Way-Too-Early Grades for Men's College Basketball First-Year Head Coaches in 2023-24
Last season in men's college basketball, six of the 14 new head coaches at major-conference programs made it to the NCAA tournament, including Naismith Coach of the Year Jerome Tang of Kansas State.
Sure, there were a couple of colossal duds (cough, Louisville), but it was a pretty good year for faces in new places.
This season, there are 12 new head coaches at major-conference programs. And after about a month, some (Chris Beard at Ole Miss, Kim English at Providence, etc.) are faring far better than others (Josh Eilert at West Virginia, Adrian Autry at Syracuse, etc.)
We've given an early report card grade to each of those 12 new head coaches, based on a combination of where their teams stand in comparison to both the end of last season as well as preseason expectations. Recruiting also factored into the conversation to an extent, but at most, it affected grades in a "B becomes a B+ or B-" sort of way.
Coaches have been listed in alphabetical order by last name.
Adrian Autry, Syracuse
1 of 12
Syracuse's 2022-23 Year-End KenPom Rank: 118
2023-24 Preseason KenPom Rank: 105
Current KenPom Rank: 106
Coach's Grade: C
Over the final nine years of Jim Boeheim's near half-century long run as head coach at Syracuse, the Orange were consistently mid at best. They did have that magical run to the Final Four in 2016, but we are just a few months away from the 10th anniversary of the last time they finished a season ranked in the AP Top 25.
And as far as KenPom ratings are concerned, the 2022-23 Syracuse team was its worst version in more than a quarter century, which had previously been true of the 2021-22 Syracuse team.
Suffice it to say, Adrian Autry wasn't gift-wrapped a contender quite like Duke's Jon Scheyer and Villanova's Kyle Neptune, who both replaced legendary coaches following runs to the 2022 Final Four.
In hopes of jump-starting a revival, Autry hit the portal hard this offseason, grabbing four power conference transfers in JJ Starling (Notre Dame), Naheem McLeod (Florida State), Chance Westry (Auburn) and Kyle Cuffe Jr. (Kansas).
However, with the exception of the 7'4" McLeod racking up both blocks (5.6 per 40 minutes) and offensive rebounds (6.4 per 40 minutes) at comically great rates, those transfers have yet to deliver, with Westry is yet to play after suffering a knee injury in the preseason.
Syracuse did score a nice, blowout win over LSU, but it has been completely overmatched against quality opponents, losing to Tennessee, Gonzaga and Virginia by an average margin of just under 20 points per game.
At least the 2-3 zone is gone, though. And there's not a single senior on this roster, so patience could be a virtue.
Chris Beard, Ole Miss
2 of 12
Ole Miss' 2022-23 Year-End KenPom Rank: 122
2023-24 Preseason KenPom Rank: 82
Current KenPom Rank: 93
Coach's Grade: A
We won't get into whether Chris Beard even should be coaching again less than a year after Texas terminated him for cause, but he has gotten out to an incredible start with the Rebels.
Like Adrian Autry, Beard went all-in on the transfer portal, bringing in six players who combined to average 55.0 points per game in 2022-23.
One of those transfers (Moussa Cisse) just got cleared by the NCAA a few days ago, while another (Brandon Murray) is still waiting to find out if he can play this season.
However, Beard got great production out of Allen Flanigan, Jaylen Murray and Jamarion Sharp in the process of going undefeated through November, with Sharp playing the biggest role in trying to get the Rebels' defense up to the coach's usual standard of excellence.
Though Ole Miss has gotten out to an 8-0 start, most of those early wins weren't pretty.
The Rebels won their first five games by an average margin of just 5.2 points, despite only facing teams that rank outside the KenPom top 150. (Winning a home game by just one point against KenPom No. 330 Detroit Mercy delivered quite a blow to their efficiency ratings.)
But the 72-52 victory over NC State in the ACC-SEC Challenge was an early statement on how good this team might be. The Rebels had nine blocks and seven steals in that one, making life just plain miserable for the Wolfpack trying to run anything on offense.
And in the subsequent 80-77 victory over Memphis, 10 blocks and six steals were a key factor in another quality win.
Ed Cooley, Georgetown
3 of 12
Georgetown's 2022-23 Year-End KenPom Rank: 219
2023-24 Preseason KenPom Rank: 159
Current KenPom Rank: 176
Coach's Grade: B
The Hoyas are 5-3, but six of those eight games were played at home against teams ranked outside the top 250 on KenPom.
They lost to No. 350 Holy Cross. They needed overtime to survive against No. 295 American. They required a late comeback and to hold on for dear life for a two-point victory over No. 265 Merrimack.
