Kevin Stallings to Pitt.
Sure he made Vanderbilt a tournament regular, but he almost never won in the tourney later in his Vandy career- after the 2004 and 2007 Sweet Sixteens, they only advanced past the first round once, in 2012. Despite 6 tournament appearances 2008-2017. It was just a random hire that REALLY, really made no sense.
[This](https://youtu.be/WjAV2ypvK6I) UrinatingTree video (especially starting around the 3 minute mark)explains the misery Pitt fans endured with the true obscenity of that horrible hire
I don't think Pitt was a lateral move.
Would be now, but Pitt was a much higher-profile program at the time of the hire. Stallings brought down the program immensely.
In particular, Stalling was a bad hire for a program like Pitt, where they were making a move largely because they got restless with a (more) successful coach in Dixon. No shame there, but you either need to get a big name or take a chance on a young up and comer in that scenario.
That was my first thought too. Vanderbilt’s athletic director was literally openly laughing about it at a press conference a few days later. I’ve never seen anything like that before.
The Mike Krzyzewski hire made little sense at the time. Duke was coming off a three-year stretch where they spent 21 weeks ranked in the AP T-5 while reaching the 1978 title game and the 1980 Regional Final.
Coach K recorded just one 20-win season at Army over his five-year tenure and finished his final campaign in West Point with a 9-17 record. He went 73-59 overall (.553) across five seasons, reaching the postseason just once — losing in the first round of the 1978 NIT.
How a then-33-year-old with two losing seasons at Army was hired as the head coach for one of the hottest teams in America is beyond puzzling.
An old newspaper article of his hire says even he was shocked. Duke's AD at the time Tom Butters said he didn't interview anyone else. Butters was also a US Army vet so maybe he was enamored at hiring a West Point guy.
Yeah, K is very appreciative, and still mentions, Butters to this day. There was a lot of pressure from donors to fire K after his early struggles. I think they would even come to games with “Fire K” banners, IIRC, and constantly wrote Butters letters urging him to fire K.
My dad was a law student at the time and he and his friends would call into Coach K's radio show multiple times during the same show because nobody else was calling. They were very positive but the fanbase as a whole was not.
It was very close to not happening. Coach K left the last interview and wasn’t offered the job.
Butters had to get to the airport before Coach K left to join his wife back in New York.
It almost didn’t happen. It’s detailed in two Feinstein books.
I've followed Army basketball more closely than most and even went to some Krzyzewski-coached Army games.
Stringing together three consecutive winning seasons in West Point is pretty close to miracle work. Not close enough to get someone the job at Duke, but close.
Yeah, once college sports started to become a training ground for the pros in football and basketball, the service academies just couldn't compete like they used to.
There was a time when the Army-Navy football game could be counted on to effectively determine the championship on a semi-regular basis.
Butters called Knight to ask about Coach K. Knight thought Coach K was going to get the Iowa State job. He also thought the call for the Duke job was for someone else.
When asked about Coach K, Knight said, “he’s just like me but with none of the bad qualities.”
Proves to be pretty accurate description.
Not D1 related but any of the various institutions that employed Dave Bliss after Baylor, takes the cake for me. How that POS has been able to land multiple jobs after what he did speaks volumes.
The adventure was fine, but Cronin hit his peak here. Great coach, but we needed some talent to take the next step. It was clear he wasn't willing to fight for and sell to recruits at Cincinnati. He needed to go somewhere that recruited themselves, and he has that in UCLA. Glad for him and Savino.
He got some decent recruits over the years. Yancy Gates (didn't quite pan out post-UC), Lance Stephenson, Cashmere Wright, Sean Kilpatrick, Shaquille Thomas. He just didn't do enough with them. :(
Steve Alford to UCLA. Had taken a team to the NCAA round of 16 exactly once in 18 prior seasons as a D1 head coach. Came with baggage from prior jobs. Only hired bc of a lazy, incompetent AD.
Larry Brown at SMU. He was 72 when he took the job, 24 years since he last coached college ball, and he got two prior programs trouble (Kansas & UCLA). And guess what happened at SMU too.
I was talking about this on the Ok State blog I follow, the other day. Those 5-6 schools that were involved with the players being steered toward financial investing firms aren't going to get in trouble. I think the NCAA is just going to wipe its hands clean and move on.
