Next week, you (like us) will be so immersed in conference tournament brackets that there won’t be time to step back and reflect on the just-concluded college basketball regular season. We’re waiting for the March crescendo, so in the meantime, let’s gain perspective on the season that’s winding down.
Keep this in mind: What happens in the NCAA tournament should matter when assessing players, single-season teams, programs, and coaches, but the journey from early November through early March should matter as well, and it often gets lost in the shuffle. This is especially the case when an overachiever over the long run of the regular season gets bounced in the round of 64 by an improbable off-balance 27-footer at the horn. Let’s be sure, in the here and now, to appreciate the good work that’s been done over roughly four months.
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This installment of The Student Section’s season in review concerns the best coaching performances of the season. You really have to devote two categories to this award: The Thoroughbred Division and the Maximizer Division. It is hard to coach at a powerhouse program and live up to expectations, but it is also an imposing challenge — albeit a different one — to make the most out of resources that or situations that are less than ideal. The coaches who have thrived in both contexts deserve equal billing and recognition in 2015.
We start with the Thoroughbred Division. Bill Self at Kansas, Jay Wright at Villanova, and Bo Ryan of Wisconsin all won (or are about to win) their respective conferences outright. There is a slight chance Kansas might have to share its title, but don’t bet on Oklahoma winning in Iowa State Monday night (or Kansas losing at home to West Virginia on Tuesday).
Self is about to continue one of the most remarkable streaks in college basketball, Kansas’s uninterrupted run atop the Big 12. An 11th straight regular-season conference championship? That is NUTS. Wright has taken a guard-heavy lineup at Villanova and continued to get the most out of it. If you’re in play for a 1 seed this late in the season, you’re obviously not leaving money on the table. Ryan has taken Wisconsin to another level over the past few seasons. While the stylistic components of Wisconsin are not terribly different from what they used to be on the surface, there is something of a San Antonio Spur-like change in Madison, in that the Badgers now rely on their offense more than their defense. Four years ago, you would not have imagined that Wisconsin could score the way it does. Ryan’s principles are the same, but he’s not winning 51-49 grinders anymore.
Yet, while those three coaches have all been outstanding at their respective programs, the two best Thoroughbred Division coaches this season have to be John Calipari of Kentucky and Tony Bennett of Virginia.
There is something in these two men which makes them comparable to Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. The Calipari-Federer comparison has nothing to do with Federer saying “Go Cats!” to tennis fan and Kentucky chronicler Matt Jones a few years ago at the prestigious Indian Wells tennis tournament:
Roger Federer just came on the KSR Postgame Show and said Go Cats! That was awesome
— Matt Jones (@KySportsRadio) March 9, 2013
Why do the Calipari-Federer and Bennett-Nadal comparisons work?
It’s very simple, especially if you’ve been around tennis fans during the Federer-Nadal era.
Many tennis fans and commentators will tell you that Federer revels in making difficult things look easy. He takes great pleasure in doing something elegant, smooth, and polished — not only playing good tennis, but looking good while doing so. That’s Calipari. He is a showman and an orchestrator. He revels in the theater of competition… and he’s been able to get a bunch of many talented youngsters to play well together, sharing the ball. Calipari’s identity as a Larry Brown protege has never been more apparent than this season. He’s played (or rather coached) his sport the right way, like Federer.
Nadal, the opposite of Federer — but equally if not more brilliant in his own way — does not like to make difficult things look easy. He likes to make difficult things look… DIFFICULT. Nadal is never more in his element than when he’s suffering on the court — that’s his and uncle/coach Toni Nadal’s term, by the way, not mine. Nadal is comfortable being uncomfortable. He loves the challenge of competing under duress, of overcoming crises, of fighting, fighting, fighting through whatever difficulties and imposing opponents are thrown his way.
Doesn’t this sound EXACTLY like Virginia basketball, especially in a season when Justin Anderson and London Perrantes have missed multiple games with injuries? Even within the Thoroughbred Division of coaches, two paths toward greatness could not be more different than the ones carved out by “Roger” Calipari and “Rafael” Bennett.