Not great.
BUT—yes, an all-caps but—Georgetown came oh-so close to upsetting a pretty good TCU team on Saturday, leading by six in the final two minutes and by two in the final seconds before Emanuel Miller banked in the game-winning triple at the buzzer for the Horned Frogs.
Long story short, it looks like Ed Cooley brought the "incessantly playing in games with dramatic finishes" calling card with him from Providence to Georgetown.
And there's no question that the offense has improved from the brick-laying mess it had been in recent years.
Illinois transfer Jayden Epps and North Carolina transfer Dontrez Styles have seized their chance to shine, combining for 35 points per night. And after missing the first six games of the season, Kansas State transfer Ismael Massoud has already emerged as a difference-maker with 25 points, 13 rebounds, six blocks and three steals between his first two games.
Georgetown isn't going to flirt with an at-large bid, but it's also not going to be the freebie on the schedule that it used to be.
Cannot wait for that Jan. 27 game at Providence.
One last note: Cooley has already signed two of the nation's top 60 players in next year's recruiting class, per 247 Sports. In Patrick Ewing's six years on the job, the Hoyas signed a grand total of one player ranked 95th or better (Aminu Mohammed). That's a huge step in the right direction.
.png?w=256 "NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Championship")
Josh Eilert, West Virginia
4 of 12
West Virginia's 2022-23 Year-End KenPom Rank: 19
2023-24 Preseason KenPom Rank: 64
Current KenPom Rank: 111
Coach's Grade: D-
I refuse to give Josh Eilert a failing grade, because he inherited an impossible situation.
However, things are not going well in Morgantown.
It's hard enough being the coach who replaces a Hall of Famer, but doing so in the middle of the summer in light of multiple scandals involving the former coach further intensifies an already tough transition.
On top of that, four of the top players Eilert was planning on leaning on this season haven't been available to him.
Jose Perez left the program in September because of an academic issue. Veteran point guard Kerr Kriisa was suspended for the first nine games for impermissible benefits received while at Arizona. Montana State transfer RaeQuan Battle still hasn't been cleared by the NCAA. And Georgetown transfer Akok Akok collapsed on the court during WVU's exhibition game against George Mason and has no timetable for a return.
Getting Kriisa back in a week will help to some extent, but it just was not meant to be in Year 1 under Eilert, as the Mountaineers have already lost a home game to Monmouth and rank among the worst in the country both in shooting percentage and turnover margin.
Even before all of the roster shortages came to light, West Virginia was expected to finish in the bottom half of the 14-team Big 12. At this point, though, it's looking like a race between WVU, UCF and Oklahoma State for last place in the nation's best conference.
Kim English, Providence
5 of 12
Providence's 2022-23 Year-End KenPom Rank: 40
2023-24 Preseason KenPom Rank: 54
Current KenPom Rank: 44
Coach's Grade: B+
Ed Cooley's decision to leave Providence for Georgetown was certainly the most stunning/controversial move of this revolution on the coaching carousel, but it opened the door for Kim English to get a high-major job after just two seasons at George Mason.
Impressively, not only was he able to convince Bryce Hopkins and Devin Carter to stay with the Friars, but he also got top-50 recruit Garwey Dual to recommit.
Pretty much every other new coach on this list inherited a roster that was gutted by departures. But English had one heck of a core already in place, to which he was able bring both Josh Oduro and Ticket Gaines with him from GMU.
And the early returns on this group have been quite good.
The Friars are sitting at 7-2, with a road loss to what might be a damn good Oklahoma and an overtime neutral court loss to a respectable Kansas State squad—on a night when starting point guard Jayden Pierre got hurt early in the first half and Oduro was limited to just 22 minutes by foul trouble, no less.
And they smoked Wisconsin, leading by as many as 25 points in the second half of their best win of the season.
I'm not ready to put Providence in the upper tier of the Big East along with Connecticut, Marquette and Creighton just yet, but they might get there.
Mark Madsen, California
6 of 12
California's 2022-23 Year-End KenPom Rank: 270
2023-24 Preseason KenPom Rank: 146
Current KenPom Rank: 163
Coach's Grade: B+
After cobbling together a 54-134 record over the previous six seasons, Cal basketball really has nowhere to go but up.
Hiring Wyking Jones was a disaster, and Mark Fox wasn't any better. But given how well Mark Madsen had done in building up Utah Valley over the past four years, perhaps he could be the man to carry them through this rebuilding project.
Thus far?
Well, at least they can rebound for a change. Madsen brought in Texas Tech transfers Fardaws Aimaq and Jaylon Tyson, and the Golden Bears have gone from a team that routinely got dominated on the glass to one of the better rebounding teams in the country.