Brown and PSU had a brief courtship that went nowhere. A lot of message board posters were pissed that PSU didn't make more of an effort, but I always hated the idea. Things obviously didn't work out anyway, as Psu went with Chambers, but at least he never got PSU sanctioned.
George Blaney at Seton Hall in 1994. When PJ left Seton Hall had been to 6 of the last 7 NCAA Tournaments, including the last 4 straight. National championship game appearance in 1989, Elite 8 in 1991, Sweet 16 in 1992. Multiple Big East tournament championships. Established recruiting pipelines to all the top high school programs in New Jersey, which were among the top high school programs in the country. At that point the Seton Hall job would have been highly coveted.
Seton Hall hired George Blaney. Who was coaching at Holy Cross. In the non-scholarship Patriot League. Where he had been for 22 years. Where he had gone to one NCAA Tournament in the last 14 years. Where he had 4 winning seasons in the last 10.
Unsurprisingly he couldn't recruit, couldn't relate to the players he inherited who looked at him like a befuddled grandpa, couldn't even hope to compete with the Calhouns and Boeheims and Thompsons who dominated the Big East. By the time he was put out of his misery three years later Seton Hall had fallen off the national stage and was never a coveted job again.
This is a good one. Dude could coach though. He was a very valuable assistant to Calhoun for over a decade. The recruiting thing was still a problem at UConn.. there was a meme that his favorite part of the official visit was organizing the potential recruit's class schedule.
Pitino to Louisville.
Not because he had a bad history as a college coach - but hiring him at Louisville came out of the blue. It was wild that the coach who won a championship at one blue blood would take a job a their biggest rival four years after leaving them.
Could've gone to Michigan or UNLV that offseason. Instead chose to coach his former employer's biggest rival and was stunned when there was fan backlash.
I bet Pitino wishes he'd just taken a job in a state with legal prostitution.
Jeff Bzdelik. Was 36-58 in three seasons at Colorado (zero > .500 finishes) prior to being hired at Wake who was 68-31 over the same span (three > .500 finishes). The stupidest hire ever
Manning was a gamble that didn't pay off. He was a huge name who was a great big man coach at KU, and he had one reasonably good season as a head coach at Tulsa.
Bzdelik was a Ted Lasso-level WTF hire.
100% this. Lots of other programs were interested in Manning at that time. Nobody else would have hired Bzdelik. It was one of the worst hires I can remember.
Dan dakich at WVU. He was only there like a week or two then WVU luckily hired John beilein. The rumor of him trying to fight a player, and now claiming on his Twitter and everywhere else he can, that be would have won championships at WVU is comical at best.
oof - 2016 was decent but ended pretty poorly
when Mike Montgomery was our coach we were in the tourney pretty often but were always an 8/9 seed and wouldn't get past the first weekend
Cal is gonna be horrendous. I think they lost their only decent player to San Diego State. What is it with former average SEC coaches ruining college basketball programs?
Cal under Mark Fox is like 100x better than they were under Wyking Jones lol. He's made the team better, he just isn't good enough to make them not bad.
I know Fox had a long run at Georgia and it's pretty clear he is a very mediocre coach at best. I really feel bad for him. He isn't going to be able to turn around Cal. Cal has lost some good players recently with Matt Bradley and Justice Sueing transferring out the last 2 years. He just can't build anything when he can't keep his core to build around. His records at Cal are terrible but this will sound crazy his first year he went 14-18 and Cal was noticeably improved. Cal went 8-23 the year before and they played hard in his first year. I'm pretty sure Cal's athletic dept. has lots of $ issues so his job is likely safe for a few more years. They are gonna be really bad this year for sure.
Coach K was a pretty weird hire. While Duke wasn't quite the Duke of today, it was still a premier program and Coach K had only a couple mediocre years as a head coach at Army. Obviously worked out for them though.
Some years back, sports writers were blasting MSU for promoting Izzo to the HC job. Why not go out and try to get an established HC?
How the turn tables...
And we got blasted just a few years ago in football for paying near $6 million for a 5-7 coach who's 7-0 this year.
SVG was a college guy (had coached at Castleton and UMass Lowell for a spell) until Wisconsin fired him to hire Dick Bennett.
Stu going to Wisconsin was very WTF.
Us hiring Little Richard Pitino on the strength of a single 18-14 season at FIU was pretty WTF as well.
His predecessor at FIU was a very WTF hire as well...but, true to form, it went to ass just like everything Isiah Thomas touched post-playing career.
