Ranking the 10 New CBB Coaches Most Likely to Make the 2016 NCAA Tournament
Recently hired college basketball coaches have a very limited amount of time to reach the NCAA tournament before their seats start getting hot, but there are quite a few 2015 offseason hires who could be dancing in the first season with their new programs.
Last year, this piece was a big fat bust. Of the 48 teams with a new coach, North Dakota State was the only one to reach the tournament—and we didn't even have the Bison in our top 10 because, come on, they lost their head coach and five of their seven leading scorers from the previous season. Who makes the tournament after all that upheaval?
This year, though, you can take several of these straight to the bank. Florida, Iowa State and Texas each acquired one of the best young coaches in the game and gave him one heck of a strong roster to play with. If those three teams don't make the tournament, something will have gone horribly awry.
They aren't the only teams with a good chance of reaching the Big Dance under the tutelage of new coaches. From the 40 offseason hires, we've ranked the 10 most likely to partake in the 2016 NCAA tournament.
Some of these coaches have been to the tournament many times with previous schools. Others are serving as a head coach for the very first time. Regardless of their past, the present looks bright for these 10 programs.
10. VCU: Will Wade
1 of 10
School record in 2014-15: 26-10 overall (12-6 in A-10)
Coaching pedigree: Two years as assistant at Harvard, four years as assistant at VCU, two years as head coach at Chattanooga (40-25 record)
A few weeks ago, VCU topped our list of tournament regulars most likely to miss the 2016 NCAA tournament. I'm still not particularly buying the Rams as a tourney team this season, but the list of viable candidates for this are quite slim.
In most cases, coaches with minimal experience are replacing coaches who were fired for repeatedly failing to miss the tournament, and let's just say we're not too optimistic about Jeff Neubauer turning things around overnight for Fordham.
But it's hardly beyond the realm of possibility for VCU to remain one of the A-10's top teams under Will Wade.
Wade did work under Shaka Smart for four years, so he might be the one person most qualified to swoop in and keep the status quo in terms of defensive strategy. And though the Rams lose a ton between Treveon Graham, Briante Weber and Terry Larrier, there's still a pretty strong core here. Along with Oral Roberts transfer Korey Billbury, Wade will inherit a rotation featuring JeQuan Lewis, Melvin Johnson, Jordan Burgess and Mo Alie-Cox.
Will it be enough, though? VCU was very good until losing Weber to a devastating knee injury, but never looked the same after that—and that was with Graham and Larrier still on the roster. Wade will have his work cut out for him in turning what was a bunch of role players into a tournament team, but he just might be up to the task.
9. DePaul: Dave Leitao
2 of 10
School record in 2014-15: 12-20 overall (6-12 in Big East)
Coaching pedigree: Four years at Virginia, three years at DePaul, two years at Northeastern (143-129 record)
Will Wade used to be an assistant at VCU, but Dave Leitao is returning to serve his second term as the head coach of DePaul. He previously held the position from 2002-2005 and was responsible for the Blue Demons' most recent trip to the NCAA tournament in 2004.
Over the past eight seasons, though, this program has been...not great. Since the start of the 2007-08 season, DePaul has an overall record of 82-171. In the Big East, the Blue Demons have gone 22-122 during that stretch.
Yet, there's some real potential here. It's no accident that they won five of their first seven Big East games last season. They had serious talent, and much of it is back for another year. Led by Billy Garrett, Myke Henry and Tommy Hamilton, the Blue Demons have a pretty strong core to which they're adding four 3-star recruits.
Leitao certainly had success at DePaul in the past, too. He was only there for three years, but he led the Blue Demons to three of their four seasons with a winning record in the past 15 years. Had he stayed there instead of jumping ship for the job at Virginia, when DePaul was transitioning from C-USA to the Big East, he just might have built something special.
Moreover, the middle tier in the Big East is totally up for grabs this year. Villanova, Butler, Georgetown and Xavier should each be very good, but do you really feel comfortable saying that any other team from the Big East is a lock to make the tournament?
Aside from a decade of incompetence, what's keeping DePaul from serving as the fifth-best team in this conference?
