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Patience with coaches often pays off
by Dick 'Hoops' Weiss, FOXSports.com
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| In this era, Dean Smith might not have survived his first few years at UNC. (Doug Pensinger / Getty Images) |
Yes, the Tar Heels won a national championship in 1957, beating Kansas and Wilt Chamberlain in triple overtime in one of the greatest games ever played. But following an investigation into recruiting violations, Carolina was hit with limited NCAA sanctions in 1960. The next year, a gambling scandal infected both the Heels and neighboring N.C. State.
Smith was the perfect, squeaky-clean disciplinarian to clean up the mess, but it took him five years to get that ACC program up and running and he had to live through a potential career-breaking incident during his fourth year on the job. When Carolina, which was traveling back to campus after a 107-85 loss to Wake Forest in the middle of the 1964-65 season, arrived back in Chapel Hill, students had hung Smith in effigy. Billy Cunningham and Billy Galantal jumped off the bus to take the effigy down.
Today, it would have been the beginning of the end.
But Smith had the backing of chancellor Bill Aycock, who felt the program was headed in the right direction and gave Smith enough time to build one of the great dynasties in sports.
Patience has become a lost virtue in college basketball.
We live in a "what have you done for me lately" world where a coach's every move is scrutinized on TV, his recruiting is over-analyzed, Internet message boards can be vicious and he can be on the hot seat after just three years on the job.
The increased pressures have forced coaches, who in some cases are making seven-figure salaries, to take more chances in recruiting and dumb down early-season schedules to build a distorted record to satisfy the unrealistic fans and administrations in an effort to survive.
But there still are some schools and ADs that have given coaches the time they needed to build a program from the ashes.
Here are some examples:
Mike Krzyzewski, Duke
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Krzyzewski is generally considered the best college basketball coach of his generation, but there was a time when his job was on the line. Krzyzewski was considered a questionable choice by some when he came to Duke from Army in 1980 following a 9-17 season. He coached his first Duke team to an NIT appearance, but then went through turbulent times, winning 10 and 11 games the next two seasons, punctuated by a 109-66 loss to Virginia in the 1983 ACC tournament. Krzyzewski had his first big recruiting class the previous year, bringing in Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, Jay Bilas and David Henderson, who eventually became the nucleus of the Devils' 1986 Final Four team. But Duke fans were restless, and dissatisifed members of the Iron Dukes booster club were circulating a petition calling for his resignation.
AD Tom Butters made a heroic decision midway through the 1983-84 season. The Devils, who started the season 14-1, had lost four straight games, but Butters called Krzyzewski into his office and gave him a five-year extension. Three national championships and 10 trips to the Final Four later, it looks like he made the right decision.
Jay Wright, Villanova
In 1994, Hofstra AD Harry Royle hired the 32-year old Wright, an assistant from UNLV, to breathe new life into a stagnant program that had just five winning seasons in the previous 21 years as a member of Division I. His first three teams won nine, 12 and 10 games. But the administration stuck with him. Wright, with the assistance of Tom Pecora, used his bigger-than-life, dapper Frank McGuire personality to recruit well in the Metropolitan area, signing two future pros — guard Speedy Claxton and forward Norman Richardson — and had a breakthrough season in 1999, when the Pride won 22 games and advanced to the NIT. Wright coached the Pride to the America East Conference title the next two years, qualifying for automatic bids to the NCAA tournament.
Wright was eventually romanced by Villanova five years later and coached this Big East sleeping giant into the No. 2-ranked team in the country. The Wildcats — playing a four-guard lineup featuring Randy Foye and Kyle Lowry — advanced to an NCAA Elite Eight berth and Wright collected his share of national Coach of the Year awards.
Bob McKillop, Davidson
McKillop and his star guard, Stephen Curry, were the talk of the NCAA tournament last spring, but his first three years at this tiny private school outside Charlotte were nothing to brag about. McKillop, who spent a year as an assistant at Davidson in 1989 before returning to Long Island to coach Long Island Lutheran to five state championships, took the head coaching job with the Wildcats in 1989. He was 4-24 as an independent his first year, then won 10 and 11 games the next two seasons when Davidson played in the Big South.
McKillop, one of the best X-and-0 minds in the sport, didn't have his first winning season until 1994, when he won 22 games and his team finished second in the Southern Conference and received a bid to the NIT. He has gone on to win the conference's Coach of the Year award six times, taking his last three Davidson teams to the NCAA tournament and making a 2008 Cinderella run to the Elite Eight.
Scott Drew, Baylor
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| After a few lean years, Scott Drew has built Baylor into a Top 25 team. (Jamie Squire / Getty Images) |
Drew left Valparaiso to take the head-coaching job at this Big 12 program in August 2003 on the heels of a major scandal that started with the murder of Patrick Dennehy by teammate Carlton Dotson and ended with the discovery of a sordid cover-up, the firing of coach Dave Bliss and the AD, academic fraud and heavy NCAA sanctions.
Most of Baylor's key players had chosen to transfer, the program was put on probation until 2010 and scholarships were reduced until 2007. Postseason play was also eliminated for the 2004 season and only conference games were permitted for the 2006 season.
Drew, with the support of AD Ian McGraw, has rebuilt this program from the ashes, but it took time. The Bears were 8-21 in 2004, 9-19 in 2005 and 4-13 in the conference-only 2006 season. But he has turned the program around quickly with some innovative recruiting, coaching the Bears to a 21-9 regular-season record and an NCAA appearance in 2008. Scott's father, Homer, was given an extended opportunity at Valparaiso and as a result his Crusaders provided the the NCAA tournament with one of its marquee moments when in 1998 Bryce Drew hit a last-second shot to stun Ole Miss in a first-round game. The irony is that this appearance has now become the envy of many small-college presidents and members of the board of trustees, who do not understand the context, time and uniqueness of the moment when they try to emulate it.
As a result, the speed of the coaching carousel has decreased the time to establish programs the way Krzyzewski, McKillop and Wright did. Universities want to know what you are doing for me tomorrow. This is evident with approxiately 50-60 jobs opening every year and shrinking the pool of those coaches who have not been fired. There are Web sites that charge subscribers to perpetuate this panic and gauge the probability of which coach will lose his job next.
We love March Madness, but it is a shame that such a positive event can help generate such havoc.
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