They're also actually somewhat respectable on offense now, which hasn't been the case since they last made the NCAA tournament in 2016.
From a wins and losses perspective, though, Cal remains a work in process. Even after a nice victory over Santa Clara Saturday night, the Golden Bears are just 3-5 with bad home defeats to Pacific and Montana State.
That said, all five losses came right down to the wire, they're already way better than they were last year—still not good, but definitely better—and they haven't been at full strength yet.
Devin Askew has been out the past five games with a foot injury, and Keonte Kennedy just made his season debut Saturday. If and when they have those two guards, Aimaq, Tyson and Jalen Cone all available at the same time, the Golden Bears could be a walking resume landmine in Pac-12 play.
Grant McCasland, Texas Tech
7 of 12
Texas Tech's 2022-23 Year-End KenPom Rank: 63
2023-24 Preseason KenPom Rank: 43
Current KenPom Rank: 52
Coach's Grade: B-
Based on what Grant McCasland did at North Texas over the past six seasons, hopes were high that he would put Texas Tech back on the national map in a hurry.
The Mean Green were the worst team in Conference USA when he got that job, but they got better every year, upset Purdue in the 2021 NCAA tournament and won the NIT last season.
Early returns have been a mixed bag at Texas Tech, though.
The Red Raiders did put forth a great defensive effort against Michigan in the fifth-place game of the Battle 4 Atlantis, limiting the Wolverines to just 57 points. But TTU was on the loser's half of that bracket because it couldn't buy a stop in the opener against Villanova. And one week after shutting down Michigan, the Red Raiders imploded at Butler, allowing 103 points in that overtime loss.
The snail-like tempo and stingy defense he thrived with at North Texas hasn't made its way to Lubbock yet.
To be fair, they are breaking in an almost entirely new rotation. Aside from Pop Isaacs, the six players leading the team in minutes played were not on the roster last season, and it generally does take longer for team defense to find its footing than team offense.
The Red Raiders could make huge strides in that regard over the next month against a pretty easy schedule.
Rick Pitino, St. John's
8 of 12
St. John's 2022-23 Year-End KenPom Rank: 82
2023-24 Preseason KenPom Rank: 60
Current KenPom Rank: 60
Coach's Grade: B-
This was an A+ hire for St. John's, but Rick Pitino hasn't completely turned the program around just yet.
Was it outrageously premature for the Red Storm to be third among others receiving votes in the preseason AP poll?
You betcha.
After one month of action, though, the Pitino era at St. John's already seems to be trending in the right direction.
To be clear, it's nowhere near the trademark elite defense he always had at Louisville. The Johnnies couldn't stop anything in the losses to Michigan and Dayton, and they have allowed greater than one point per possession in five of seven games thus far, including the season opener against Stony Brook. Lot of work to be done on that end of the floor.
But this conglomeration of Joel Soriano and a ton of transfers sure can score and crash the offensive glass, averaging nearly 80 points per game, despite facing a pretty respectable schedule. The defensive grind against Virginia-like North Texas dragged down its scoring average, but St. John's scored pretty much at will against both Utah and West Virginia.
Only time will tell whether the defense improves over the course of the season and whether the Johnnies win an NCAA tournament game for the first time since 2000. But the team that was projected to finish in the middle of the pack in the Big East is well on pace to do just that.
Mike Rhoades, Penn State
9 of 12
Penn State's 2022-23 Year-End KenPom Rank: 36
2023-24 Preseason KenPom Rank: 85
Current KenPom Rank: 127
Coach's Grade: C-
After winning an NCAA tournament game for the first time since 2001, Penn State lost basically everything. There were 11 Nittany Lions who averaged at least one point per game in 2022-23, and the only one who remained in State College was Kanye Clary, who played 10.4 minutes per game as a backup guard.
Having them in the top 100 in the preseason was mighty generous of KenPom's algorithm. That was much more a reminder that Penn State finished five of the previous six seasons rated in the top 50 than it was any sort of vote of confidence in the current roster.
The Nittany Lions did start out 4-0 with three of those wins coming in blowout fashion, so at least they're nowhere near "2022-23 Louisville" bad. But losing all three games of the ESPN Events Invitational by double digits brought them back to earth in a hurry.
Mike Rhoades did what he could, bringing two transfers (Ace Baldwin Jr. and Nick Kern Jr.) with him from VCU and snagging three other high-major guys from the portal. But the home loss to Bucknell this past Saturday was a vivid reminder of how much of a rebuilding season this was always going to be for this program.
