Early Grades for Coaches at New Schools in College Basketball in 2016-17

The college basketball coaching carousel stayed in motion for quite some time this past offseason, with 50 of the 351 Division I schools hiring someone new to take over their program. As is the case with most of these cycles, a good number of those openings came about because coaches left one job to take another.

That's the case with 10 of the 12 most high-profile coaching changes from this offseason, as sitting coaches at other schools filled those jobs. The other two hires were assistant coaches who have head coaching experience.

Regardless of the circumstances surrounding how the job became open, there's one thing this group has in common: Each is expected to make some progress in their first season to justify being hired. And though we're extremely early in the 2016-17 season, the results so far are looking good as the 12 coaches we've highlighted are a combined 36-7 through Monday's games. That includes a win for Tim Jankovich's SMU squad over Kevin Stallings' Pittsburgh team in the 2K Classic in New York City last week.

How is each new coach doing, and what are the prospects for the season? Check out how we assess the stock of 12 of the most notable first-year coaches.

Chris Beard, Texas Tech

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Chris Beard is personally responsible for four different coaching changes this past spring thanks to his very short-lived stint as UNLV's coach. The Runnin' Rebels from Arkansas-Little Rock, whom he led to an upset of Purdue in the NCAA tournament in his only season there, hired him, but once Texas Tech opened up, he couldn't pass up the chance to run the program where he was an assistant from 2001-11.

That extra move led UNLV to go with New Mexico State's Marvin Menzies as Beard's replacement, and both Little Rock and NMSU both promoted assistants to shut down that part of the offseason carousel.

Beard replaces Tubby Smith, who's now at Memphis, after Smith got the Red Raiders into the NCAA tourney for the first time since 2007. Smith left behind a solid group that has won its first three games by an average of 24 points despite not having junior center Norense Odiase because of a foot injury, with returners like junior guard Keenan Evans and senior forward Aaron Ross picking up the slack.

Tech has benefitted from the play of transfers Shadell Millinghaus (Southern Miss) and Anthony Livingston (Arkansas State), who have combined for 25.3 points and 10.3 rebounds per game on 58.9 percent shooting, though the competition hasn't been that strong. Tougher games are on the horizon this week in the Cancun Challenge. First, there's Auburn on Tuesday and then either Purdue or Utah State on Wednesday. However, there's only one true road game (Dec. 17 at Richmond) before the Big 12 schedule, so the Red Raiders could go into conference play with a good record but not a true idea of how good they are.

Grade: B

Jamie Dixon, TCU

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Jamie Dixon had a pretty reliable track record of getting Pittsburgh to the NCAA tournament, getting the Panthers in 11 times in 13 seasons with three Sweet 16s and an Elite Eight. But those deep runs were between 2004-09, and after that he never got out of the first weekend and twice missed the tourney altogether. Not surprisingly, fans started to grow tired of mediocrity, and Dixon took that as a sign it was time to find a place where he would be more appreciated.

TCU last made the NCAA tourney in 1998, when it was in the Western Athletic Conference. It's since moved to Conference USA, then the Mountain West and since 2012-13, it has been in the Big 12 where previous coach Trent Johnson went 8-64 in league play and was 50-79 overall.

So while the Horned Frogs faithful aren't ready to anoint Dixon as program savior after a 4-0 start that includes Monday's comeback home win over Illinois State, they are hopeful he can at least make the team competitive in the Big 12. The results so far don't indicate that's going to happen, but if TCU fares well this weekend in Las Vegas against UNLV and then either Washington or Western Kentucky, then a more definitive outlook can be made.

What can be evaluated at this point is the offensive balance. Seven players are averaging double figures including junior forward Vladimir Brodziansky, who had 24 points in 24 minutes off the bench on Monday.

Grade: B-

Bryce Drew, Vanderbilt

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Among the country's more successful mid-major coaches, Bryce Drew won 124 games in five seasons at alma mater Valparaiso with two NCAA tournament bids and a trip to the NIT final in April. The son of longtime former Crusaders coach Homer Drew and brother of Baylor coach Scott Drew, as well as the hero from Valpo's 1998 Sweet 16 run, his decision to leave that program wasn't an easy one.

It's unlikely he's regretting the move, but a 2-2 start at Vanderbilt isn't what he or those who praised his hire—CBS Sports' Matt Norlander gave the hire an A-minus—would have expected with the talent previous coach Kevin Stallings left for Drew to work with.

