When rating college basketball coaching hires, the most entertaining way to do it might be to rank them on a scale from Kevin Stallings (Pitt) to Mike Krzyzewski (Duke).
Have you heard that joke before?
OK, I used it a year ago in this very spot.
It’s been a long month, OK?
We instead will use letter grades to judge the 11 coaching hires in the top six college basketball leagues, starting in the ACC and working our way down (literally) to the SEC.
ACC
Georgia Tech: Damon Stoudamire
Previous position: Assistant coach, Boston Celtics
Career record: 71-77
NCAA Tournaments: 0
Overview: Stoudamire’s coaching career reflects an insatiable desire to advance his knowledge and career. And that’s a good thing. He has a hunger, and it’s likely fueled by the times when he came close to a breakthrough position. He was believed to be a candidate at Arizona, the program he led to the 1994 Final Four, in 2021. He could have been selected to run the Celtics when his friend, Ime Udoka, was dismissed prior to the current NBA season. He cited his “long journey” at an introductory press conference and expressed his excitement about the position. Stoudamire took a very tough WCC head coaching position at Pacific, which had won 20 combined games in two seasons before he arrived, and built a 23-win team inside four seasons. There is room to make a move in the current ACC. Grade: B+
Notre Dame: Micah Shrewsberry
Previous position: Head coach, Penn State
Career record: 69-94
NCAA Tournaments: 1
Overview: Shrewsberry’s record includes three seasons as coach at IU South Bend, an NAIA school not far from the Notre Dame campus that lacks the sort of resources he’ll enjoy now that he’s in charge of the Fighting Irish. Shrewsberry is one of the bright talents in college basketball, and the Irish are both wise and fortunate to land him. He did a phenomenal job with Penn State this past season, not only conceiving a winning formula while operating without a true big man in a league dominated by the likes of Zach Edey, Trayce Jackson-Davis and Hunter Dickinson but also wrestling the Lions back on track after a difficult stretch in early February. They wound up making a run to the Big Ten Tournament final and then performing superbly in a second-round NCAA Tournament defeat. The one concern about the future is whether Notre Dame will continue to have an apparently problematic approach to the Name/Image/Likeness component of recruiting. It’s been reported ND football lost four committed recruits because of NIL opportunities elsewhere. Will that become a problem for Irish hoops? Grade: A
Syracuse: Adrian Autry
Previous position: Assistant coach, Syracuse
Career record: 0-0
NCAA Tournaments: 0
Overview: The problem with grading a hire like this is that Autry has been a part of both significant success and recent decline at Syracuse. He has been an assistant when the Orange were recruiting – and then achieving with – such players as Jerami Grant, Malachi Richardson and Tyus Battle – and lately when such players have been difficult to land and the victories have not been as plentiful. Even when an assistant is promoted from a program that has built momentum, though, the transition to success is not a given. So maybe the most accurate grade here would be, say, an “incomplete”. One thing that can be said without hesitation: Autry has been a positive force in Syracuse basketball for most of the past three decades, as a player an assistant coach. It would be a delight to see him succeed. Grade: B-
Big East
Georgetown: Ed Cooley
Previous position: Head coach, Providence
Career record: 320-235
NCAA Tournaments: 6
Overview: Cooley stands 6-2, but it isn’t because he’s a tall man that he was bumping into the ceiling as coach of the Friars. By winning the 2022 Big East regular season and taking those Friars to the Sweet 16, he had reached the limit of what they are likely to do. Florida Atlantic showed us what is possible many places under the right circumstances, but Georgetown showed us in the 80s and 90s what is possible with the Hoyas. There’s no guarantee they become that program again, but the ingredients remain in place, from the world-class university to the adjacent DMV (DC/Maryland/Virginia) talent base that remains unsurpassed in American basketball over the past half-century. That does not mean he’ll get them back to the Patrick Ewing days (when he was a player, not a coach), but Cooley is the right person to take advantage of Georgetown’s assets. Grade: A
Providence: Kim English
Previous position: Head coach, George Mason
Career record: 34-29
NCAA Tournaments: 0
Overview: Full disclosure, along with a few colleagues from Fox Sports, I had dinner with English at the Final Four and came away convinced he could sell me on the idea of climbing Mount Everest. (I consider it too much work to even watch a movie about climbing Everest). This is the English I’ve known since he was a player at Missouri: smarter than most people in the room, more ebullient than everyone in the room, but never overbearing about convincing anyone of either. His coaching skill still is developing, exactly as one would expect of someone who’s been a head coach for two seasons. But his second team at Mason won 20 games, including the final six of the past regular season (plus one in the A-10 tournament to make it a seven-game winning streak). The Patriots got better. He got better. Cooley is an enormous loss, but the future should be bright. Grade: A-
St. John’s: Rick Pitino
Previous position: Head coach, Iona
Career record: 834-293
NCAA Tournaments: 23
