Question: Which Coaches Are Feeling the Heat This Season?

It’s the nature of the business that college coaches are hired to be fired.  With only a handful of exceptions around the country, job security among the coaching fraternity is hard to come by.  Every offseason roughly 15 to 20 percent of the profession turns over, with approximately half of those open jobs coming as a result of some unfortunate soul’s termination.  As we entered last season, the names of the men on the hot seat were easy to predict, and four of the five coaches listed didn’t let us down — Paul Hewitt (Georgia Tech), Jeff Capel (Oklahoma), Sidney Lowe (NC State), and Bruce Pearl (Tennessee) were all ousted after disappointing seasons (our fifth choice, Cincinnati’s Mick Cronin, got his team into the Dance and cooled his seat considerably).

Let’s take a quick look at one coach from each of the power conferences who could really use a breakthrough season in 2011-12.

ACC: Jeff Bzdelik, Wake Forest.  This was a tough league to choose from because eight of the 12 ACC coaches are in one of their first three seasons at their school.  But if we have to choose someone, it’s probably going to be the coach who guided his program to a historically awful season in his first year at the helm.  A one-win conference slate in addition to home losses to the likes of Stetson, Winthrop, UNC-Wilmington, and Presbyterian won’t buy you a great deal of slack from a program still trying to recover from the death of Skip Prosser four years ago.  Throw in the fact that several players have gotten into legal and academic trouble under Bzdelik’s watch and you start to wonder if he can survive another miserable season.  If the second-year coach expects to last much longer, he’s going to have to show some improvement in Winston-Salem this year.

There's Bad... Then There's Historically Bad...

Big East: Stan Heath, South Florida.  The five bottom-feeder Big East programs have all changed coaches in the last two years… except one — South Florida’s Stan Heath.  Heath enters his fifth season in Tampa with a total of one winning season and 19 Big East victories.  After putting together a solid 20-13 season resulting in an NIT appearance in his third year at the helm, USF backslid significantly last year to a 10-23 (3-15 Big East) mess.  Even at a school where basketball isn’t taken very seriously, a coach cannot expect to finish at or near the bottom of the standings of a 16-team league regularly and expect to stay employed very long.  He returns a verified talent in Gus Gilchrist in the post, but the Bulls don’t have a legitimate point guard and will spend this season shuttling around between different venues while the Sun Dome is refurbished.  If he’s not careful, the playing facility may not be the only new thing in USF hoops a year from now.

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1. Rally the troops! Sound the Horn of Nerdfighting and CHARGE! The ESPN/USA Today Preseason Top-25 poll has been released! The Southeastern Conference has four members on the list: Kentucky at #2 (with one 1st place vote), Vanderbilt at #7, Florida at #10 and Alabama at #17. (Future SEC member Texas A&M checks in at #19.) Mississippi State was the only other SEC school receiving votes from the coaches.
2. Returning all five starters helped Vanderbilt garner their highest Preseason Top-25 ranking since 1965. Those 1965-66 Commodores, led by legendary coach Roy Skinner, were coming off their first NCAA Tournament Elite Eight appearance. This year’s Vanderbilt team has been upset in the past two NCAA Tournaments, leaving some observers to doubt their ability to make a serious run for the NCAA title. Others, such as CBS Sportsline’s Gary Parrish thinks Vandy had enough offensive talent and experience to advance further than the First Second Round. (Our very own Brian Joyce should soon have an interesting analysis of Vandy’s ability to succeed in the postseason. Keep yer eyes peeled!)
3. After many years of success and orange body paint, it seems strange not seeing Tennessee listed on this Preseason Top 25 list. Their omission is understandable: Hitting the reset button to expunge the Bruce Pearl era, new Volunteers head coach Cuonzo Martin faces a strong schedule with a hodge-podge of athletic players who don’t exactly fit his system. After many years of being the big hounds on the block, Vols fans will need to change to root for the underdogs of the SEC East. One way to start will be getting ticket sales back on track.
4. Mississippi State basketball fans have more to look forward to than a fitter Renardo Sidney and a team that has the potential to make all sort of noise come March. This is the 100th season of Bulldog basketball! (Please, don’t ring all your cowbells at once. It’s early.) The MSU Athletic Department has compiled a list of twenty All-Century team members: modern members include the versatile Mario Austin, incredible marksman Dontae’ Jones and swat-machines Jarvis Varnado and Erick Dampier. MSU fans can select the starting five from all these All-Century team members and the top five greatest games of Mississippi State history. Sounds like a fun start to a great year’s worth of events.
5. Early in the 2011-12 team practice season there still remains more questions than answers for South Carolina. With only nine scholarship players, Coach Darrin Horn admitted to the media on Wednesday that he has yet to find a starting five players for his team. Horn’s challenge, he says, is that he has seven players that could start on any given night. The USC blog Garnet and Black Attack has speculated on a regular starting rotation that includes improving sophomore center/forward Damontre Harris and highly-regarded freshmen shooting guard Damien Leonard. The Gamecocks are currently practicing without point guard Bruce Ellington as he finishes the season for the Gamecock football team. With Ellington’s role on the football team possibly increasing due to the season-ending injury to running back Marcus Lattimore, Coach Horn may not know how much he will be able to play Ellington once he rejoins the basketball team. Horn is currently encouraged by the offensive effectiveness he’s seen in practice thus far but reincorporating his only returning experienced scorer remains a mystery.