The Commodores lost top scorers Wade Baldwin and Damian Jones early to the NBA draft but brought back six others who were part of the playing rotation. That includes 7-footer Luke Kornet and guards Matthew Fisher-Davis and Riley LaChance, but so far those veterans haven't been enough.

Fisher-Davis had 23 points, and Kornet added 19 in Monday's 75-72 home loss to Bucknell, shooting 15-of-27 from the field, while the rest of Vandy was 14-of-36. For the season the 'Dores are shooting 42.3 percent, down from 45.6 percent last season in going 19-14 and making the NCAA tourney.

Vandy's other loss was by 24 to Marquette in a neutral-site game on Nov. 11. Over Thanksgiving it plays Butler and possibly No. 8 Arizona in Las Vegas, and it has three other non-home games before the SEC slate starts. While it should still be among that league's upper half, any thought it could compete with Kentucky for the top isn't feasible right now.

Grade: C-

Jerod Haase, Stanford

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Jerod Haase won 80 games in four seasons at UAB, with an NCAA tournament win over Baylor in 2015 and a Conference USA regular-season title last year. The former Kansas and North Carolina assistant under Roy Williams replaced Johnny Dawkins, who had more NIT championships (two) than NCAA tourney bids (one) in seven seasons at Stanford.

The Cardinal are 4-0 for the first time since 2011, starting things out with a foul-heavy win over Harvard in China and then a trio of home victories. They're allowing only 59.3 points per game, 11.1 points better than last season's average, by holding opponents to 34.4 percent shooting.

Haase's start has been aided by having Reid Travis at full strength. The 6'8", 240-pound junior was limited to just eight games last season, and so far in 2016-17 he's averaging a double-double at 19 points and 10.5 rebounds on 59 percent shooting. Junior wing Dorian Pickens, the only other player averaging double figures, is shooting 50 percent from three-point range.

Stanford plays this week in the AdvoCare Invitational in Orlando, Florida, where it opens against Miami (Florida) and could face two from among Florida, Gonzaga, Iowa State and Seton Hall. There are also games upcoming against No. 15 Saint Mary's and at fifth-ranked Kansas, giving the Cardinal several chances to prepare for Pac-12 competition.

Grade: B+

Tim Jankovich, SMU

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Tim Jankovich was an extremely late hire, not becoming SMU's head coach until July when Larry Brown quit after not getting a contract extension. It wasn't that significant a change, though, since Jankovich had been on Brown's staff the previous four seasons and in April had been named head-coach-in-waiting.

Already holding a strong relationship with the Mustangs players, both new and old, Jankovich's learning curve was minimal. He's basically running the same system as Brown but with one notable exception: a greater emphasis on three-point shooting.

"I value it a lot more than he does," Jankovich told the Dallas Morning News in October. "But I do agree that there is nothing worse than a bad 3-point shot."

SMU has attempted 19 threes per game, making 36.8 percent. Last year's team averaged 15.4 per game and ranked third nationally in efficiency at 42 percent, with the now-graduated Nic Moore making 76 at a 41.3 percent clip. Sophomore guard Shake Milton, who shot 42.6 percent from outside in 2015-16, is only 6-of-20 but Duke transfer Semi Ojeleye is 8-of-18 and is averaging a team-high 19.8 points and 8.8 rebounds.

But it was the shot selection inside the three-point line, not to mention the Mustangs' lack of defense, that led to a 76-54 loss to Michigan in the 2K Classic to put them at 3-1.

Grade: B

Marvin Menzies, UNLV

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Marvin Menzies carved out a pretty successful career at New Mexico State by loading up on international players, with his last Aggies roster featuring guys from six different countries. That same formula won't likely be necessary at a more high-profile program like UNLV, but for the time being Menzies has had to make do with whatever he could get.

He wasn't hired until mid-April and only after Chris Beard decided less than three weeks after taking the job that he'd rather coach at Texas Tech. That came after Dave Rice was forced out midway through the 2015-16, and with the school taking its time to find a successor, nearly every notable player from last season moved on.

Junior forward Dwayne Morgan and sophomore guard Jalen Poyser are the only guys who logged more than 15 minutes a game last season, while senior forward Tyrell Green's 57 minutes in three games in 2016-17 are 19 more than he had all of last year. The rest of the roster are junior college transfers, freshmen or transfers from other Division I programs, including 6'7" senior Christian Jones, a bit player at St. John's who is second on UNLV in scoring so far at 14 points per game.

