Forde Minutes: Where Is the Next Wave of Elite Coaches?

This isn’t a season (or an era) for the younger phenoms, which hasn’t always been the case.

Forty names, games, teams and minutiae making news in college basketball, where it’s time to at least consider the possibility of Northwestern and Pittsburgh winning the Big Ten and ACC, respectively:

FIRST HALF: Story lines for the final stretch

SECOND HALF

NO COUNTRY FOR YOUNG MEN

While the sport has lost some older coaching fixtures in recent years in Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams and Jay Wright, their places in the pecking order have not been filled by fast-rising youngsters. In 2022–23, at least, the upper echelon of the sport is the province of middle-aged (at least) coaches who have built their resumes over time.

Here’s your age-and-experience breakdown of the head coaches occupying Ken Pomeroy’s top 25 as of Monday morning:

Eight in their 60s, with 68-year-old Rick Barnes (22) of Tennessee the oldest by a year over Houston’s Kelvin Sampson.

Twelve in their 50s, ranging from 59-year-old Brad Underwood (23) of Illinois to 50-year-old Danny Hurley of Connecticut.

Five in their 40s. Iowa State’s T.J. Otzelberger (24) is the kid of the bunch at 45 1/2, checking in five months younger than Marquette’s Shaka Smart.

Average age: 55.6. That would skew even higher if 69-year-old Bob Huggins’ West Virginia team were 25th instead of 26th. And Miami, coached by 73-year-old Jim Larranaga, isn’t far outside at No. 31.

Average years experience as a Division I head coach: 15.4. That number does not take into account 64-year-old Mike Woodson and 58-year-old Eric Musselman’s tenures as pro head coaches, or Sampson and 62-year-old Bruce Pearl’s time at lower levels of college ball.

Brianna Paciorka/News Sentinel/USA Today Network

Even the top 25 guys just getting started as head coaches aren’t very young: second-year Arizona leader Tommy Lloyd (25) is 48, and Kansas State rookie boss Jerome Tang is 56. They paid a lot of dues as assistants to fixtures Mark Few at Gonzaga and Scott Drew at Baylor, respectively.

The highest-ranked head coach younger than 45 checks in at No. 32. That’s 41-year-old Mike Boynton of Oklahoma State. The highest-ranked coach younger than 40 is two spots below that, 35-year-old Jon Scheyer of Duke (26).

Where is the next wave of elite coaches? Overlooked? Lacking upward mobility? Nonexistent?

This isn’t a season (or an era) for the younger phenoms, which hasn’t always been the case. Eight national titles have been won by coaches in their 30s (most recently Jim Valvano in 1983), and several all-time greats won their first championship by 45 (Krzyzewski, Rick Pitino, Tom Izzo, Billy Donovan, Bill Self). Bob Knight won three of them by age 46.

Unless, say, 48-year-old Nate Oats (27) breaks through this year with Alabama or Lloyd does it with Arizona, chances are we will have another coach in his 50s or 60s cutting down the nets in Houston. Only two of the past 13 national championships were won by coaches in their 40s at the time (Kevin Ollie at UConn and Tony Bennett at Virginia).

Contrast that with college football, where the playoff era has seen more precocious champions. Kirby Smart has gone back-to-back at Georgia at the age of 47, Dabo Swinney won two nattys in his 40s and Jimbo Fisher won one. (The counterpoint there, of course, is that Nick Saban dominated the sport in his late 50s and 60s.)

There currently seems to be a greater willingness to toss the keys to good jobs at a younger coach in college football than college basketball. Lincoln Riley and Ryan Day took over Oklahoma and Ohio State in their 30s; Smart was hired at Georgia at age 40; last year Notre Dame and Oregon both hired 35-year-olds in Marcus Freeman and Dan Lanning.