1. Boston Globe – Conference realignment gets old really quickly, but the Globe’s piece on the politicking that went on related to the addition of Pittsburgh and Syracuse is a must-read. We’ll certainly have more analysis up on the piece later in the day, but suffice it to say Boston College’s Athletic Director Gene DeFilippo went out of his way to shoot Connecticut down, and even has a quote about ESPN being behind everything. Conspiracy theorists unite!
2. Charlotte Observer – Unfortunately, the rumors are true and Michael Jordan will not be North Carolina’s honorary captain for the Carrier Classic. However, Jordan’s college teammate James Worthy will be joining fellow Laker great Magic Johnson to celebrate their respective alma maters in the first of what is to become an annual event. Jordan told Roy Williams he has a personal conflict he can’t escape, but Worthy is certainly a fine replacement. He played on the 1982 championship squad with Jordan before having his jersey retired to the rafters of the Dean Dome. The game is set for November 11 in San Diego.
3. Raleigh News and Observer – Speaking of conference realignment, Scott Fowler got hold of ACC Commissioner John Swofford to talk about the recent alignment news. An interesting tidbit from the article is that while Swofford was playing football for North Carolina, South Carolina dropped out of the ACC, leaving the conference with only seven members. With the additions of Pitt and Syracuse, the conference is up to a whopping 14 members and still maintains the intentionally ambiguous assertion that the ACC “is not philosophically opposed to going to 16 [teams].” Let’s just hope that the conference may not be philosophically opposed but is opposed in practice, as 16 teams would make college basketball scheduling a lopsided disaster.
4. Winston Salem Journal – Jeff Bzdelik is doing his best to restore enthusiasm for Wake Forest‘s program. This year for Black and Gold Madness he’s tapping into the rich resources of basketball alumni like Chris Paul, Randolph Childress, Tim Duncan and Josh Howard to play in an alumni game with Duncan and Howard coaching. “We invited everybody who ever wore a uniform,” Bzdelik said to emphasize the importance of all Wake Forest alumni. The Demon Deacons have already picked up one recruit this month. Hopefully events like this will help refill the talent over the next couple of years in Winston-Salem.
5. The Chronicle – Duke‘s student paper is the latest to do an in-depth look at the school’s compliance staff, leading me to believe college students are reading each other’s newspapers (relatively unlikely) or compliance staff members are easy interviews to get. All joking aside, this is another valuable look at the people behind one of the most critical parts of an athletic department that usually only brings bad news to fans.Author’s Note: the above link is for the fourth and final part of the series, but has links to the other three parts.

ESPN.com had an interesting series of stories that went up today regarding various folks’ favorite college basketball arenas to visit and the toughest ones to play in.  As always when you read blurbs of primary source information, it’s enlightening to see the reasoning behind their choices.  For example, we never knew that NC State’s old home was such an ACC snake pit, but ESPN commentators Jay Bilas and Hubert Davis both independently cited Reynolds Coliseum as the toughest arena they ever played in. Davis even claimed that he never scored “on the opposite basket away from our bench in the first half” due to the flustered situation he found himself in all four years he visited Raleigh.

