If a rival fan base — or on a broader level, the collection of fan bases in a conference — hopes that a given coach sticks around for a long time, that’s a pretty good indication of a coach’s perception in the public eye.
Keep this in mind: Perception isn’t necessarily reality. To be more precise, perceptions can and do change. Scott Drew is no longer the kind of coach other Big 12 teams want on that opposing bench. Mark Fox of Georgia and Andy Kennedy of Ole Miss have coached very poorly for extended stretches of time, but they are both about to make repeat visits to the NCAA tournament. Those achievements demonstrate a certain level of coaching acumen. Perhaps Fox and Kennedy are not “ceritified great coaches” (that would be an overreaction), but they’re no longer portraits of of failure, either. If you’re in the SEC, there might have been a time when you wanted Fox or (especially) Kennedy to stay on the job forever. Now, it’s harder to maintain that view or mindset.
There are, however, some coaches which currently inhabit that world, a world in which neighboring fans would love nothing more than for no firings to take place anytime soon.
Just a few ground rules need to be observed here:
1) The coach needs to be in his fourth season or later on the job. In other words, Bruce Weber at Kansas State and Frank Haith at Tulsa don’t apply. (Haith, had he remained at Missouri for a fourth season, would have been a perfect example.)
2) The history or stature of the program must clearly eclipse the current coach’s body of achievement. This is best viewed through the prism of the past 10 to 15 years, but at certain elite programs, the brand name should bring with it a certain level of accomplishment, regardless of what the previous decade might have witnessed.
With those rules in place, let’s open the envelope:
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5 – JOHNNY DAWKINS, STANFORD
Dawkins finally made his first NCAA tournament in his sixth season at Stanford, filling a huge hole in his career resume. However, with Chasson Randle, Anthony Brown, and Stefan Nastic all returning this season — the Cardinal were supposed to be a solid NCAA tournament team, meaning something better than a bubble team (which is what Stanford was last season as a late-charging 10 seed that barely made the field). After a loss to Oregon on Sunday night, Stanford is likely to be an NIT team. It will almost certainly have to beat Arizona this Saturday to go Dancing.
Dawkins is a former Duke point guard under Mike Krzyzewski. Another Coach K protege, Tommy Amaker, made a Sweet 16 appearance at Seton Hall in 2000 but could not build on that run at The Hall or in his subsequent power-conference coaching stop at Michigan. Dawkins’s career could be acquiring a similar trajectory. Stanford was supposed to take a step forward this season, moving toward a medium-range seed (6-8) and trying to approach what Mike Montgomery and Trent Johnson achieved in previous years. Instead, the Cardinal have regressed. If you’re a Pac-12 fan, you want Dawkins to stay on the job in Palo Alto, do you not?
4 – TRAVIS FORD, OKLAHOMA STATE
The Oklahoma State Cowboys looked like a team that was breaking through under Travis Ford. They swept Baylor (and the transformed Scott Drew) and had taken down Kansas. For a brief period of time, Ford was a legitimate contender for Big 12 Coach of the Year.
Then, the house fell down… again. It always seems to during an Oklahoma State season.
The Cowboys’ loss at Texas Tech will relegate them to the back end of the NCAA tournament field. The days of getting No. 3 seeds under Eddie Sutton are an ever-more-distant part of the past in Stillwater. The Cowboys will probably wear road black in the round of 64 as a lower seed. This makes Oklahoma bloggers and other Big 12 fans happy.
3 – TOM CREAN, INDIANA
Crean and the Hoosiers are linked in a very difficult kind of marriage. Crean has outperformed expectations this year… and that’s the problem.
Crean owns a Final Four on his resume. He comes from the Tom Izzo coaching tree. His players have played very hard for him this season, blasting out of the water the notion — widely circulated in November — that Indiana was a fractured program ravaged by bitterness and low morale in the locker room. On one level, Crean has done well this season with what he had.
Yet, Crean doing well coincides with Indiana being a prime candidate for an 8-9 or 7-10 game in the NCAA tournament. That’s not where Indiana basketball is supposed to reside. That’s where the program was in the downside years of Bob Knight’s tenure. It’s not where Indiana is supposed to be.
If the marriage between Indiana and its head coach is going to work, that coach needs to consistently make second weekends of the NCAA tournament, and occasionally a Final Four. Is Crean going to reach that standard? It’s going to be very difficult for him to pull it off.
2 – ANTHONY GRANT, ALABAMA
The Crimson Tide used to be an annual NCAA tournament team under Mark Gottfried, and they reached a bunch of Sweet 16s under Wimp Sanderson in the 1980s and early ’90s. Grant is about to finish a sixth season with only one NCAA appearance to his credit. Alabama just got swept by Vanderbilt, a team which shows promise heading into the 2015-2016 campaign. The Tide are not moving forward. Auburn has Bruce Pearl on the job. This is a dead end for Alabama, so other SEC schools should want Grant to stay for many more years in Tuscaloosa.
1 – DAVE RICE, UNLV
The coach who is about to complete his fourth season at UNLV, and who could not lead very talented teams to a single NCAA tournament win, is not inspiring confidence for a program whose diminished status was magnified this past February by the death of Jerry Tarkanian.
It’s gotten so bad at UNLV that San Diego State fans and other partisans throughout the Mountain West Conference are invested in the “Save Dave” movement:
This man needs our help to save him. Any amount helps, give what you can and let's #SaveDave http://t.co/IvP4o9jolt pic.twitter.com/pAusJ4rBSY
— The Show (@TheShowSDSU) February 25, 2015
That pretty much says it all.