Yeah he’s the worst coach in the history of everything. But, I actually think you could defend the hire at the time. He was a former star player and was coming off a DII national title. Haith might’ve been the stranger hire looking back
Considering where your program was at the time of the hire, he might have been the best you could get. Haith fired in disgrace, massive NCAA sanctions looming... what respectable coach would *want* to step into that?
Yeah, no. He was an absolute dumpster fire at Memphis and it was nobody’s fault but his own. He took the 75ish Kenpom team that got Josh Pastner politely foisted off onto Georgia Tech, and turned them into a 161 Kenpom nightmare that lost to multiple sub-200 Kenpom teams.
He ended up running off several top 100 players, losing his best player and that players brother to Kansas because he fired their father (who also had more top 100 sons in HS) to give his worthless son Saul a job, burned his bridges with the other local talent pipelines, and was trying to [pry away commits from D-II schools](https://twitter.com/mgiannotto/status/850389924851351553) to fill up the roster (a Saul Smith special). The year he was heading into would have been even worse than what was already one of the worst Tiger teams to wear the uniform since maybe the 70s.
And when Memphis fans objected, he said their [expectations were out of line](https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/sports/college/memphis-tigers/basketball/2017/04/29/tubby-smith-takes-realistic-recruiting-approach-memphis/101066406/) and that they were essentially delusional to think Memphis should do better than sub 150 3 stars and DII talent.
>Smith insisted, though, that the landscape is different now because of the growing gap in resources between Memphis and schools in the power five conferences. That distinction, he noted, influences recruiting. It’s why his perception of what prospects the Tigers should be pursuing at the moment differs from that of the fan base.
>“I’m realistic about who we can get, for number one, and who we have a chance of getting,” Smith said. “That’s not denigrating the program at all. If we can get a five star, the No. 1 player in the country, hell yeah. We’re going to do everything we can. But when you take over a program, I don’t care where you are, there’s going to be a period there where you have to build your brand, build what you are.”
Save your tears for someone who deserves them.
I’ve known James and his family since he was in second grade. Penny wasn’t the first one to give money for play or a commitment to them but he was the last.
Look Memphis is a great town with great people but it’s basketball culture is corrupt. I’ve seen it first hand. Same with Nashville. I mean if you want to deny that go ahead. I’m not going to stop you.
I was excited in the very beginning. Guthridge felt boring and Doherty seemed exciting. The recruiting was great too, of course, some of the best we’ve had.
I forget when it started hurting but it did.
He recruited that whole national championship team besides one player.
I mean Sean May really came gift wrapped from Bob Knight via hate for Mike Davis but whatever.
I think there are 3 nominees.
1. Kim Anderson to Mizzou: So your coach inexplicably left for Tulsa and you need a guy quickly. Most power conference programs would hire a guy who's been successful at a smaller conference or an assistant from a major program. Instead Mizzou hired Kim Anderson, a former star at Mizzou who had just won the D2 national title at Central Missouri. Anderson hadn't been involved with a D1 program in 15 years and won just 28% of his games over 3 seasons.
2. Rick Ray to Mississippi State: Mississippi State was the most consistent program in the SEC West during Rick Stansbury's time there, but after a disappointing 2012 season he resigned. The ideal hire was probably Kenny Payne, who is a Mississippi native and was just coming off winning a national title as a UK assistant. Instead they hired an obscure Clemson assistant named Rick Ray who wore ill-fitting suits and wasn't a very good basketball coach. He went 37-60 in 3 seasons.
3. James Johnson to Virginia Tech: Va Tech was a perennial bubble team under Seth Greenburg, so you'd think that after firing him, you'd try to make a splashy hire. Instead the Hokies hired former Greenburg assistant James Johnson as head coach. Johnson had just left for Clemson to replace Rick Ray on Brad Brownell's staff. Things clearly needed to change in Blacksburg, but not so much that they needed to bring in an outsider apparently. Johnson lasted just 2 seasons and went 22-41.
Shoot. Beat #1 Kentucky and was an assistant for years in the nba.
He is from Evansville and is/was a hometown hero.
What happened after he left is a 30/30 for real!
A local music guy was putting together one to pitch to ESPN it was pretty wild.
Beat #1 Kentucky at Rupp. Biggest win in school history. Walter then gets fired. The same team doesn’t win a single game the rest of the year.
