Thatâs an impossible bar to clear. Success has to be defined as something less than a national championship, 6 ACC titles in 10 years, multiple number 1 and 2 seeds, a dozen+ NBA players, Hall of Fame level coach, etcâŠ
Not to say we should lower the bar too much. Success has to be more than what Capelâs accomplished at Pitt or Brownell at Clemson, but calling anything short of what Bennett accomplished a failure is just asking for failure.
So in successive posts, we have @kendall saying the next coach, as soon as next season, should be expected to do even better than Bennett, whereas @4547Lambeth cautions us against unrealistic expectations for the next coach to achieve success on par with Bennettâs relative miracle working.
This is going to go great.
Depending on how you define consistent, this gets into ânext coach needs to be another HoFâerâ territory. Look at the tourney stats from 2000-2024 and sort by number of Sweet 16s.
Going down the list until you get to a team on there that doesnât have a HoF guy (forecasting some into the future for some of them) responsible for a good chunk of the S16s isâŠXavier?
I meanâŠI think we should hire a future HoFâer, that would be great. Hard to predict it now though.
Itâs funny how things change⊠before UMBC my thought was always TB doesnât go out too early. I mean sure as a 1 seed if you donât make the final 4 itâs an âupsetâ but letâs be real uva wasnât losing when they shouldnât until that game. I always thought next step was just get over the hump and play in April until they finally did itâŠ
Anything even remotely close to the level of success TB consistently had should be considered a major W. Top 4 ACC, high(ish) tourney seeds and not going out first round are all very good results IMO.
Not to beat a dead horse, but we of course are last on that list in PASE (even with a national title). Lol.
I think we need to accept that a new coach, even if successful, likely isnât going to follow a neat upward chart of ascension. And even after established, there will still probably be highs and lows. The TB era of annual increased returns early followed by consistent results isnât the norm.
Iâve been chewing on this exact question. What is a reasonable goal for the next coach. I think maintaining Bennettâs level of success (Natâl Championship, multi conference championships) is not realistic (though would certainly welcome it).
I think success for ME would be:
I have a hard time using NCAA tournament success as a barometer because itâs so fickle. Itâs seems the best way to have a good shot at NCAA success is to be a consistently strong program - and then pray the Basketball Gods are kind.
Success might also take a different form, tbh. Maybe less regular season excellence, but more ability to be dynamic in post season and make runs.
I said âideally.â Itâs not the expectation. It is possible, and Iâm brave enough to dream big.
I think a comparison to Tony is both unrealistic and unfortunately also anachronistic. Tony had a highly successful system of redshirting, teaching a complex defense, five pillars, etc., which rested on recruiting within a fairly narrow range of players and keeping them around 4-5 years.
Those strategies and values were great at the time but todayâs environment makes them largely impossible. The next coach has to adapt to the reality of the current menâs basketball culture. Recruiting transfers may be more important than bringing in high schoolers. Offensive and defensive strategy and tactics have to be teachable in short order. Coaching skills are still vital, but within the environment weâre now in.
If we could get someone who matched the success of Terry Holland or even Jeff Jones 1990-1995 I would be thrilled.
There is a strong chance our next hire comes nowhere close to the 2014-2019 run.
I would be very disappointed is the next hire could not clear the low bar of Post natty Tony pumped up by a historically weak âpowerâ conference.
Both things can be true
Just have us be a threat to win the ACC tournament and win an NCAA tournament game and we go from there
If you define âconsistentâ as 30% (of sweet 16s) then, from 2010 to 2019, there were 7 schools (ranked from 19-25, in terms of # of sweet 16s), that hit that mark:
For me, that feels like a reasonable goal. A lot of UVa fans still do the reflexive âtourney games are a crapshootâ thing, but every game is a crapshoot, and Iâd argue that each individual tourney game is actually less of a crapshoot than a reg. season game. And ten tourneys worth of games is not a crapshoot.
I donât love the word expectation, but I think a nice outcome for the next coach would be:
Agree. There were three Tony eras:
K retired. Roy retired. Bennett retired. Boeheim retired. Larrañaga retired. Hamilton is retiring.
Pitino is 72. Izzo and Barnes are 70. Sampson is 69. Cal is 66. Pearl is 64. Self and Few are 62.
Thereâs a vacuum, and itâs about to get much bigger.
Virginia is a top-20 non-BlueBlood job, probably top-15, especially given the recent rumors of funding and support.
Here are some recent coaching tenures I think are at least somewhat realistic for our next coach to be able to emulate.
(The last two are Fran McCaffery and Brad Brownell, two guys we openly aspire to hire better than with this next coach.)
Feels like Pitino just getting started in these parts.
Dude is pretty amazing at coaching
Why is it so fickle, or less fickle than âconsistently top 25â or âregularly top 15?â
âNCAA tournament successâ basically encapsulates your requirements, and if anything is a little looser. First, in order to have NCAA tournament success, you have to make the tournament. So thatâs like a top 4-5 in the league with a reasonable OOC record devoid of horrible losses. Sounds good to me. Second, you have win games in the tournament. Harder to define the bar, but can we say a >0.500 record is pretty decent? A consistently/regularly top 25/15 program is going to be an 8 seed or better almost every year. That program should win >1.5 NCAA Tournament games per year, generally losing at most 1, should it not?
My expectations in empirical form:
Dammit Evan
Man that would be awesome if we got that
I see folks made some thoughtful cases for what should be a âsuccessfulâ hire. I donât particularly disagree with any of them. Here is another log to throw on that fire. I went and looked at a decent sample of performances from schoolâs after their Hall of Fame coach left. Generally, I was looking at the next 10 years, but if one of the coaches went beyond that window (ex. Bill Self, Dan Hurley, etc) I just used their entire winning pct.
If you were going to judge strictly on pass/fail where would that pass/fail line be on this list? I think mine would be around Greg Gard/Mark Turgeon level of post-Tony success. A Mick Cronin or Matt Painter would be excellent.
(Typo: Included Todd Goldenâs numbers at UF but forgot to put his name).
Yeah, I think the bar to beat is clearly in the Florida, Wisconsin, Maryland range. I donât know if Iâd call Turgeron successful given how much grief Maryland fans gave him, but Iâd call Gard successful and White clearly not successful.