It’s undoubtedly easier to make a name for oneself as a football assistant than a basketball assistant. Coordinators are high-profile, high-paying positions, and successful ones are quickly touted as geniuses. Given the pursuit of schematic advantage—to use a Charlie Weis line—the path is clearer for a 32-year-old (Kenny Dillingham at Arizona State) to take over a power-conference program in football than in basketball.

It also could be that the young hires for elite jobs in college hoops either haven’t fared as well lately (Archie Miller was 39 when he got to Indiana) or are just getting started (Scheyer and 38-year-old Kyle Neptune at Villanova). Matt Painter, Sean Miller (28) and Mick Cronin (29) were 30-somethings in charge of quality programs once, too—they just weren’t winning titles at that age.

They might be ready to do it now, in their 50s. College basketball in 2023 is being led by both older players and older coaches.

WHEN THE CHAMPIONSHIP CELEBRATION COMES WITH A *

Craig Greenberg, the new mayor of Louisville (30), scored political points on a backdoor layup last week by hanging a banner outside Metro Hall downtown that reasserts the Cardinals as the 2013 NCAA champions*. The title may be vacated, but it shall be remembered by a fan base that is still trying to keep its NCAA investigations and punishments straight.

The point here, of course, is that no such banner can hang inside Louisville’s home arena, the KFC Yum Center, since the original was taken down as part of sanctions for the infamous sex-workers-in-the-basketball-dorm scandal. (Also known as former point guard and staff member Andre McGee’s last and worst assist as a Cardinal.) The school reached an agreement with the NCAA on what wording it could put on a new banner, and “Final Coaches Poll #1” went into the rafters last weekend as a plant-based substitute for the meat and potatoes of “NCAA Champion.”

This was instructive for a percentage of chesty, unenlightened fans who have spent years declaring that the school should re-raise the banner in direct defiance of the NCAA, because what are they going to do about it? The answer, from athletic director Josh Heird, was that doing so could get the school dragged back in front of the NCAA Committee on Infractions to face new sanctions. So, no.

This is the compromise solution. Playing the bellicose victim card, while fun for some in theory, has its limitations in the real world.

The banner hoopla happened in concert with the school welcoming back that 2013 team for a 10th anniversary celebration, which coincided with the best moment of the season by far for the moribund Cardinals, who upset tailspinning Clemson to improve to 4–23. In a season of lose-lose-lose, this was a win-win Saturday.

For years, people have scoffed at the notion of vacated victories (31) as any sort of real NCAA penalty. In fact, this penalty was real and painful for a proud fanbase. The embarrassment of having the only vacated men’s basketball national title was profound, and the ongoing inability to fully recognize that team remains a sore point in Louisville. Those sanctions do matter.

The rest of the story: The banner on display downtown was a replica of the original, but not the original, The Minutes was told. The real banner was stored in an office when the sanctions were handed down in 2017, and remains somewhere within the confines of the Louisville athletic department. It’s not quite consigned to the dustbin of history, but it’s out of sight and out of celebration circulation.

SWEEPS MONTH

Sometimes the difference between dancing and NITing is the ability to beat one key opponent twice. A Minutes quartet of opportune sweeps that were finalized in February:

Kentucky (32) sweeping Tennessee. The Wildcats would not be in the tournament without having the Volunteers’ number. This hasn’t been a good Kentucky team defensively—except when playing the Vols. In two losses to Big Blue, Tennessee averaged 55 points while making nine of 48 three-pointers and 11 of 24 free throws. That’s 18.8% from three and 45.8% from the line, compared to the Vols’ season percentages of 32.2 and 71.5.

Oklahoma State (33) sweeping Iowa State. The Cowboys went from outside the bracket to perhaps a No. 9 or 10 seed at the moment in no small part by beating the Cyclones in Stillwater in January and in Ames Feb. 11. The January win was especially big, with Iowa State running hot at that point and Oklahoma State barely above .500. The Pokes trailed by as many as 16 points and didn’t take their first lead until 3:09 remaining.