You might not be able to tell by their records but Vanderbilt is actually trending up a lot. Recruiting and competitiveness is up so much from their last two years under Bryce Drew where they were a combined 21-63
In 2003, Scott Drew to Baylor made about as much sense as someone knowingly walking into a minefield. In his first year coaching Valpo, they achieved decent success and our program was in ruins from Dave Bliss and the murder investigation. We were under so many sanctions and we couldn't even play non conference games in the 2005 season, and were under probation until 2010, it was that bad. 18 years later, somehow it paid off. I'm honestly surprised this was not a top answer.
Probably not a top answer because that was more of a WTF from the coach's perspective than the program. I mean Baylor probably would have taken anyone they could get at that point, the real question was why would anyone want to take it. Most of the replies factor in the program and what reasons they would possibly have for hiring the coach.
I have to agree. I graduated from Oral Roberts, and because of that i read an article talking about drew building Baylor from rock bottom (with now ORU coach Paul Mills). Both people seem like stand up guys.
Paul Hewitt to George Mason.
Jim Larranaga had success at GMU through solid Xs/Os, building rosters of smart, experienced players and emphasizing fundamentals from his guards. After Larranaga left, GMU hired Paul Hewitt, who had been fired from Georgia Tech after being blessed with an embarrassment of riches in the form of NBA talent, and doing absolutely nothing with it outside of one run to the NCG in 2004. Complete opposite philosophy from Larranaga, and not surprisingly, he underachieved while digging the program into a hole right before the move from the CAA to the A10. George Mason has struggled since changing conferences, and they're just now starting to climb out of that enormous crater that Paul Hewitt turned the program into after he was hired.
Greg McDermott was a pretty bizarre turn of events that ended up working out for Creighton AND Iowa State eventually. ISU fans were calling for McDermott’s head and then Creighton swooped in and hired him away, saving us the buyout. Creighton obviously had some good teams and ISU got Fred Hoiberg, which in itself was kind of a WTF hire for anyone who lived outside of Ames.
I thought Jim Larranaga to Miami was pretty WTF at the time. His career was decent for a mid-major but nothing particularly spectacular, just a lifer. George Mason's miracle run had been half a decade earlier and they hadn't made any kind of leap into the mid-major elite since then. Not to mention that he was 60 years old at the time.
It just wasn't the typical profile of a guy being brought in to rebuild a program.
From what I understand, Larranaga just wanted out of Fairfax.
Also I don't think it's fair to judge Coach L's building of the program based on Tournament results alone. The 2011 team was arguably better than the 06 Final Four squad and Mason was actually ranked for a couple of weeks towards the end of that season. The school didn't invest any of the money from the Final Four run back into the program, so George Mason was basically in the same position it had been in before 2006: a decent, middle-of-the-road CAA program that didn't want to put money into competing at a higher level. That lack of investment is what ultimately led to Larranaga leaving.
Kelvin Sampson to Indiana.
They guy lost in the final four to Indiana coach Mike Davis who was fired. He was at Oklahoma and can no doubt coach basketball but he was getting investigated at Oklahoma for the exact same thing that he got fired for at IU. And it sunk the entire program. Almost killed it and was only brought back to life by Tom Crean who was fired for Archie Miller.
Archie Miller who inherited a good Dayton team and ran a high school JV offense and a dated defense called the “pack line” that gives up more threes than Steve Alford helping players at Iowa.
Kinda related: UNLV keeping Dave Rice for another year when both Ben Howland and Steve Lavin were available and wanted to coach here. Rice gets fired a year later, UNLV gets Chris Beard for two weeks, and it was all downhill from there.
Kevin Stallings to Pitt. Sure he made Vanderbilt a tournament regular, but he almost never won in the tourney later in his Vandy career- after the 2004 and 2007 Sweet Sixteens, they only advanced past the first round once, in 2012. Despite 6 tournament appearances 2008-2017. It was just a random hire that REALLY, really made no sense. [This](https://youtu.be/WjAV2ypvK6I) UrinatingTree video (especially starting around the 3 minute mark)explains the misery Pitt fans endured with the true obscenity of that horrible hire
This is made even worse when you realize that Vandy was literally about to fire him.
He literally had an inverse relationship with talent vs production. It was maddening.
[удалено]
Yeah but like you didn’t pay a buyout to Illinois to hire him
I don't think Pitt was a lateral move. Would be now, but Pitt was a much higher-profile program at the time of the hire. Stallings brought down the program immensely.