8. Chattanooga: Matt McCall
3 of 10
School record in 2014-15: 22-10 overall (15-3 in SoCon)
Coaching pedigree: Three years as assistant at Florida Atlantic, four years as assistant at Florida
Continuing our train of Will Wade callbacks, the new VCU leader was the head coach at Chattanooga for the past two seasons, where Matt McCall now inherits a very good situation.
Ronrico White is a pretty big casualty for the Mocs. He led the team in both minutes played and assists and was also a source of 11.1 points per game.
Fortunately, there were five players who averaged at least 8.8 points per contest, and four of them are back in the fold for the 2015-16 season. Justin Tuoyo—whom Wade originally recruited to VCU before later getting him to transfer to Chattanooga—may well be the next Southern Conference Player of the Year. If it's not him, it might be Casey Jones. The duo makes for one heck of a one-two punch in the paint.
The big hurdle, though, is Wofford. Chattanooga went 3-1 against the Terriers under Wade, but the Mocs were pretty much the only team that could beat them, as they went 32-4 against the rest of the conference (including conference tournaments).
With any luck, Karl Cochran graduating will be just enough for Chattanooga to finish ahead of Wofford before winning the SoCon tournament.
The other hope is that McCall learned a thing or two from his last boss. Not only was he Billy Donovan's assistant for the past four seasons, but he also served as Florida's director of basketball operations from 2006-2008. He has certainly witnessed firsthand what it takes to build and sustain a winning tradition.
7. Utah State: Tim Duryea
4 of 10
School record in 2014-15: 18-13 overall (11-7 in MWC)
Coaching pedigree: 13 years as assistant with Utah State
It has been a long time since anyone other than Stew Morrill (pictured above) patrolled the sidelines for Utah State and with good reason. Over the past 17 seasons, Morrill won 72.0 percent of his games and didn't finish a single season at or below .500.
However, after 29 years as a head coach and more than 40 total years coaching college hoops, Morrill decided to call it a career at the age of 62.
The timing of the decision couldn't have been much better for longtime assistant, Tim Duryea, as all five of the Aggies' leading scorers will be back for another season.
They never even remotely crept into last year's NCAA tournament discussion, but that had more to do with poor scheduling and bad luck in overtime games than it did the talent on the court. Jalen Moore and Chris Smith both had outstanding seasons deserving of substantially more national recognition than the complete lack of it that they received.
Winning in the Mountain West will not be easy. Boise State and San Diego State should both be strong and look for New Mexico to rebound to the top third of the conference standings after a down year in 2014-15. But winning has become the norm at Utah State, and the Aggies are about due to turn that pedigree into a tournament berth for the first time since 2011.
6. Bucknell: Nathan Davis
5 of 10
School record in 2014-15: 19-15 overall (13-5 in Patriot)
Coaching pedigree: Six years at D-III Randolph-Macon (141-39 record), five years as assistant at Navy, five years as assistant at Bucknell
After seven mostly successful seasons as the head coach of Bucknell, Dave Paulsen decided to upgrade a little bit by taking the opening at George Mason, thus creating an opportunity for Nathan Davis to come back home. Before Paulsen's arrival, Davis was the assistant to Pat Flannery for five years, during which the Bison advanced to the round of 32 twice—the only NCAA tournament wins in school history.
Hopefully, they can catch lightning in a bottle again with Davis, who spent the past six years dominating at the D-III level with Randolph-Macon—his alma mater.
On the players side of the equation, Bucknell gets back most of its key players from last season. Steven Kaspar graduated, and J.C. Show elected to transfer to Binghamton after just one season, but the Bison do get back five of their six leading scorers, including Chris Hass, who averaged 16.0 points per game last season.
Keeping the roster intact should be good news for a team that won its conference's regular-season championship last season. No other team on the list can make that claim, so it's not hard to argue that Davis is in one of the best situations of any new coach.
Despite a beyond lackluster 7-23 inaugural season for Paulsen, Bucknell has averaged 19.8 wins per year over the past 11 seasons. We like Davis' chances of keeping that trend going.
