By mid-February, pretty much every national writer has a group of coaches already set aside from which they’ll eventually pick their Coach of the Year. A lot of them at the present time are the same names we’ve been hearing over and over for the last month or so: Chris Holtmann (Xavier), Tony Bennett (Virginia), Wayne Tinkle (Oregon State), Mark Turgeon (Maryland), etc.
5 college basketball coaches who aren’t receiving enough praise this season
Awards and national attention don’t always tell the whole story when it comes to coaching performances, and these five guys are proof.
Soobum Im-USA TODAY Sports
Those guys are all great, but I think they fit the description of having received a justified amount of respect and attention so far this season. Here are five who probably deserve a little -- or in some cases a lot -- more.
Archie Miller, Dayton
The Flyers might not make it back to the NCAA Tournament, but the fact that they're even in the discussion in mid-February is something of a minor miracle. You can't give Miller, who chose to stay at UD despite being a top candidate for several major openings after last March's Elite 8 run, enough credit for this team's 17-5 record and shot at a return to the big dance. If you just read the off-the-court news, you'd think they'd be struggling just to find enough guys to dress at this point.
First came the news in June that Khari Price, the team's starting point guard in 2013-14, was transferring. He ended up at Southern Mississippi, where he's sitting out this season per NCAA transfer rules. In September, incoming freshman center Steve McElvene was declared a partial qualifier who would have to sit out the entire season.
Then, one week before Christmas, Miller announced that that he had dismissed starting center Devon Scott and backup big man Jalen Robinson from the team after the pair had been involved in a trespassing incident in which they allegedly stole money. The exits of those two players, who were averaging a combined 12.4 points and 9.8 rebounds per game, left Dayton without a single player who stands taller than 6'6. Toss in a pair of players with lingering injuries, and Dayton has spent the bulk of 2015 playing with just six scholarship players.
A heartbreaking loss to George Washington at the buzzer on Friday is the only thing keeping Dayton from being in a three-way tie for first place in the Atlantic 10 right now. The Flyers still have games remaining against both of the teams ahead of them (VCU and Rhode Island), which means technically they control their own league title destiny. It seems like a long shot at the present moment, but then again, this entire season has.
Archie Miller of Dayton, Photo credit: Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports
Kevin Keatts, UNC-Wilmington
Keatts inherited a program that had lost at least 20 games in four consecutive seasons, and a team that had just gone 9-23 and finished dead last in the CAA the year before. There’s a reason why the Seahawks were picked to finish ninth in the 10-team league heading into 2014-15, and why their current 8-4 conference mark (good for one game behind first place William & Mary) is being hailed as one of the biggest head-turners in all of college basketball.
Next season was supposed to be the first opportunity to make a move for Keatts, who immediately after being hired last spring was able to land a solid recruiting class and convince four players -- Marcus Bryan (Charlotte), Chris Flemmings (Barton), Jarvis Haywood (Jacksonville), and Denzel Ingram (Charlotte) -- to transfer into the program. Instead, UNCW has a surprise CAA Player of the Year candidate in senior guard Freddie Jackson, and a good shot at its first conference title of any sort in nearly a decade. Not bad for the first-year head coach of a program that hasn't had a winning record in league play since 2008.
John Calipari, Kentucky
On the surface it doesn’t seem all that impressive. Calipari has a team that started last season ranked No. 1, made it to the national championship game, brought in yet another top-ranked recruiting class, and was the overwhelming preseason favorite to cut down the nets in Indianapolis. It all makes it almost too easy to forget that Kentucky lost 11 games a season ago, including six in the SEC, and made their run to the finals as a No. 8 seed. Toss in the facts that he has nine McDonald’s All-Americans to keep happy and has dealt with questions all season long about whether his backup freshmen guards are better than his sophomore starters, and the fact that we’re still talking about a team chasing perfection becomes fairly remarkable.
Ready for your fact of the day? In his two seasons at Kentucky, Billy Gillispie picked up more SEC Coach of the Year honors (one) than John Calipari has in his first five seasons in Lexington. Calipari will get his due credit if the Wildcats do happen to run the table, but the fact that this is his standard for achieving recognized success speaks volumes about what he’s been able to accomplish, even if his personal trophy case doesn’t reflect it.
LeVelle Moton, North Carolina Central
Over the last three seasons, North Carolina Central has won 40 MEAC regular-season games, and lost only two. This year's Eagles are six wins away from running the table in the conference, and will likely be heavy favorites to win the MEAC Tournament and make their second straight trip (and second trip ever) to the NCAA Tournament. This would be a remarkable run of success for any program, let alone one that wasn't even in Division I when Moton was hired seven years ago.
The 40-year-old Moton played basketball at NCCU in the 1990s, and then shortly after began a coaching career that started with a middle school gig. He then coached in high school and as an assistant at NC Central before being handed the full-time reigns in 2009, when the Eagles were still a Division-II program. They joined the MEAC in 2011-12, and have gone an astounding 50-8 in conference play, winning their first conference title of any sort in over 50 years last season. There’s a reason Moton was targeted for a handful of jobs after last season, and will likely experience the same phenomenon this spring.
Mick Cronin/Larry Davis, Cincinnati
It’s one of the oddest situations in college basketball history, but somehow these two guys are making it work.
In late December, Cronin, who is in his ninth season at Cincinnati, was diagnosed with a tear in the inner wall of an artery, which was detected after he went to the hospital complaining about persistent headaches. In order for the tear to heal, Cronin was ordered to rest, take medication, and control his blood pressure, which meant he had to sit out the rest of UC’s season ... sort of.
Cronin still attends practice on most days, he’s with the team during talk-throughs before games, and he chats with Davis, now the interim head coach, multiple times a day. But he watches the games from home. Davis is the man calling the shots during the games, and Cronin makes it a point to refer to him as “coach” during any and all conversations between the two, but it’s still Cronin who is controlling things, making changes to the starting lineup, and telling his players what they did right and wrong after games.
It’s an extremely odd relationship, but at the moment, it’s working surprisingly well. The Bearcats won at then-No. 3 SMU last week, completing a surprising season sweep of the AAC-leading Mustangs, who haven’t lost to anyone else in the conference. Cincy is 17-6 overall and has a current RPI of 28, which would almost certainly put them in the field of 68 if the NCAA Tournament began today. It’s an achievement that many people thought wasn’t possible heading into the season, and one that would be even more astounding considering everything that has happened since.
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