The Prodigy Theory of Coaching

and South Carolina isn’t one of them. Everything runs through Tennessee, then Vanderbilt, then UGA most years. Still too early in my opinion if Kentucky can be a perennial power in women’s basketball but Matthew Mitchell deserves huge props since everything goes through John Calipari in Lexington.

What about Jen Rizzotti? She’s been at Hartford every year since 1999 when she was just 25 years old and she’s gotten them to five NCAA berths. The knock on her is that she hasn’t coached a team past the 2nd round of the NCAA, but she’s at a mid major. Rizzotti’s still young by head coaching standards, and I wonder why she hasn’t gotten a serious ring for some major conference jobs.. I don’t see any point in her having to wait for Geno to retire or go to a men’s college team if she’s eyeing the UConn job, since he should be coaching for at least another 10-15 years.

I just chose ten coaches that were in successful programs with less than 10 years tenure. Not much thought put into it. Nikki Caldwell – and as pilight mentioned, Dawn Staley – are doing quite well and are good examples.

As for the men’s game, it would interesting to do a study on that – but it ain’t going to be me what does it!

If a team is used to success, they expect it to continue. Plain and simple.

Pat Summitt would likely be pressured to retire if Tennessee can’t continue its run of success. As hard as it sounds, we’d see “Let Go of Geno” signs in Connecticut if they have a couple of truly mediocre (WNIT or worse) seasons in a row. Duke would fire Coach P if it happens. Even at programs that aren’t as good as these three, they still will fire the coach if things happen.

The only place I can think of where a perennial losing coach was fired way too late was at the Air Force Academy last year where the coach had 90 some wins in 10 years, and that can be attributed to the fact that the Air Force Academy plays in the Mountain West Conference, where the top programs are Top 25 teams most seasons, and also because service academies’ recruiting is hampered because almost no top 150 recruit wants to play at a college with a very structured lifestyle plus the five years of service after commissioning (not to be confused with enlisting). The other two D-I service academies, The US Military Academy and the US Naval Academy play in the Patriot League and their teams aren’t among the top of the league most years either, but they are at least competitive in their leagues more often than not…. I wouldn’t use Air Force as an example of a school that doesn’t care about its women’s sports, and that would be because of the reasons I mentioned above. But I guess my rambling is to say that women’s teams coaches are gonna be scrutinized and they will be on the clock to improve results on the court and hopefully for attendance too.

22 different head coaches have won at least one title. And here’s the theory put again to the test.

Prodigy Theory of Coaching: Coaches who have been head coaches at Division I [men’s] basketball programs for over fifteen years and haven’t won NCAA championships will never win an NCAA championship.

Average time to achieve 1st national championship: on average, these coaches achieved their first national championship in their 15th season. This number includes Steve Fisher, who won his national championship at Michigan in 1989, but he was named head coach right before the NCAA tournament when his predecessor was fired. If you take Fisher out, a coach won a national championship in his 15.7th season. So the theory barely holds, if at all. In addition, five coaches won their first national title after their 20th season. They are:

1. Dean Smith won his first national title in 1982 with UNC, and it was his 21st season as a head coach. He went on to win the 1993 national championship as well. Perhaps John Wooden was partly to blame.

2. Jerry Tarkanian won the 1990 title with UNLV, and it was his 22nd season. Given that he was coaching a team that wasn’t in a sexy league, that could have played a part as to why it took him awhile. He did get his first final four in his 9th season coaching in 1977.

3. Jim Calhoun won his first national title in 1999 with Connecticut, in his 27th year as a head coach. Calhoun spent his first 14 years at Northeastern, a mid-major school where the Huskies enjoyed some NCAA dance berths, but that was as far as the program would go. At UConn, he had to turn around a regional power and what was then the school’s flagship sport that went through four consecutive losing seasons, turn it back to a regional power with some deep runs in the dance like in 1990 when they hit the Elite Eight, and the consistent NCAA runs made UConn the Top 10 national power it is now. So in short, no way Calhoun could’ve won a national title any earlier than 1990.

4. Gary Williams won his national title in 2002 with Maryland in his 24th season. He spent about three to four years each at American, Boston College, and Ohio State before returning to his alma mater, where he had to go through the aftermath of the Len Bias ordeal, plus rebounding a program that went through NCAA violations, and he turned their team around into a perennial Top 20 team in the late ’90’s through the early 2000’s. Maryland however is a traditional middle of the pack ACC team, and since the 2002 title, the program hasn’t been able to continue that same success, but nevertheless, Gary is a hell of a coach, especially in games. Hard to say if Gary could have won a title earlier.

5. Jim Boeheim won his national title in 2003 with Syracuse in his 27th season. He got them through I believe two other final four appearances before, but for whatever reason, his teams don’t perform as well in the dance as most of their fans would hope more often than not. He’s still a great coach, but he isn’t the coach I’d want for March Madness.

