Over the last few years a lot of posters have complained about our young coaches needing on the job training and lamenting that we didn't just go out and hire a proven coach. I looked at the last thirty years of NCAA tournament champions, had to go back to 1993 because there was no tournament in 2020. A couple of general things that surprised me when digging through all of this, UConn should be considered a top tier team at this point, 5 championships with three different coaches, that is impressive. Also, Kentucky hasn't won it all since 2012, and that is their only championship since 1998. 20 different coaches won championships. Coach K with 5, Roy Williams and Jim Calhoun with 3, and a bunch with 2 championships. Of the 20 coaches that won championships, 14 of them won a championship at their first high-major head coaching job. The 6 who were hired by schools going out and getting a proven coach were Gary Williams, John Calipari, Lute Olson, Rick Pitino, Roy Williams, and Tubby Smith. Tubby Smith won a championship his first year at Kentucky with Pitino's players and never even made it to the final four again. Gary Williams didn't do much at Boston College or Ohio State before arriving at Maryland, and didn't make the tournament at Maryland until his fifth year. Lute Olson showed progress in his 8 years at Iowa, then took 14 years to get Arizona to a championship. Calipari is Calipari, infractions follow everywhere he goes. Pitino is intriguing, the only one to win championships at two different schools, but also got fired from one of those schools because of infractions. That leaves us with Roy Williams, the poster boy for going out and hiring a proven coach. They tried to hire him in 2000, but he turned them down to stay with his players, then they came calling again after the Matt Doherty experiment, and he led them to 3 championships. Roy Williams was the only experienced hire to win multiple championships for the school that hire him. Among the coaches who won championships at their first high-major job, Bill Self, Billy Donovan, Dean Smith, Jay Wright, Jim Calhoun, and Coach K all won multiple championships for the school that gave them their first big shot. The experienced hires did have a shorter time to their first championship (an average of 6 years for the experienced hires versus 11 years for the new guys), but a part of that is where (and when) they went. Tubby won a championship in his first year, with players who had played in two championship games already. Roy Williams won in his second year at North Carolina with a bunch of juniors and seniors, but stuck around and proved himself as a hall of fame coach. Calipari won in his third year with a bunch of freshmen and sophomores that he recruited. The only new hire to win a championship in less than 5 years was Kevin Ollie at UConn, but he flamed out within a few years. Overall the new hires gave more years to their schools, 24 years at their championship school versus 16 years for the experienced coaches. One more consideration is that the new hires are almost all legends whose schools are tied to them. The experienced hires don't bring the same level of name recognition to their schools, and for an AD, it can be appealing to be the guy who brought in the school legend rather than just a guy who won a championship. Hiring a new up and coming coach is the path to stability and championships. Hiring an experienced coach can lead to a championship faster, but with more turnover, and more NCAA infractions. It will be interesting to look back thirty years into NIL and see if that has changed. [survivor bias, this only looks at coaches who won, not at all coaches hired with and without experience]
Excellent post phil and good analysis. It's an important matter of perspective, which all too often, is lost on us fanatics who insist on immediate glory. One note - Bill Self was at Illinois three years prior to KU. His teams made the tournament five consecutive years (2 at Tulsa / 3 at Illinois) and had three top 10 finishes (finished #12 his last year at Tulsa).
I know this is peripheral to your point, but I still say that THE best model to follow is the Carmelo Anthony Syracuse team. You HAVE to build a team and that takes time. Obviously, you need to win enough games to keep the money folks on your side as well as give your prospective signees hope for their careers. That means the typical program building of quality players (Not O-A-D) and quality coaching. THEN you get that one transcendent player that makes it all work. And in this environment, you better bring your Brinks truck with you. Cal's (and the other "Blue Bloods") methodology is rife with errors. It keeps the silly money flowing but it rarely produces. We are NOT one of those. Heck we aren't going to do that in football. It is what it is.
