izzo’s 15th trip to the Sweet 16 in 28 years at MSU…incredible.

· Bill Self has been the head coach at Kansas for 20 years. Self had to miss Kansas’ second round game against Arkansas for medical reasons. The defending champion and 1 seeded Jayhawks proceeded to lose to the 8 seed Razorbacks.

· After 21 years as the head coach at Villanova and 2 national championships, Jay Wright retired. His replacement, Kyle Neptune (Lehigh alumni, by the way), led Villanova to a Selection Sunday NET ranking of 75, and they missed the NCAA tournament after only missing the tournament once between 2005 and 2022 under Jay Wright. (Side note — Jay Wright was incredible on the March Madness studio shows, and he certainly has a promising career there if he decides not to pursue coaching again).

Although, given all of that, I believe that the head coaches of Cinderella teams that pull upsets in the NCAA tournament get overly rewarded for their wins by immediately getting jobs at new schools. The latest example of this phenomenon is fresh in our minds, with Tobin Anderson, the former coach of 16 seeded Fairleigh Dickinson (FDU), taking the head coaching job at Iona less than 2 days after his team lost to Florida Atlantic (FAU) in the second round after their historic upset of 1 seed Purdue. To me, it seems like a bit of an overreaction that based off of one game coaches can get a completely new job. If FDU lost in the first round to Purdue, as everyone expected them to, would Tobin Anderson be at Iona right now? To illustrate this point to the extreme, if one game is enough of a sample size to make significant coaching personnel decisions, then after losing one game to FDU should Purdue coach Matt Painter be fired? Should Virginia coach Tony Bennett have been fired for losing to 16 seed UMBC in the first round in 2018? Should John Calipari have been immediately fired after losing to 15 seed Saint Peter’s in the first round in 2022? No, I don’t think so…and for the record, they were not fired.

I’ll be interested to follow how Tobin Anderson performs at Iona, but I don’t think the few past incidences of Cinderella team coaches immediately leaving for new jobs have been great successes:

· After taking 15th seed Saint Peter’s to the Elite 8 in 2022, head coach Shaheen Holloway left for the head coaching job at Seton Hall less than 3 days after their tournament run ended against UNC. In Holloway’s first season at Seton Hall, he led the team to a NET ranking of 77 on Selection Sunday, and they failed to make the NCAA tournament, after Seton Hall made 5 out of the last 6 NCAA tournaments.

· After taking 15 seed Florida Gulf Coast to the Sweet 16 in the 2013 NCAA tournament, head coach Andy Enfield left for the head coaching job at USC less than 3 days after their tournament run ended against Florida. Enfield is still the head coach at USC, and while USC is not considered a traditional college basketball powerhouse, I think his results at USC have been underwhelming, given the stature and brand name of the school. In his tenure at USC over the last 9 years, Enfield has only advanced beyond the first round of the NCAA tournament twice (losing in the 2nd round in 2017 and advancing to the Elite 8 in 2021).

To be clear, I do not blame these coaches for seizing these opportunities afforded to them after a magical run in the tournament. Coaching is their job, and they’ve worked their whole careers, coaching at various levels of basketball, to try to earn the best coaching job that they can get. My point is just that I think schools hiring these coaches may be overreacting to the Cinderella run that they just witnessed in the tournament. It amazes me that in these 3 instances above, all less than 3 DAYS after each teams’ tournament runs ended, that a new school already hired them. Given everything that I discussed above, about how important I think an elite head coach is to a college basketball team’s success, I would think that a decision as monumental as your head coach would take longer than a couple of days to decide on? I believe that these quick hiring decisions are due to schools being afraid of losing their chance to hire the “coach of the moment”, but I think that schools are overlooking the opportunity to diligently analyze the larger pool of Division I coaches, regardless of the result of their last tournament game, to find who they believe is the best coach, and not just the hottest coach of the moment.

· Related to the point of the Cinderella coaches, I think it’s a great development for the players to be able to enter the transfer portal and immediately play for their new team next season, without having to sit out a year. If the coaches are going to be able to cash in on their successful tournament run and get immediate job offers, then the star players on those teams should also be able to transfer to a better situation if another team is interested in them.

· As an aside, while like I said above, I don’t blame him, it’s his job…but I feel like it’s an unsatisfying ending to the FDU fairytale that Tobin Anderson couldn’t have waited another week to take the Iona job. He was only the FDU head coach for 10 months, and I feel like he didn’t even stay long enough after their tournament run ended to have articles written about the team this week that could quote him as the current coach of FDU.

Given the phenomenon discussed above of teams hiring away the Cinderella coaches after their tournament run, there are two coaches that I’ll be keeping an eye on after their tournament runs end:

· I’ll be curious to see if Princeton head coach Mitch Henderson takes a new coaching job after their tournament run ends or if he’ll stay at Princeton. Given that he played basketball at Princeton from 1994 to 1998, and has already been the head coach at Princeton for 12 years, I have a feeling that he’ll decide to stay at Princeton.

· On the other hand, Dusty May sticks out to me as a prime candidate to jump to a higher profile job after Florida Atlantic’s tournament run ends. Florida Atlantic is May’s first head coaching job of his career and he’s only 46 years old. This is his 5th season as the head coach at FAU, and he led the team to a NET ranking of 13 on Selection Sunday with 29 wins, and a trip to at least the Sweet 16 as a 9 seed, which is FAU’s first ever time advancing beyond the first round of the NCAA tournament.

As a college basketball fan, it’s fascinating to see the impact of elite head coaches, and the possibly overzealous decisions that teams make in their quest to get one of their own.