5. Hawaii: Eran Ganot
6 of 10
School record in 2014-15: 22-13 overall (8-8 in MWC)
Coaching pedigree: Five years as assistant at Saint Mary's, three years as assistant at Hawaii
Are you noticing a trend yet?
VCU, DePaul, Utah State, Bucknell and Hawaii all hired coaches they had worked with before. One was formerly the head coach of his new program and one merely got promoted from assistant to head coach when the previous one retired, but the fact remains that these teams aren't exactly starting over from scratch on the sideline.
As was also the case with most of those other schools, Eran Ganot isn't starting over from scratch on the court, either. Hawaii loses just one senior from last year's roster (Garrett Nevels). Nevels did rank second on the team in scoring average, but keeping Aaron Valdes, Roderick Bobbitt and Stefan Jankovic is much more critical than the one player the Rainbow Warriors lost.
The big unknown is whether they will still play with the same pace and defensive intensity as they did for their one season under Benjy Taylor.
Hawaii was sort of a late-night version of VCU last season, ranking 16th in adjusted tempo and seventh in steal percentage. Throw in the inherent home-court advantage of forcing opponents to play much later than usual, and the Rainbow Warriors were frequently able to catch teams off guard with their style.
In the final year of Ganot's tenure as an assistant at Hawaii, though, that team ranked 229th in tempo and 340th in steal percentage. And in his five seasons at Saint Mary's, the Gaels were consistently below-average in both tempo and turnovers forced.
We shall see whether he comes in and sticks with what got the team to 22 wins last season or instead coaches at the pace he has been watching for some time now.
4. Mississippi State: Ben Howland
7 of 10
School record in 2014-15: 13-19 overall (6-12 in SEC)
Coaching pedigree: 10 years at UCLA, five years at Northern Arizona, four years at Pittsburgh (399-208 record)
It would be quite the feat if Mississippi State went from three consecutive seasons at least five games below .500 straight to an appearance in the NCAA tournament, but it was already quite the feat that the Bulldogs were able to sign a guy with 19 years of D-I head coaching experience (Ben Howland) who subsequently signed quite possibly the best guard in this year's recruiting class (Malik Newman).
In order to go from "Perennially Pathetic" to "Postseason Potential" overnight, those are the types of offseason splashes that must be made.
What's more, the Bulldogs get back nearly everyone from a team that was arguably one quality guard away from being competitive. Craig Sword, Gavin Ware, Fred Thomas and Travis Daniels will supply the senior leadership, while Newman provides the spark, ball-handling and three-point shooting they desperately lacked.
Mississippi State ranked 337th in offensive turnover percentage and 301st in three-point percentage. Considering 12 of last year's 19 losses were by a margin of 10 or fewer points, the addition of Newman to help in those categories—in conjunction with the upgrade from Rick Ray to Howland—should make Mississippi State a prime candidate to improve by at least eight games.
It may seem like an unlikely proposition, but there were actually 11 teams that won at least 20 games last season after failing to win more than 13 the previous year. Temple headlined the list, improving from 9-22 to 26-11 in one offseason. The previous season, there were 14 such transformations, including George Washington's improvement from 13-17 to 24-9.
This isn't to say Mississippi State is absolutely going to join that club, but is rather a heads up that it happens more frequently than you may have thought.
3. Florida: Michael White
8 of 10
School record in 2014-15: 16-17 overall (8-10 in SEC)
Coaching pedigree: Four years at Louisiana Tech (110-40 record)
Very few coaches were better than Billy Donovan over the past 17 seasons. Since the start of 1998-99, he led Florida to an overall record of 440-154 (74.1 winning percentage), including seven regular-season SEC championships, four Final Fours and two national championships.
It's never easy to replace one of the best of a generation, but having one of the best of the next generation is a great way to try.
Over the past three years, Michael White's Louisiana Tech teams won 77.6 percent of their games, winning at least a share of the C-USA regular-season championship each year. They just couldn't seem to get over the hump, though, repeatedly falling short in the conference tournament.