A number of media types also weighed in with their favorite places to experience a game, and several of the old faithfuls represent well here — Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium (3 votes), Kansas’ Allen Fieldhouse (2 votes) and the world’s most famous arena, Madison Square Garden (2 votes) — along with a few other tried-and-trues including Oklahoma State’s Gallagher-Iba Arena, Stanford’s Maples Pavilion, Penn’s Palestra, and UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion (1 vote each).  But it was the list provided by Dana O’Neil (excellent usage of “sepia,” by the way) from her interviews of several head coaches back in July on the recruiting trail that really caught our eye. First, here’s her list:

Fifteen prominent coaches chose nine different arenas between them.  Three of those are already retired to the dustbin of history, and three others are clearly a personal house of horrors to specific coaches.  Not many people in this business will choose a place like Murray State Arena over somewhere like the Kohl Center or Breslin Arena, but Big Ten coach Bruce Weber did.  The remaining joints are again places we’re all familiar with as incredibly difficult to walk out with a win, but we quickly noticed that there was something peculiar about the responses among O’Neil’s interviewees.  Take a closer look — of the 15 coaches, only one of them gave an answer that includes a site where his team must regularly play games.

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News leaked on Tuesday night that the NCAA will hit Bruce Pearl with a three-year “show cause” penalty for his role in facilitating and later lying about numerous violations while acting as the Tennessee head basketball coach from 2005-11.  We all remember the story of NCAA investigators presenting Pearl with a photograph of current Ohio State point guard Aaron Craft standing next to him at his own cookout, and his subsequent disavowal of knowledge of such a thing.  But his transgressions were considerably more than that incident alone — it was the systematic and rather clumsy attempts at a subsequent cover-up that ultimately doomed the jocular head coach to the harsh penalty he faces today.  Here’s the relevant statement from the NCAA’s 21-page Infractions Report:

A Scene at Pearl's Home, Apparently (credit: KSR)

From the 2008-09 academic year through June 14, 2010, the former head men’s basketball coach acted contrary to the principle of ethical conduct when he knowingly engaged in violations of NCAA recruiting legislation and failed to deport himself in accordance with the generally recognized high standards of honesty and sportsmanship normally associated with the conduct and administration of intercollegiate athletics by providing false and misleading information to the institution and the enforcement staff and by attempting to influence others to furnish the institution and enforcement staff false and misleading information concerning their involvement in or knowledge of matters relevant to a violation of an NCAA regulation.

Ouch.  Once again, the lesson learned from an organization in an authoritative position is that the cover-up carries more weight than the actual crime.

What does this really mean, though?  It seems as if most commentators are interpreting this as an effective banishment of Pearl from the NCAA for the next several years as a direct result of carrying a cheetos-colored letter on his chest, but a reading of the fine print of the NCAA’s report shows that this isn’t true.  Mike DeCourcy points out in an article today that the “show cause” is one of the most misunderstood penalties that the NCAA has at its disposal.  Even a spectacularly reliable source such as Wikipedia states in its first sentence about such a penalty that “a coach involved in major rules violations at a university’s athletic program may not be hired by any other NCAA member institutions without permission from the Infractions Committee for a set period of time.”

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Throughout the summer RTC contributors Zach Hayes and Brian Otskey will discuss the hot topics — or whatever comes to mind — around each major conference in college basketball.  This week, they tackle the SEC.  For the entire summer series focusing on each of the six power conferences, click here.

Brian: While football dominates the conversation when it comes to the SEC, most basketball fans know there is some quality hoops played in this league as well. The 2011-12 version of SEC basketball is no exception as three teams (Kentucky, Vanderbilt and Florida) should be top 25 mainstays while a fourth (Alabama) has the potential to make quite a bit of noise in its own right and crack the rankings. New coaches begin major rebuilding projects at Arkansas and Tennessee while LSU and Auburn should improve from disastrous seasons. There’s a renewed sense of optimism at Mississippi State but Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina have to start over after losing key contributors from last year. The SEC looks to be a very strong league at the top but full of intrigue from #1 to #12.