Menzies' debut was an inauspicious one, losing by eight at home to a South Alabama team that has started 5-0 but was 14-19 last season. The Runnin' Rebels followed with wins over UC Riverside and Cal State Fullerton.

UNLV faces TCU and then either Washington or Western Kentucky this weekend in the Global Sports Classic in Las Vegas, and it later takes on Duke and Oregon in neutral-site games and hosts Kansas. Those games could either steel the Rebels to compete in the Mountain West or prepare to set them up for a long season.

Grade: C

Josh Pastner, Georgia Tech

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Josh Pastner saw the writing on the wall and left Memphis before it could fire him. He averaged 26 wins with four NCAA tournament appearances in his first five seasons but then dipped to 37-29 with an 18-18 mark in AAC play in his last two years, so when the opportunity to jump to another power program arose he didn't hesitate.

Even if that meant taking on an even worse situation than the one he'd created at his old job. Georgia Tech finished 11th in the ACC last season and was picked 14th out of 15 schools for 2016-17. The Yellow Jackets' top returning scorer, senior forward Quinton Stephens, averaged 5.0 points and 3.8 rebounds in 20.1 minutes the year before.

That prompted CBS Sports' Jon Rothstein to declare Tech won't win an ACC game this season because it has "the worst power-five roster I've ever seen."

Tech won its first two games by 15 points apiece but then lost 67-61 at home to Ohio on Friday. It has a potentially disastrous three-game road trip coming up at Penn State, Tennessee and VCU and then the arduous ACC slate. It's going to be a long year in Atlanta, but that was to be expected, and if Pastner can recruit to Tech like he did at Memphis, the turnaround could start as soon as next season.

Grade: C

Steve Pikiell, Rutgers

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Rutgers can't get much worse than last season, when under Eddie Jordan it was 7-25 overall and 1-17 in the Big Ten. Steve Pikiell is already more than halfway toward matching that win total and we're still in November.

Sure, those wins include one against a Division II school and the others were against teams that were a combined 18-72 last season, but that doesn't change the fact the Scarlet Knights are off to their best start in 16 years. And the Nov. 17 win at DePaul snapped a 20-game road skid and 0-24 run away from Piscataway.

Pikiell, who won 192 games in 11 seasons at Stony Brook and took the Seawolves to their first-ever NCAA tournament in March, has experience picking a program up off the mat. Stony Brook won 13 games in his first two years and then had at least 22 wins in six of his final seven seasons.

Guard Nigel Johnson, a transfer from Kansas State, and 7'0” former UNC-Wilmington center C.J. Gettys have combined with returning guards Corey Sanders and Mike Williams and forward Deshawn Freeman to form a solid group. Freeman played only eight games in 2015-16 because of injury.

Aside from games at Miami (FL) and Seton Hall, the remainder of Rutgers' nonconference schedule is manageable. It's looking good that it'll go into conference play with more total wins than all of last season, but whether it will get many after that is still uncertain.

Grade: A

Tubby Smith, Memphis

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Tubby Smith is well-known for one very significant thing during his long and storied coaching career: he's going to get his team into the NCAA tournament no matter how infrequent that may have been before he arrived. Memphis is his sixth Division I gig, and he's led each of the previous five to at least one tourney bid within his first three years.

Fresh off leading Texas Tech to its first NCAA tourney since 2007, which came in his third year in Lubbock, Smith now is tasked with turning around a Memphis team that last went dancing in 2014. It's not as dire a situation as he faced most recently, or early in his career at Georgia or Tulsa, but it's also not nearly as set up for success as when he inherited a juggernaut at Kentucky in 1997-98 and won a national title that first season.

It helps that Josh Pastner left behind some talented scorers in brothers Dedric and K.J. Lawson, who during a 3-0 start have combined for 37.7 points, 22.7 rebounds, 7.0 assists and 2.3 blocks per game. But just as important has been the early progress made by guards Markel Crawford and Craig Randall, who were bit players a season ago.

The opponents so far—Milwaukee, Savannah State and Texas Rio Grande Valley—are likely to end up being among the six or seven worst the Tigers face all season. However, much of Memphis' nonleague schedule is soft beyond this weekend's Emerald Coast Classic games against Providence and either Iowa or Virginia, and December games at Oklahoma and Ole Miss and against South Carolina.