Fortunately, at Florida, a 25-win regular season would be way more than enough for an at-large bid, so he wouldn't need to sweat the SEC tournament too much. But getting that many wins will also be exponentially more difficult, particularly given how much the Gators lost this offseason. In addition to the legendary head coach, Michael Frazier, Jon Horford, Eli Carter and Chris Walker won't be back this season.
They'll need to rely heavily on a pair of very talented players who sat out this past year.
Brandone Francis and John Egbunu will make or break White's inaugural season at Florida. Dorian Finney-Smith, Devin Robinson, Kasey Hill and Chris Chiozza make for a solid foundation, but it's going to take more than that to win in this league.
If Francis, Egbunu and incoming freshman KeVaughn Allen really tap into their potential, White will have the luxury of falling into a very strong seven-man rotation capable of winning a lot of games.
2. Texas: Shaka Smart
9 of 10
School record in 2014-15: 20-14 overall (8-10 in Big 12)
Coaching pedigree: Six years at VCU (163-56 record)
HAVOC served its purpose at VCU and served it well, but it doesn't sound like it's coming with Shaka Smart to Texas.
In a piece on Smart that ESPN's Myron Medcalf recently published, Texas power forward Connor Lammert was quoted as saying, "After he introduced himself, he looked at us big guys, and he was saying, 'Whatever system we had there, we didn't have the size, we didn't have some of the personnel that we're gonna have here.'"
In other words, Texas' roster is so talented, and the Longhorns brand will continue to bring in so much talent that they don't need any sort of gimmick to win games.
They'll simply settle for being better and better-coached than virtually every team they play.
When you reflect on all that he accomplished at VCU, it's scary to consider what Smart might be able to do at Texas. Metaphorically speaking, he got pretty good at Call of Duty while playing on a 23" television for six years and is now making the transition to playing on a 65" screen. There might be a very brief adjustment period, but he's going to destroy everyone once that's over and done with.
Getting back to the basketball, despite losing Myles Turner and Jonathan Holmes, the Longhorns are still loaded. Isaiah Taylor is probably more talented than any guard Smart ever worked with at VCU, and Cameron Ridley might be the best big man he has coached. He also has other studs like Javan Felix, Demarcus Holland and Kendal Yancy.
Texas might not immediately give Kansas a serious challenge for the Big 12 Championship, but this is definitely a 2016 tournament team.
1. Iowa State: Steve Prohm
10 of 10
School record in 2014-15: 25-9 overall (12-6 in Big 12)
Coaching pedigree: Four years as head coach at Murray State (104-29 record)
We all felt badly for Steve Prohm when Murray State's 25-game winning streak ended on a late, deep three-pointer by Belmont in the Ohio Valley Championship Game, subsequently keeping the Racers out of the NCAA tournament.
It's pretty hard to feel sorry for him now.
No matter how good of a coach Prohm is, he was staring a rebuilding season square in the face. Four of his six leading scorers either graduated or declared for the NBA draft, and his seventh-leading scorer decided to transfer. Unless Jeffrey Moss and Justin Seymour plan on evolving into Stephen Curry and Damian Lillard, it's probably going to be a tough year for the Racers.
But then—after the coaching carousel had seemingly slowed to a halt—Fred Hoiberg to the Chicago Bulls gradually became a foregone conclusion, and Prohm was able to add his name to a very short list of coaches who inherited a legitimate Final Four contender.
We'll see where the Cyclones ultimately land in the AP preseason poll in a few months, but most everyone viewed them as a top-five team when it was assumed Hoiberg would be back. They should still absolutely be a top-10 team, though.
Perhaps they take a minor hit for losing "The Mayor," but the Cyclones still have Georges Niang, Monte Morris, Jameel McKay and every other player. That combination makes them such a tantalizing dark horse to win it all.
Frankly, no matter who ended up getting the job, that coach would have been No. 1 on this list. It just sweetens the deal that it's a coach who won the last four Ohio Valley regular-season titles.
Not only will Prohm absolutely lead the Cyclones to the tournament, but he might become the first coach to win the NCAA tournament in his first year with a new team since Rick Pitino left Kentucky for the Boston Celtics and bequeathed Tubby Smith a championship roster for the 1997-98 season.
Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.
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