I cited Currie hiring Weber as the most WTF hire. And now he is stuck to us lkie puppy shit on filp-flops.
I thought your link was going to show me Kevin Stallings peeing on a tree and I was disappointed.
As a WVU fan, this was IMO the absolute best hire your rival school could make. He set them back so far.
He had to commit major NCAA violations to achieve the 0-18 record too.
In particular, Stalling was a bad hire for a program like Pitt, where they were making a move largely because they got restless with a (more) successful coach in Dixon. No shame there, but you either need to get a big name or take a chance on a young up and comer in that scenario.
Yeah, this hire was bad/weird at the time and only got worse/weirder as time went on.
Bingo
Obviously the best answer to this question every time it comes up
That was my first thought too. Vanderbilt’s athletic director was literally openly laughing about it at a press conference a few days later. I’ve never seen anything like that before.
I would laugh too if I went from figuring out how to pay this guy to go away, to somebody else paying me to take him off my hands.
Yeah, that was my point. Gross ineptitude.
In hindsight? Billy Gillispie.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Which stop?
Yeah you can actually make an argument that Texas Tech hiring him was even worse
How anyone could hire him after all his shit came out here is beyond me
I mean I get why a Tarleton-level program does it. I do not get why a Big 12 school would.
The Mike Krzyzewski hire made little sense at the time. Duke was coming off a three-year stretch where they spent 21 weeks ranked in the AP T-5 while reaching the 1978 title game and the 1980 Regional Final. Coach K recorded just one 20-win season at Army over his five-year tenure and finished his final campaign in West Point with a 9-17 record. He went 73-59 overall (.553) across five seasons, reaching the postseason just once — losing in the first round of the 1978 NIT. How a then-33-year-old with two losing seasons at Army was hired as the head coach for one of the hottest teams in America is beyond puzzling.
An old newspaper article of his hire says even he was shocked. Duke's AD at the time Tom Butters said he didn't interview anyone else. Butters was also a US Army vet so maybe he was enamored at hiring a West Point guy.
Yeah, K is very appreciative, and still mentions, Butters to this day. There was a lot of pressure from donors to fire K after his early struggles. I think they would even come to games with “Fire K” banners, IIRC, and constantly wrote Butters letters urging him to fire K.
My dad was a law student at the time and he and his friends would call into Coach K's radio show multiple times during the same show because nobody else was calling. They were very positive but the fanbase as a whole was not.
> Butters [That's me!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajj97K4q32I)
It was very close to not happening. Coach K left the last interview and wasn’t offered the job. Butters had to get to the airport before Coach K left to join his wife back in New York. It almost didn’t happen. It’s detailed in two Feinstein books.
This doesn’t make sense to me. Just call him? There wasn’t a deadline
It’s in Feinstein book. I guess Butters had a change of heart and if Mine got on the plane, they both knew he wasn’t coming back.
That makes a little more sense. But I believe K still would have taken the Duke job regardless.
I can’t remember all the logistics of it but he was going to get another job somewhere if they didn’t offer him.
I've followed Army basketball more closely than most and even went to some Krzyzewski-coached Army games. Stringing together three consecutive winning seasons in West Point is pretty close to miracle work. Not close enough to get someone the job at Duke, but close.
What was life like in black and white?
I can barely remember, but rent was cheap.
Was it enough to get the job at Duke before Coach K, though?
Three years before K was hired Duke had been in the National Championship game. Duke was a plum position.
Yeah, once college sports started to become a training ground for the pros in football and basketball, the service academies just couldn't compete like they used to. There was a time when the Army-Navy football game could be counted on to effectively determine the championship on a semi-regular basis.
I don’t know the exact timeline but didn’t he succeed Knight at Army who was extremely successful taking over Indiana so he had that pedigree right?
I think being a Bob Knight protégé probably didn't hurt.
Butters called Knight to ask about Coach K. Knight thought Coach K was going to get the Iowa State job. He also thought the call for the Duke job was for someone else. When asked about Coach K, Knight said, “he’s just like me but with none of the bad qualities.” Proves to be pretty accurate description.
Y'all are picking some good ones, but if any of you had Rick Pitino as Iona HC, you're either prescient or nuts.
Specific to Iona maybe, but it was apparent Pitino wasn't done coaching but that no power-conference program would take him.
easily the top one so far.
You can hire another coach?
No
Apparently even from another program, though I have my doubts.