Overview: Let’s get this out of the way up front: Rick Pitino is the best coach whose hire is being evaluated here. He’s the only one in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. If we were evaluating exclusively Hall of Famers, he might still come in at No. 1. We are not judging Pitino’s career, though. We are judging the decision to place him in charge of the Red Storm. And while it certainly will be a successful hire, the degree of success will be determined by Pitino himself. He is 71 years old, so this is not to be a gradual rebuild. It will need to happen quickly. That potentially is facilitated by the immediate-eligibility option for transfers, but how well Pitino will do in that venue will be determined by how much of his attention he will spend. That was the problem during the final years at Louisville. He trusted, but did not take the time to verify. He needs to do better. Grade: A-
MORE: Rick Pitino's timeline from Louisville to St. John's
Big Ten
Penn State: Mike Rhoades
Previous position: Head coach, VCU
Career record: 373-189
NCAA Tournaments: 3
Overview: Does VCU have advantages over most of the Atlantic 10? Indeed, but so do Dayton and Saint Louis, and yet Rhoades’ last three teams were 39-11 in league games and won two conference tournaments. He built something sustainable that had a natural connection to Shaka Smart’s great teams of a decade ago but was demonstrably his own. The move here, though, is from a traditional league power in basketball to a traditional league power in, well, football. Basketball success in Happy Valley is not unattainable. Each of the previous five coaches was able to get the Lions to the NCAA Tournament; Pat Chambers never officially made it, but the 2020 team was 21-10 and a likely No. 6 seed in the canceled NCAA Tournament. They just were not, with the exception of Shrewsberry’s two-year stay, able to do it consistently. That’s the job now for Rhoades. Grade: B+
Big 12
Texas: Rodney Terry
Previous position: Interim head coach, Texas
Career record: 185-164
NCAA Tournaments: 2
Overview: Terry was the choice of the Sporting News as the 2022-23 Coach of the Year for his work in taking over the Longhorns under distressing circumstances and directing them to a second-place finish in a brutal Big 12 Conference as well as the championship of the Big 12 Tournament. Had the Horns better managed the past 10 minutes of the Midwest Region final against Miami, he might have entered the Final Four in his first period in charge of the program. What Terry must do now is combine the instincts of the ace recruiter assistant who built the relationship with Canadian basketball that produced top prospects Tristan Thompson, Corey Joseph and Myck Kabongo a decade ago with the program-builder who remade Fresno State into a significant Mountain West contender. This position will be much different than any he’s held before, even the interim spot he handled so beautifully over the past three months. Grade: A
MORE: Rodney Terry named TSN Coach of the Year
Texas Tech: Grant McCasland
Previous position: Head coach, North Texas
Career record: 155-77
NCAA Tournaments: 1
Overview: A few years ago, in the Big 12 that existed with Texas and Oklahoma entrenched, this might have been a problematic hire. How would McCasland convince top players to come to the league’s most remote campus to play a style that literally ranked dead last in tempo among all Division I teams in each of the past two seasons? Now, with Cincinnati, Houston, BYU and UCF entering the league and the Horns and Sooners soon to check out, it’s more likely to succeed. Understand, McCasland is nothing less than a magnificent technical coach. His teams frustrate opponents, then vanquish them. His past two teams averaged 20th nationally in defensive efficiency; because Ken Pomeroy’s stats at KenPom.com are adjusted to competition, it is not easy to post such numbers in a mid-major league. McCasland will win games. But he’ll need to attract talent to win the biggest ones. Grade: B
Pac-12
California: Mark Madsen
Previous position: Head coach, Utah Valley
Career record: 70-51
NCAA Tournaments: 0
Overview: Is there a place where high-profile athletics have retreated at a faster rate than this? It hasn’t been that long -- has it? -- since Cal football and basketball were really good. This is where Pete Newell coached, for goodness sake, where Jason Kidd played. They’ve made nine NCAA appearances since 2000, but none since 2016. There are some positive signs about this decision. The administration did not concern themselves with March Madness success, but instead with demonstrated ability to build a program. Utah Valley improved from 11-19 his first year to consecutive 20-win seasons in his third and fourth years. It probably didn’t hurt Madsen’s candidacy that he is a popular former player, but remember – he’s a popular former player at Stanford. He’s got a ton of work to do, but there is potential for growth. Grade: B
SEC
Ole Miss: Chris Beard
Previous position: Head coach, Texas
Career record: 237-98
NCAA Tournaments: 4
Overview: It is difficult – nah, let’s say impossible – to divorce the evaluation of the basketball element of this hire from the impropriety of it all. Beard definitely is in the upper echelon of the game’s technicians. There has got to be more to it than that. His arrest last December on a third-degree felony charge of domestic violence led to him losing the head coaching position at Texas. With the charges subsequently dropped, his punishment becomes … a different multi-million-dollar job. Really? They can point to the charges being dropped, and they surely did, but if Ole Miss were proud of this hire, they would not have needed to execute the unprecedented Selection Monday news dump. They sneaked their decision into the public while those who cover the sport were consumed with brackets. With no conviction, it was obvious he would work as a D-1 head coach again. After three months, though? Let’s recall Kelvin Sampson – a better coach – spent six years as an NBA assistant because he made too many recruiting calls. Is it an overstatement to say this hire reeks? Well, that’s something you can decide for yourself, but you can be certain this grade has nothing to do with Xs and Os. Grade: F