The Overall Top Four SEC Teams Will Receive SEC Tourney Byes Next Season

Perhaps the biggest news this offseason was the decision to scrap the East/West divisional format and rank the teams 1 through 12. In my opinion, this is the best setup and will result in better balance throughout the conference. However, the SEC athletic directors did not change the scheduling format for this coming year at their spring meetings back in early June. If it were up to me, I would have done away with the divisions and changed the schedule at the same time. What we will have this year is akin to what the Big 12 used for years before losing two of its members. While that isn’t the end of the world, it’s a bigger deal in the SEC. The three strongest teams resided in what was the East division while many of the weaker programs competed in the SEC West. With the scheduling format remaining the same for one more year, Alabama looks to be the biggest beneficiary. The Crimson Tide will play 10 games against Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Mississippi and Mississippi State while seeing Florida, Kentucky and Vanderbilt only once. While some of the West schools should be a bit better than they were, none will come close to matching what the top three East clubs bring to the table. Alabama went 12-4 in conference play last year and that would have been good enough for second place in the new setup. Does anyone really think Alabama was the second best team in the conference last season? I have nothing against Alabama but that simply wasn’t the case. I just don’t see why the conference ADs made this knee-jerk decision to dump the divisions without changing the schedule. Waiting one year and working it all out would have been the better approach. The East teams will benefit from playing each other twice (better RPI) but I’d like to see the league go to an 18-game schedule eventually. The rumblings about a true round-robin 22-game slate sound nice, but 22 conference games seems like too much to me. I’d label that as good in theory but unrealistic in a 12-team league.

My pick to win the league is Kentucky. John Calipari brings in his best recruiting class ever with four 5-star players heading to Lexington. With returnees Terrence Jones, Doron Lamb, Darius Miller and Eloy Vargas on board, UK is primed for a monster season. I expect Marquis Teague to take the reins at the point fairly easily while Anthony Davis and Kyle Wiltjer headline the front court. Kentucky also has the luxury of the versatile Jones who, with added strength and quickness, can expand his game even further. He’s got an incredible shooting touch for a man of his size but I’m more interested to see how much better he gets in the paint with Davis now by his side to relieve some of the pressure. Despite all of this, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist may be Calipari’s best recruit. This kid is the type of player that scouts drool over, able to slash and take it inside or step out and knock down a mid-range shot. He needs to work on his shooting from behind the arc but Kidd-Gilchrist is an incredible athlete who will contribute right away on the defensive end as well as on the glass. Kidd-Gilchrist will bring a strong work ethic and commitment towards getting better to Kentucky and the Wildcats will reap the benefits all season long. I expect Kentucky to be one of the few national championship contenders despite all of their youth.

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Who’s Got Next? is a bi-weekly column by Josh Paunil, the RTC recruiting guru. We encourage you to check out his website dedicated solely to college basketball recruiting, National Recruiting Spotlight, for more detailed recruiting information. Twice a week he will bring you an overview of what’s going on in the complex world of recruiting, from who is signing where among the seniors to who the hot prospects are in the lower levels of the sport. If you have any suggestions as to areas we’re missing, please let us know at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

Introduction

The stars were out to shine this weekend as the best players in the country went at it during the Pangos All-American Camp. The top two prep players in the country, centers Andre Drummond (#1) and Isaiah Austin (#2 — Baylor) put on a show Friday and two of the best power forwards in the country, Mitch McGary and Robert Carter (#34), battled it out at the Under Armour Best of the Best Camp. However, amidst all the big men competing against each other, one wing player stole the show at Pangos and showed why he could be considered the best player in the Class of 2012. There is also a lot of new news today regarding new lists, new timetables and when top prospects will take visits so make sure you don’t miss the latest Who’s Got Next? column.

What They’re Saying

Five-time NBA All-Star Joe Johnson has many great things to say about Archie Goodwin (#19).