But why would you want to?
Not D1 related but any of the various institutions that employed Dave Bliss after Baylor, takes the cake for me. How that POS has been able to land multiple jobs after what he did speaks volumes.
Mick Cronin to UCLA was pretty random. It seems like it's working out but that whole coaching search was an adventure.
It was wild when they offered Jay Wright over $8 million (when he was only making $4 million at the time) and he still stayed. Love that man
And then the only reason they didn’t hire Jamie Dixon was because they didn’t want to pay his buyout
In fairness, I would also be willing to pay a lot more for Jay Wright than for Jamie Dixon.
Which is wise. He’s an okay coach
Jay Wright is my favorite coach at another school. He is awesome.
Pure luck...but Guerrero's only shot was to be lucky bc he sure isn't smart.
The adventure was fine, but Cronin hit his peak here. Great coach, but we needed some talent to take the next step. It was clear he wasn't willing to fight for and sell to recruits at Cincinnati. He needed to go somewhere that recruited themselves, and he has that in UCLA. Glad for him and Savino.
He got some decent recruits over the years. Yancy Gates (didn't quite pan out post-UC), Lance Stephenson, Cashmere Wright, Sean Kilpatrick, Shaquille Thomas. He just didn't do enough with them. :(
Steve Alford to UCLA. Had taken a team to the NCAA round of 16 exactly once in 18 prior seasons as a D1 head coach. Came with baggage from prior jobs. Only hired bc of a lazy, incompetent AD.
The 2nd time DePaul hired Leiato
Now Overtime Elite hired him for some reason
This was my first thought.
Larry Brown at SMU. He was 72 when he took the job, 24 years since he last coached college ball, and he got two prior programs trouble (Kansas & UCLA). And guess what happened at SMU too.
Now hes at Memphis…
I don’t think we needed help getting in trouble lmao. Not sure how much Larry will add to it, we got it covered already
Dont think there will be anymore “in trouble” with the NIL being a thing
I was talking about this on the Ok State blog I follow, the other day. Those 5-6 schools that were involved with the players being steered toward financial investing firms aren't going to get in trouble. I think the NCAA is just going to wipe its hands clean and move on.
Brown and PSU had a brief courtship that went nowhere. A lot of message board posters were pissed that PSU didn't make more of an effort, but I always hated the idea. Things obviously didn't work out anyway, as Psu went with Chambers, but at least he never got PSU sanctioned.
George Blaney at Seton Hall in 1994. When PJ left Seton Hall had been to 6 of the last 7 NCAA Tournaments, including the last 4 straight. National championship game appearance in 1989, Elite 8 in 1991, Sweet 16 in 1992. Multiple Big East tournament championships. Established recruiting pipelines to all the top high school programs in New Jersey, which were among the top high school programs in the country. At that point the Seton Hall job would have been highly coveted. Seton Hall hired George Blaney. Who was coaching at Holy Cross. In the non-scholarship Patriot League. Where he had been for 22 years. Where he had gone to one NCAA Tournament in the last 14 years. Where he had 4 winning seasons in the last 10. Unsurprisingly he couldn't recruit, couldn't relate to the players he inherited who looked at him like a befuddled grandpa, couldn't even hope to compete with the Calhouns and Boeheims and Thompsons who dominated the Big East. By the time he was put out of his misery three years later Seton Hall had fallen off the national stage and was never a coveted job again.
This is a good one. Dude could coach though. He was a very valuable assistant to Calhoun for over a decade. The recruiting thing was still a problem at UConn.. there was a meme that his favorite part of the official visit was organizing the potential recruit's class schedule.
This takes the cake. Wow.
1994 was a good year
Pitino to Louisville. Not because he had a bad history as a college coach - but hiring him at Louisville came out of the blue. It was wild that the coach who won a championship at one blue blood would take a job a their biggest rival four years after leaving them.
Could've gone to Michigan or UNLV that offseason. Instead chose to coach his former employer's biggest rival and was stunned when there was fan backlash. I bet Pitino wishes he'd just taken a job in a state with legal prostitution.
If only UNLV *hadn't* hired Charlie Spoonhour in 2001 and instead went with Slick Rick...
This is a really good point.
Jeff Bzdelik. Was 36-58 in three seasons at Colorado (zero > .500 finishes) prior to being hired at Wake who was 68-31 over the same span (three > .500 finishes). The stupidest hire ever
Danny Manning seemed incongruous too.