Grade: B

Kevin Stallings, Pittsburgh

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After Jamie Dixon departed Pittsburgh for TCU after 13 seasons, it provided the program with the chance to start fresh and go in a new direction in hopes of moving away from a period of good-but-not-great results. Hiring a 56-year-old coach whose average record at his previous job was 19-13 over 17 seasons doesn't instantly scream “game-changer,” but Kevin Stallings is who the Panthers have for the foreseeable future.

Stallings made seven NCAA tournament appearances with Vanderbilt between 1999-2016, a period in which Dixon and Ben Howland took Pitt to the tourney 13 times. And for what it's worth, Dixon is five years younger than Stallings.

There's no point in grading the hire after the fact when there are current results to evaluate. Pitt's 3-1 record is about what you'd expect from a team bringing back three of its top four scorers from a 21-12 team, though maybe the specifics of those aren't. The Panthers needed double overtime to beat Eastern Michigan in their opener and were out-rebounded by a smaller SMU team in a loss during last week's 2K Classic before beating Marquette by three a night later.

Senior forward Michael Young is benefiting from Stallings' history with big men at Vandy, with the 6'9” senior getting more touches and turning that into 24 points per game. Jamel Artis, a 6'7” senior forward, is also getting more involved and has averaged 19.8 points so far.

Grade: B-

Rick Stansbury, Western Kentucky

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Western Kentucky doesn't have a particularly strong basketball history, though it did make the Final Four in 1971 only to have that appearance vacated because star Jim McDaniels had signed a pro contract while still playing for the Hilltoppers. They've been to the NCAA tournament 23 times, most recently in 2013, but despite winning at least 18 games in four straight seasons under Ray Harper, the school opted to look elsewhere this spring.

And it just so happened Rick Stansbury was ready to get back into being a head coach after being on Billy Kennedy's staff at Texas A&M for three years. Before that he ran Mississippi State for 14 seasons and is that school's career wins leader a 293.

Western Kentucky has never been considered a destination for notable players, but Stansbury is changing that. He brought in six transfers, four of whom are eligible this season, including guards Junior Lomomba (Providence) and Pancake Thomas (Hartford) and forward Que Johnson (Washington State), and he's signed a top-10 class for 2017 that includes 5-star center Mitchell Robinson.

Stansbury's second Western Kentucky team is going to be good, and the first one could contend in Conference USA if he can get a totally new roster to coalesce. That hasn't happened yet during a 2-1 start that included a 21-point loss at Belmont on Saturday, and seven straight non-home games between Friday and Dec. 17 will be a major test that is apt to leave the Hilltoppers with an unimpressive record heading into league play.

Grade: B-

Brad Underwood, Oklahoma State

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The 20 games Oklahoma State lost last season with Travis Ford as head coach are six fewer than Brad Underwood had in three years with Stephen F. Austin. We're comparing Southland Conference apples to Big 12 oranges here, but even in the weakest of leagues it's hard to go 53-1 with three consecutive regular-season and conference tournament titles.

Underwood's last SFA team upset third-seeded West Virginia and nearly took down Notre Dame in March, and he was hired away by OK State roughly 24 hours after that one-point loss. It was considered a good move then, and it's looking even better with the Cowboys off to a 4-0 start following Monday's 98-90 win over Connecticut in the Maui Invitational.

Opening with four straight wins isn't unusual for the Cowboys, who did it in 2010 and 2012-14, but it's how explosive they've looked in doing so that stands out. Monday's 98 points were their fewest the team has scored so far, and they're averaging 104.8 points per game on 50.8 percent shooting.

Senior Phil Forte and sophomore Jawun Evans, both of whom missed significant time a year ago because of injury, have combined to average 47.3 points per game—including 53 against UConn, with 35 coming from Evans. OK State's lack of size hasn't gotten in the way yet, but it could later on, as Bleacher Report's Kerry Miller noted the Cowboys are "going to get destroyed by quality frontcourts this year."

That could come as soon as Tuesday's Maui semifinal against North Carolina, and it could be a big problem in Big 12 play. For now, though, OK State is looking like one of the more improved power-conference teams in the country.

Grade: A

All statistics courtesy of Sports-Reference.com, unless otherwise noted. All recruiting information courtesy of Scout.com, unless otherwise noted.

Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.