Other trends I saw:
1. The 22 coaches who won a men’s Division I basketball championship between 1982 and 2010 got to their first Final Four at an average of their 9.6th season, and their 10th season without Steve Fisher. The coaches who spent over 20 years before their first Final Four were Calhoun who got it in his 27th season in 1999 (the same year he won the national title), and Gary Williams who got it in his 23rd season in 2001.

2. Seven of the 22 coaches did not spend any years as assistant coaches at a Division I program as far as I can see on Wikipedia (Jim Valvano, John Thompson, Jr., Larry Brown, Jerry Tarkanian, Nolan Richardon, Lute Olson, and Jim Calhoun). Two only spent one year (Rollie Massimino and Mike Krzyzewski).

3. Only five coaches spent 10 or more years as a Division I assistant (Denny Crum, Steve Fisher, and Roy Williams all spent 10 years each; Tubby Smith spent 12 years; and Tom Izzo spent 16 years as an assistant coach). Basically, most of the coaches that win a national title haven’t spent too much time as an assistant. Those who did spent considerable time at a national power. Crum was at UCLA for awhile, Fisher was at Michigan for about 7 years I’d like to say, Roy Williams was at UNC for 10 years (before going to KU), and Izzo was at Michigan State as the top assistant for a number of years before he became the head coach.

By notable, I’m saying this from the standpoint of the average college basketball fan because men’s coaches come to mind more quickly than women’s coaches. Maybe I could’ve worded this better.

From a basketball standpoint, I guess all I can do is describe.

1. We saw 19 schools win at least one men’s Division I championship and only two different schools managed to win in consecutive years for a total of two times (Duke in 1991 and 1992 and Florida in 2006 and 2007). In women’s basketball 13 schools won at least one championship, and we saw three schools win at least two championships in a row for a total of five times (Southern Cal in 1983-1984; Tennessee in 1996-1998; Connecticut in 2002-2004; Tennessee in 2007-2008; Connecticut in 2009-2010). Note that we had two times in women’s hoops where a team won three championships in a row. No men’s team has won a threepeat since UCLA during the Wooden era.

2. There were six schools that won at least two mens championships between 1982 and 2010. They are:

North Carolina (1982, 1993, 2005, 2009)
Kansas (1988, 2008)
Duke (1991, 1992, 2001, 2010)
Kentucky (1996, 1998)
Connecticut (1999, 2004)
Florida (2006, 2007)

Five women’s schools got at least two championships
Louisiana Tech (1982, 1988)
USC (1983, 1984)
Tennessee (1987, 1989, 1991, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2007, 2008)
Stanford (1990, 1992)
Connecticut (1995, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2009, 2010)

The number didn’t differ much here, among men’s and women’s teams winning two or more titles, but the two women’s programs that won the most championships, the UConn women and Tennessee won 7 and 8 championships respectively which is more than half of the women’s NCAA championships ever given, and that I think has created the impression that there isn’t much parity in women’s basketball over the past 15 years especially. With UConn especially, since 1995, every class (assuming the players play four consecutive years and no redshirt) except the class of 1999 and class of 2008 won at least one championship.
  
The two men’s programs winning the most championships, North Carolina and Duke respectively have won four each, but in North Carolina’s case, each of those titles were won with clearly different cores, and Duke won those four titles with three clearly different cores (the repeat group was won with many of the same players).

What is the same in men’s and women’s basketball is that the best programs of all time will win championships in clearly different eras. The two most dominant women’s programs ever, UConn and Tennessee have won championships in the 1990’s and 2000’s, and for Tennessee, they also won titles in the ’80’s. The two most dominant men’s programs of the past 30 years, UNC and Duke also have made Final Fours in the ’80’s, ’90’s, and 2000’s, with Carolina winning a title in each decade, and Duke winning its titles in the ’90’s and the 2000’s.

3. One thing I can speculate as to why there are more upsets in the NCAA men’s tournament, less periodic dynasties, and therefore more parity among men’s basketball teams is because of the NBA Draft. We are seeing more and more players going pro before they exhaust their eligibility. Things like this are what allowed seasoned veteran mid major teams like George Mason to get to the Final Four as an 11 seed in 2006, and a small elite liberal arts college like Davidson College to nearly do the same in 2008 as a 10 seed.

In women’s basketball, this rarely happens, only if a player wants to go to Europe. Therefore, we can see dynasties play out in the fashion that we do with the UConn era of dominance between the 1999-2000 and the 2003-2004 seasons and the three peat Tennessee had from 1995-1996 through 1997-1998.

To me, this may have been a very long analysis trying to say that more notable men’s coaches may mean more men’s coaches who got to touch the championship trophy….