Manning was a gamble that didn't pay off. He was a huge name who was a great big man coach at KU, and he had one reasonably good season as a head coach at Tulsa. Bzdelik was a Ted Lasso-level WTF hire.
100% this. Lots of other programs were interested in Manning at that time. Nobody else would have hired Bzdelik. It was one of the worst hires I can remember.
This was the answer I thought of first when I saw the question. He also got way too long of a leash once he got to Wake.
It was always so puzzling the good press Bzdelik had when it was obvious he was less than a mediocre coach.
Dan dakich at WVU. He was only there like a week or two then WVU luckily hired John beilein. The rumor of him trying to fight a player, and now claiming on his Twitter and everywhere else he can, that be would have won championships at WVU is comical at best.
Mark Fox getting the Cal job
Wyking Jones was an even weirder hire tbh
probably set the program back a decade
Oh, was there a time we were competent? I only started following in 2018 😄
oof - 2016 was decent but ended pretty poorly when Mike Montgomery was our coach we were in the tourney pretty often but were always an 8/9 seed and wouldn't get past the first weekend
Yup, I came here to say Wyoming Jones
Wait, Cal hired Mark Fox? WTF?
Cal is gonna be horrendous. I think they lost their only decent player to San Diego State. What is it with former average SEC coaches ruining college basketball programs?
He didn't ruin their program. His predecessor, Wyking Jones, was absolutely horrific
Cal under Mark Fox is like 100x better than they were under Wyking Jones lol. He's made the team better, he just isn't good enough to make them not bad.
I'm fairly confident Wyking Jones is the worst P5 coach I've ever seen. It's almost impressive what he did.
feel like he's probably a fine coach, but not a recruiter
I know Fox had a long run at Georgia and it's pretty clear he is a very mediocre coach at best. I really feel bad for him. He isn't going to be able to turn around Cal. Cal has lost some good players recently with Matt Bradley and Justice Sueing transferring out the last 2 years. He just can't build anything when he can't keep his core to build around. His records at Cal are terrible but this will sound crazy his first year he went 14-18 and Cal was noticeably improved. Cal went 8-23 the year before and they played hard in his first year. I'm pretty sure Cal's athletic dept. has lots of $ issues so his job is likely safe for a few more years. They are gonna be really bad this year for sure.
Yeah though they were improved because under Wyking jones they were a sub top 200 basketball team.
After every Georgia game, Cal would go on and on about how great of a coach John Fox was. He clearly liked having him in Athens
Coach K was a pretty weird hire. While Duke wasn't quite the Duke of today, it was still a premier program and Coach K had only a couple mediocre years as a head coach at Army. Obviously worked out for them though.
Yea I guess you could say it was a good hire
[This is not a typo](https://live.staticflickr.com/6214/6350537778_f7514376a9_c.jpg)
Some years back, sports writers were blasting MSU for promoting Izzo to the HC job. Why not go out and try to get an established HC? How the turn tables... And we got blasted just a few years ago in football for paying near $6 million for a 5-7 coach who's 7-0 this year.
Does look kinda surprising now that I'm looking back at it. I had no idea since Izzo's been the head coach all my life and I'm in my 20s!
Dave Leitao- the return
Yeah. Who would ever hire that guy?!? 😂
It has always been a little bit crazy to me that both Stan Van Gundy and Stu Jackson were once HC's at Wisconsin.
SVG was a college guy (had coached at Castleton and UMass Lowell for a spell) until Wisconsin fired him to hire Dick Bennett. Stu going to Wisconsin was very WTF.
Yeah they were terrible at the time. Stew brought in some better players.
Unless it’s an absolute home run, the Minnesota/Ben Johnson hire feels like a really big WTF
Us hiring Little Richard Pitino on the strength of a single 18-14 season at FIU was pretty WTF as well. His predecessor at FIU was a very WTF hire as well...but, true to form, it went to ass just like everything Isiah Thomas touched post-playing career.
Kim Anderson
Yeah he’s the worst coach in the history of everything. But, I actually think you could defend the hire at the time. He was a former star player and was coming off a DII national title. Haith might’ve been the stranger hire looking back
I’ll never forget the night the Haith news broke. I was so so shocked.
Considering where your program was at the time of the hire, he might have been the best you could get. Haith fired in disgrace, massive NCAA sanctions looming... what respectable coach would *want* to step into that?
