USATSI
May is here, meaning we are (already) almost one full month into the offseason. Before the buzzer sounds, let’s get off one last piece of reflection on 2022-23.
It’s time for my annual appraisal of the first-year coaches who had the best debuts. Last year’s coaching carousel had 60 coaching swaps, and in that group, a dozen of them really stood out from this past season.
I maintain that it is foolhardy to assign grades to coaching hires both right after they happen — and even one year into the job. We don’t have enough data (or, in keeping with the trope: the homework hasn’t been submitted yet) to truly/fairly evaluate these hires. We can, however, identify the coaches on their way to good returns after just one season. (Later this week, as I do annually, I will be grading the hires from four years prior. The 2019 class is up for assessment.)
To wit: Four of the seven coaches who earned acclaim in this piece a year ago had downturns (or worse) in ’22-23: Mark Adams, Chris Beard, Hubert Davis and Drew Valentine. Two of those four were severed from their jobs, and the other two didn’t make the NCAA Tournament after massively disappointing sophomore campaigns.
For today, I’m not only looking at which big schools and power-conference athletic directors did the best; there are some small-league coaches who stood out, and they’re highlighted below as well. For the Big Six leagues, the biggest criterion remains unchanged: If you made the NCAAs in your first year of coaching in the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 or SEC, you get a mention. That’s the bar to clear. Six such coaches did that in ’22-23.
In alphabetical order (by school), here they…
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