The end of the first weekend of the NCAA tournament brings forth a number of discussions every year, and one of them is the expectations game, as various programs either reach — or fall short of — the Sweet 16, the dividing line between “upper-tier” and “middle-tier” for a lot of college basketball programs.
While not every coach can be Rick Pitino and Tom Izzo, who somehow got their teams back to the Sweet 16 again despite regular season roadblocks, at least some success in the NCAA tournament is needed to keep certain coaches off the hot seat. However, some schools have more reasonable expectations than others.
For mid-major coaches such as Ben Jacobson (Northern Iowa), Gregg Marshall (Wichita State), and Shaka Smart (VCU), the expectations set for their programs are properly calibrated. Each coach is always getting looks from prominent national programs.
With a Final Four under their respective belts, Marshall and Smart have major accomplishments to point to, but it has to be mentioned that they’re a combined 4-13 in the NCAA tournament other than their Final Four seasons. Smart is 2-4 and Marshall is 4-9. VCU has been a first-round exit each of the past two seasons. Also, Jacobson is a career .500 coach in March after Sunday night’s loss to Louisville, a game many felt UNI was going to win. Yet, these coaches are rightly seen as being very good at what they do. They are in demand as opposed to being under fire.
Then things get progressively more complicated across the nation.
At the power conference level, Fred Hoiberg has had his early struggles in March, with a career tournament record of 4-3. On that resume, he has last year’s Sweet 16, this year’s round of 64 exit, and two round-of-32 losses. Yet, he’s not in trouble at all, and in fact, there have been murmurings that the Chicago Bulls might be interested in Hoiberg if they become tired of Tom Thibodeau. (The point is not to explore the veracity or legitimacy of the murmurings, only to mention that someone is interested in floating Hoiberg’s name. He’s doing quite well for himself.)
A Big 12 coach who sits one game under .500 is Rick Barnes, who has a reputation for underachieving despite building the Texas brand into more than just a football school. Barnes has accomplished a lot at Texas, but he has become a victim of his earlier successes, not to mention his ability to recruit at a high level.
Sure, it’s easy to identify some coaches as men who regularly live up to our high expectations of them. What makes returning Sweet 16 coaches Bob Huggins and Bo Ryan Hall of Fame-worthy coaches, for instance? Returning to the Sweet 16 this year — in Huggins’ case, West Virginia has been able to get to the Sweet 16 on multiple occasions. What makes Sean Miller one of the hottest commodities in the county? A 16-7 record in the NCAA tournament. Lon Kruger just joined Eddie Sutton as the second coach to take four schools to the Sweet 16 after Oklahoma got past Dayton on Sunday. It’s no coincidence that Kruger has received the opportunities he’s been given.
However, then you have coaches such as Notre Dame’s Mike Brey. This will be only Brey’s second Sweet 16 appearance in his 15th season in South Bend. Notre Dame has been eliminated in the round of 64 or was sent to the NIT in eight of those 15 seasons, yet Brey still has plenty of job security. Just across the state, Matt Painter endured his first loss in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in his (now) 10 years at Purdue. The Boilermakers have failed to qualify for the NCAA Tournament only three times over that span.
Why, then, is Brey regarded with such esteem and Painter is on the hot seat? It simply comes down to expectations. It is the same reason the mid-major coaches are the darlings sometimes. There’s more internal pressure to have to be great at Purdue than there is to be a top program at Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish will always care more about football than Purdue will — that’s not meant to knock Purdue’s pigskin ambitions but merely point out where the center of Notre Dame’s athletic program is. These and other dynamics affect expectations for basketball and, for that matter, other sports in any athletic department.
Not everyone is going to be Rick Pitino, Tom Izzo, or Mike Krzyzewski. The sooner some of these schools start to wrap their heads around this, the quicker the expectations will be leveled.