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Could you pick Butler coach Chris Holtmann out of a lineup? Here’s his face — it might be the first time you’ve seen it all season. Just know this: If you put Holtmann in the top three on the national 2015 Coach of the Year Award list, you wouldn’t be unreasonable in doing so — not at all.
We now turn to the Maximizer Division, with five other coaches who have been remarkably good — just in ways (and contexts) that are different from what the thoroughbreds have to deal with in this or any other season.
Wayne Tinkle has worked with a very limited and flawed Oregon State team. Yet, he has squeezed so much out of the Beavers that they have lost only one home game (Utah) entering their Senior Night finale against Oregon this Wednesday. Oregon State should make the NIT, an amazing feat for a team that didn’t bring back a lot in the way of scoring production this season.
Mark Turgeon of Maryland was very much on the hot seat at the start of this season. You can say that Melo Trimble saved his job as much as Turgeon himself did, but keep in mind that Maryland lost a lot of players in the offseason. There were legitimate concerns about the amount of quality depth on hand in College Park. (This is akin to what Oregon’s Dana Altman faced… except for the not-very-small fact that Oregon’s attrition was due to player misconduct. Nothing of the sort occurred at Maryland.) Turgeon was working with a lineup that was very different from what he had initially expected to coach. Maryland had wilted late in games during its run of NIT seasons. This year, the Terps have been much more composed in late-game situations. A coach can’t teach poise, but he certainly can encourage it. Turgeon has given new life to his coaching career.
Speaking of that kind of dynamic, it’s clear Scott Drew should no longer be whacked like a pinata in coaching discussions. Baylor used to be that team which got every break possible in the NCAA tournament, and more than once — it would be a 3 seed in a region and watch the 6 and 2 seeds in its half of the bracket lose. The Bears would go 14-11-10 in terms of the seeds they’d play en route to the Elite Eight (in 2010 and 2012). It was luck, people (including this person) said.
Well, that might have been true then, but Baylor is now churning out one quality season after another. Baylor beat a 3 seed in last season’s NCAA tournament and has now taken a radically reworked lineup to what might very well be another 3 seed. The Bears are less up-and-down than they used to be. They’ve won at Iowa State and West Virginia, displaying more mettle on the road than they once did. They fought Kansas for 40 minutes in Lawrence. They’re tougher and more resourceful. Baylor is becoming an entrenched upper-level program. That’s Scott Drew’s work in evidence.
Yet, as good as Drew has been, he’s probably not one of the top two coaches in the Maximizer Division. It’s not Drew’s fault — he’s been sensational. It’s just that the top two have thrived under more daunting circumstances.
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Bob McKillop took Davidson College from the Southern Conference — a small one-bid conference — to the Atlantic 10, a league that’s a few notches above the Colonial Athletic Association and several other conferences which might occasionally deliver more than one team to the NCAA tournament in a strong year. That leap — SoCon to A-10 — is as big a conference leap as any team has made this season. That Davidson has a very legitimate chance of making the NCAA tournament in its first A-10 season tells you all you need to know about McKillop’s coaching chops. He can coach my team anyday.
The coach who is probably the leader of the Maximizer Division, though — yes, even better than McKillop — is Chris Holtmann of Butler.
It’s not just that Butler was trying to recover from a bad season. It’s not just that the Bulldogs were trying to build something new in the post-Brad Stevens era. Holtmann was appointed interim coach on October 2 — not August 2 or July 2, but October 2, one month before the season. When previous coach Brandon Miller had to take a medical leave of absence, Holtmann was thrust into the spotlight… and into a realm where he had to carry out all the responsibilities a head coach must shoulder during a preaseason… and a regular season.
Holtmann has taken a Butler team that was not expected to do very much and, in short order, has turned the Bulldogs into a solid NCAA tournament team, one that will wear white as a higher seed in the round of 64. Only Bob McKillop can compare to Holtmann among coaches who looked at the peak of Mount Everest back in early November… and have climbed the whole mountain in the ensuing four months.