Nevada (34) sweeping New Mexico. The difference between one Mountain West team being in the bracket and the other being out—temporarily, in both instances—might be the four points that decided these two thrilling meetings. The Wolf Pack won a controversial first meeting at home in double overtime, in part thanks to a questionable flagrant foul call, then backed it up with a Kenan Blackshear paint jumper that bounced twice and rolled in at the buzzer.

Pittsburgh (35) sweeping North Carolina. The Panthers have other wins that now mean more on the resume (at Northwestern and North Carolina State, and home against Virginia and Miami), but at the time these were huge. Pitt beat the Tar Heels at home by two on Dec. 30, with Blake Hinson hitting the go-ahead three with 1:28 left. In Chapel Hill on Feb. 1, Jamarius Burton made two pressurized free throws with three seconds left for a one-point win.

ROSTER OF THE WEEK

Each week, The Minutes highlights a team that has found a way to construct a winning roster during these transient times in the sport. This week’s subject: Oral Roberts (36), which is 25–4 on the season.

The single most important aspect of the Golden Eagles’ success was who didn’t transfer. After scoring 24.5 points per game for the Cinderella ORU team that advanced to the 2021 NCAA tournament Sweet Sixteen, diminutive scoring dynamo Max Abmas seemed like a prime candidate for an upgrade to a more prominent program. But he stayed and has now scored 2,457 points at ORU, fourth among active D-I players.

The key imports that have joined Abmas: 7’4” perimeter threat Connor Vanover, who arrived from Arkansas and is averaging 12.4 points, 7.1 rebounds, 3.4 blocks and more than one made three per game; Isaac McBride, averaging 12.4 points and shooting 43 perform from three in his second season after transferring from Vanderbilt; and UT-Arlington transfer Patrick Mwamba, second on the team in rebounds at 5.7 per game.

The other key retention: coach Paul Mills, now in his sixth season at ORU.

STAT OF THE WEEK

“Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest…”

That’s author Joseph Heller in the novel Catch-22, describing the remarkably unremarkable character Major Major. It also describes Florida (37) basketball over the past five seasons.

The Gators are 88–65 in that time, 45–39 in the SEC. Never bad, rarely great … just lacking distinction. Over the past two seasons, with two different head coaches, they are a dead-even 16–16 in league play. They have neither won nor lost more than three SEC games in a row since February 2019. They have floated inconspicuously between No. 20 and No. 60 in the Pomeroy Ratings for 124 of the last 133 games, occasionally nudging inside the top 20 early in the season before sliding back out.

They currently are on the wrong side of the bubble, as they were last year, after being on the right side of it in 2021 and ’19. Florida’s only moments of distinction were in the 2021 NCAA tournament, when it followed a thrilling overtime win over Virginia Tech in the first round with an upset loss to Oral Roberts—balancing out those brief fluctuations of the excitement meter.

Perhaps Wednesday, Florida can distinguish itself at home against Kentucky, a game the Gators badly need to stay in the tourney conversation. If it doesn’t work out, maybe they can shoot for a 9–9 SEC regular-season record and a 16–16 record overall.

COACH WHO EARNED HIS COMP CAR

Tom Izzo (38), Michigan State. Everything the man has said and done since the horrific (yet appallingly routine) gun violence on the East Lansing campus last week has underscored how much he means to the school and how much the school means to him. He’s been a leader, a consoler and a rallyer when Michigan State needed one.

COACH WHO SHOULD TAKE THE BUS TO WORK

Dana Altman (39), Oregon. Losing both ends of a Washington trip, and three games in a row, has backed the Ducks off the bubble. Currently in sixth place in the Pac-12 with three games to play, Oregon might need to win four games in four days in the league tournament to go dancing.

BUZZER BEATER

When thirsty in the basketball holy land of Bloomington, Ind., The Minutes always recommends finding any and all products from locally based Upland Brewery (40). The Dragonfly IPA is a staple, but also check out the Juiced In Time hazy IPA and thank The Minutes later.

FIRST HALF: Story lines for the final stretch