• Atlanta Hawks guard Joe Johnson on junior Archie Goodwin (#19): “Archie’s gonna be a special player. I think he’s far ahead of where I was going into the 12th grade, so I was really surprised. He makes great plays that can’t be taught. The sky’s gonna be the limit.”
• Sonny Parker on where his son, sophomore Jabari Parker (Watch List), wants to play college: “I asked him if he had a top five, and he said, ‘Dad, wherever I’m going to get an opportunity to play.’ Let’s put it this way, he’s an elite player, and he’s going to go to an elite school. Whatever school he goes to, I know he wants to win a national championship.”
• Junior Justin Anderson (#45) who he’s recruiting: “I’m really working on [class of 2012 point guard] L.J. Rose (#20)… we’re trying to get him at my high school (Montrose Christian) and at UVA. Right now, we’re really pushing for him.”
• Junior Shabazz Muhammad (#3) on who he’s been talking to lately: “I talked to [Arizona head] coach [Sean] Miller two days ago, I talked to [Duke head] coach [Mike] Krzyzewski two days ago, I’ve been e-mailing [Kentucky head] coach [John] Calipari, I talked to [UCLA head] coach [Ben] Howland, I talked to Memphis.” On his visit to Arizona: “I enjoyed myself a lot, it was a great experience for me. All in all it was a great time and I had a great experience their.”
• Junior Anthony Bennett on the schools that are recruiting him the hardest: “Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Connecticut, West Virginia, Florida.” On when he will make a decision: “Probably late next year.”
• Sophomore star Nerlens Noel (Watch List) on a timetable for hist list: “I think I’m going to put out a list by the fall, maybe after this summer.”

What the Ellis Family is Saying

Do you see the resemblance between Grant Hill and Perry Ellis (#10)? Coach K does.

Fonda Ellis, the mother of Class of 2012 power forward Perry Ellis (#10) said many interesting things a couple of days ago when she talked to National Recruiting Spotlight about her son’s interest in Duke (to see more analysis of this make sure you check out the “What You Missed” section). Perry also said a couple of noteworthy things so we compiled the best quotes that the two recently said.

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Yesterday the twelve SEC head basketball coaches voted to remove the east/west divisional format from their league.  Pending what amounts to a rubber-stamping approval process from the league presidents, the conference could move to a standard twelve-team format as utilized by the other major basketball leagues as soon as next season.  The impetus for this change has been the serious imbalance between the two divisions for a while now.  In 2010-11, five SEC East teams were invited to the NCAA Tournament (versus none from the SEC West), and in 2009-10, four SEC East teams received golden tickets while its western counterparts were left at home.  To put an exclamation point on it, in the last five seasons, a whopping 18 SEC East teams have been invited to go dancing (out of 30 possible bids) against only five from the much-weaker West division.

The SEC is Trying to Avoid 12-4 Teams Like Alabama Left Out of the NCAAs

The SEC coaches know that NCAA bids are where they earn their paychecks and job security, so they’re seeking better ways to position themselves to get more teams into March Madness.  What was once a consistent six-bid league has fallen to an average of four the last three seasons, and as already discussed, the vast majority of those are coming from one division.  The idea to have a single conference race where schools are ranked and seeded for the conference tournament #1 to #12 is highly dubious given unbalanced scheduling (the intra-divisional teams will stay play each other twice in 2011-12) — does Alabama’s 12-4 mark (8-2 against the SEC West) from last season correlate to Kentucky’s 10-6 record (7-3 against the tougher SEC East)?  From an NCAA profile perspective, is it better for a school to tout its status as #1 in the SEC West or #5 overall, as Mississippi State (9-7) dealt with two seasons ago?  Fourth versus fifth place may not matter much in a deep league like the Big East, but in the SEC, it could mean the difference between caviar dreams in the NCAA Tournament or franks n’ beans in the NIT. 

Along the lines of those questions, we thought it might be interesting to examine the last two SEC Tournaments through the old and new formats to determine if the coaches’ stated goal to create more NCAA bid opportunities for the league makes better sense without divisions.  The brackets on the left hand side represent the old divisional format (#1 to #6 in both divisions), while the brackets on the right represent the new format (#1 to #12 regardless of division).   NCAA bubble teams in both years are signified in red.       