Before the season, Penn State was picked in the media poll to finish 13th in the Big Ten, ahead of only Minnesota. That hasn't really changed after a month of action, so we'll give Rhoades a barely below-average grade for now.
Micah Shrewsberry, Notre Dame
10 of 12
Notre Dame's 2022-23 Year-End KenPom Rank: 166
2023-24 Preseason KenPom Rank: 165
Current KenPom Rank: 179
Coach's Grade: C-
Notre Dame couldn't buy a win in Mike Brey's final season in South Bend, matching a program record with 21 losses.
Then, Micah Shrewsberry inherited even more of a rebuilding situation than the one he left behind at Penn State.
Four Fighting Irish players exhausted their eligibility and five others transferred out of the program, leaving Matt Zona as the only returning player who scored more than one point last season. Even at that, we're talking 34 points in 140 minutes of action from a player in his third season of college basketball. Not exactly a pivotal building block there.
And, it's going about as well on the court as you'd expect. After a Tuesday night win over Western Michigan, Notre Dame is sitting at 4-4, losing by double digits in each of its first three games against top-100 opponents. It also suffered a bad home loss to Western Carolina.
On the plus side, though, Shrewsberry has done well on the recruiting trail and could be building a nice foundation for next season and beyond.
Carey Booth, a 4-star forward, originally committed to Penn State, but he followed Shrewsberry to Notre Dame instead. The Fighting Irish have also landed top-75 recruits Sir Mohammed and Cole Certa in next year's class, and they have relied primarily upon underclassmen thus far.
Notre Dame will not be a factor in the ACC this season, all but certain to rival Louisville for last place in the conference. But that was going to be the case regardless of who got the job. The Irish might be a tournament team again within the next two years, though.
Damon Stoudamire, Georgia Tech
11 of 12
Georgia Tech's 2022-23 Year-End KenPom Rank: 161
2023-24 Preseason KenPom Rank: 118
Current KenPom Rank: 121
Coach's Grade: A-
Barely a week ago, Damon Stoudamire would've gotten a D+ at best. At that time, Georgia Tech was 2-2 with a 35-point loss to Cincinnati, a home loss to UMass Lowell and a three-point home win over Howard. It was a three-game stretch which dropped the Yellow Jackets 50 spots on KenPom from No. 102 to No. 152.
Then, in the span of under 100 hours, they did something twice that they had only done once in the past two seasons combined: They defeated a ranked opponent.
The first win over AP No. 21 Mississippi State didn't register too strongly on the national Richter Scale, but upsetting No. 7 Duke on Saturday afternoon certainly did. The freshman tandem of Naithan George and Baye Ndongo was stellar against the Blue Devils, with the former doling out nine dimes and the latter going for 21 points and four blocks.
The net result is that Georgia Tech is almost exactly back where it started the season. However, what a ridiculously impressive "no change" scenario, knocking off a blue blood it had lost to in 16 of the previous 17 meetings, including an 86-43 home loss earlier this calendar year.
The Yellow Jackets need to prove this wasn't just one fluky week before we can start taking them seriously as a threat to make the NCAA tournament. (Losing by 14 to Georgia Tuesday night wasn't a great start to that end.) But those two wins will resonate for some time for their new head coach.
Rodney Terry, Texas
12 of 12
Texas' 2022-23 Year-End KenPom Rank: 5
2023-24 Preseason KenPom Rank: 16
Current KenPom Rank: 30
Coach's Grade: B
Rodney Terry was Texas interim head coach for all but eight games last season, but this was his first time overseeing the roster assembly in Austin.
And there was quite a bit to oversee, as the Longhorns had to replace five of the six leading scorers from what was one of the most experienced rosters in the nation in 2022-23.
Thus far, transfers are leading that charge, as Max Abmas (Oral Roberts), Ithiel Horton (UCF) and Kadin Shedrick (Virginia) are the top three scorers for Texas. But Terry has also gotten Dillon Mitchell to make quite the leap in his second season with the program, blossoming into a much more well-rounded player.
The problem is they don't yet have anything close to a good win to show for it.
The Longhorns are 6-1, but they lost by 10 to Connecticut in their only game against a remotely marquee opponent. And they almost suffered what would have been a brutal loss against Louisville were it not for Abmas draining the game-winning buzzer beater in that one at Madison Square Garden.
As a result, they've slipped more than a dozen spots in the KenPom rankings. But the jury is still out on the Longhorns, who will have many chances in Big 12 play to show what they're made of. They also have a road game against Marquette Wednesday night, which could get them back in the mix for a top-10 ranking in a hurry.
.png?w=480 "NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Championship")
.jpg?w=600 "Colts Release Kenny Moore")