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1. By Michigan State standards, last year was a tough one to say the least. They could use some good fortune, but they’ll have to wait a little longer. Yesterday they learned that Russell Byrd, a 6’7 freshman guard with reliable three-point range who missed last season with a left foot injury, will have surgery on that same foot tomorrow. He should be back and ready in time for the start of practice in October, but MSU had hoped to have Byrd healthy and up to speed by now.
2. Penn State has hired former South Carolina and Vanderbilt head coach Eddie Fogler to assist with their coaching search. You know, ’cause he helped with previous coaching searches at…Auburn and Georgia Tech. Yeah. Can you imagine this call from PSU AD Tim Curley to former coach Fogler? Curley: “Hey, Eddie, you know we have a coaching vacancy here, right?” Fogler: “Yeeeees…” Curley: “Well, we were wondering if…” Fogler (smiling in anticipation): “YEEEESSSS??” Curley: “Do you know anyone who might be interested?”
3. “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” Couldn’t agree more with the great Lefty Driesell, who was inducted into the Southern Conference Hall of Fame this past Tuesday. Before moving on to Maryland, Driesell posted a 176-65 record at Davidson over nine seasons, went to the Sweet 16 three times and the Elite Eight twice, won five regular season titles and three conference tournament crowns. He hasn’t totally removed that coaching hat — he regularly advises his son Chuck, head coach at The Citadel. Chuck’s choice for the most important piece of advice his father has given him: “Recruit daily or perish.”
4. Ryan Harrow decided to leave North Carolina State after his freshman year and the ouster of Sidney Lowe, and late last night he decided that he’ll head to Lexington and play for Kentucky. The 6’0 and 160-pound point guard was rated as the 39th-best overall player on the ESPNU 100 for 2010, and the eighth-best point guard. He averaged 9.3 PPG and 3.3 APG for the Wolfpack in his only season there, and led the team with a 1.9 assist-to-turnover ratio. He’ll sit out the 2011-12 season while learning to guard the likes of Marquis Teague and Doron Lamb in practice every day, and will eligible to play in 2012-13.
5. Four years ago, North Carolina mascot Jason Ray was hit by a car and killed right in front of the team hotel in New Jersey before his team’s NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 game. He was an organ donor. Because of that, he helped save the lives of four people. One of them was Ronald Griffin of Franklin Township, New Jersey, who received Ray’s heart. Griffin lived for four more years. That’s four more birthdays, four more NCAA Tournaments, four more anniversaries, four more whatevers — and everything in between. 1,461 more days he got to enjoy the privilege of breathing, walking, perceiving. Mr. Griffin, who became a big Tar Heel fan after learning whose heart he received, died this week, aged 62. We have nothing to add to this, other than to express our condolences to Mr. Griffin’s family, and our respect to Jason Ray.

It’s always interesting to see the numbers when the NCAA releases its annual attendance figures for the prior season.  After all, ticket sales are still what drives the operating budget of most of these schools, and if a coach can’t consistently put fannies in the seats, he’s unlikely to have a job for very long.  The NCAA’s figures, though, mostly deal in the aggregate: A total of 27.6 million fans attending Division I men’s basketball games;  the usual suspects, Kentucky, Syracuse, North Carolina and Louisville, leading the way; the Big East cracking the three million mark with its sixteen-team lineup.  While it’s interesting to know that those schools and leagues are getting massive numbers of people through the turnstiles, it doesn’t really tell us the whole story without the subcontext of arena size.  Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium is the classic example — Duke ranks #48 in total home attendance (158,338 fans), but that figure represents 17 home dates at 100% capacity (9,314 fans each game) — so the truth here is that demand for seats within CIS far equals (or more likely, outstrips) availability.  Let’s take a look at some of the schools in the NCAA’s top 100 from the perspective of that alternate reality.

Changes things a little, right?  Twenty-one of the top 100 schools in average attendance were at 90% or higher in capacity last season.  And although some of the bigger arenas such as those at Kentucky (#3), Louisville (#8) and Memphis (#19) are still represented, this metric gives some love to the smaller-capacity schools like K-State (#1), Gonzaga (#5), Wichita State (#7) and others who consistently sold out (or nearly did so) every night the home team took the floor.  Some extra props need to go to the high-mids who support their teams through thick and thin, as seven of the top 21 on this list came from non-BCS conferences.

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