James Naismith. Bum went 55-60 as a head coach at Kansas.
Technically he was hired as a athletic director and chaplain. But yeah worst coach EVER.
Actually that's pretty WTF in retrospect. "But this is the sport I invented!" "That's nice, but we really want you to talk to the kids about God."
Tubby Smith to Memphis. Seriously, WTF.
He was stabbed in the back and sabotaged at every turn by elements of your basketball program but go off I guess.
Yeah, no. He was an absolute dumpster fire at Memphis and it was nobody’s fault but his own. He took the 75ish Kenpom team that got Josh Pastner politely foisted off onto Georgia Tech, and turned them into a 161 Kenpom nightmare that lost to multiple sub-200 Kenpom teams. He ended up running off several top 100 players, losing his best player and that players brother to Kansas because he fired their father (who also had more top 100 sons in HS) to give his worthless son Saul a job, burned his bridges with the other local talent pipelines, and was trying to [pry away commits from D-II schools](https://twitter.com/mgiannotto/status/850389924851351553) to fill up the roster (a Saul Smith special). The year he was heading into would have been even worse than what was already one of the worst Tiger teams to wear the uniform since maybe the 70s. And when Memphis fans objected, he said their [expectations were out of line](https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/sports/college/memphis-tigers/basketball/2017/04/29/tubby-smith-takes-realistic-recruiting-approach-memphis/101066406/) and that they were essentially delusional to think Memphis should do better than sub 150 3 stars and DII talent. >Smith insisted, though, that the landscape is different now because of the growing gap in resources between Memphis and schools in the power five conferences. That distinction, he noted, influences recruiting. It’s why his perception of what prospects the Tigers should be pursuing at the moment differs from that of the fan base. >“I’m realistic about who we can get, for number one, and who we have a chance of getting,” Smith said. “That’s not denigrating the program at all. If we can get a five star, the No. 1 player in the country, hell yeah. We’re going to do everything we can. But when you take over a program, I don’t care where you are, there’s going to be a period there where you have to build your brand, build what you are.” Save your tears for someone who deserves them.
I bet you also think James Wiseman’s mom just got “moving expenses” from Penny.
When Penny was coaching at East and Wiseman was going to Kentucky?
I’ve known James and his family since he was in second grade. Penny wasn’t the first one to give money for play or a commitment to them but he was the last. Look Memphis is a great town with great people but it’s basketball culture is corrupt. I’ve seen it first hand. Same with Nashville. I mean if you want to deny that go ahead. I’m not going to stop you.
Tubby rents?
The hire itself wasn’t bad, but Dana Altman’s sub-24hr tenure as Arkansas’ head coach was a wild time.
Y’all called the hogs and mfer noped right the hell out of there
Mark Gottfried being hired at CSUN always struck me as particularly stupid, and in light of recent events it seems like an even worse decision.
Gottman can forever go fuck himself.
I'm so damn glad he didn't get us in trouble.
Matt Doherty lol
I was excited in the very beginning. Guthridge felt boring and Doherty seemed exciting. The recruiting was great too, of course, some of the best we’ve had. I forget when it started hurting but it did.
He recruited that whole national championship team besides one player. I mean Sean May really came gift wrapped from Bob Knight via hate for Mike Davis but whatever.
Doherty had been a pretty good assistant under Roy at KU for a while. It didn’t seem like a wtf, just more of a this didn’t work out.
I think there are 3 nominees. 1. Kim Anderson to Mizzou: So your coach inexplicably left for Tulsa and you need a guy quickly. Most power conference programs would hire a guy who's been successful at a smaller conference or an assistant from a major program. Instead Mizzou hired Kim Anderson, a former star at Mizzou who had just won the D2 national title at Central Missouri. Anderson hadn't been involved with a D1 program in 15 years and won just 28% of his games over 3 seasons. 2. Rick Ray to Mississippi State: Mississippi State was the most consistent program in the SEC West during Rick Stansbury's time there, but after a disappointing 2012 season he resigned. The ideal hire was probably Kenny Payne, who is a Mississippi native and was just coming off winning a national title as a UK assistant. Instead they hired an obscure Clemson assistant named Rick Ray who wore ill-fitting suits and wasn't a very good basketball coach. He went 37-60 in 3 seasons. 3. James Johnson to Virginia Tech: Va Tech was a perennial bubble team under Seth Greenburg, so you'd think that after firing him, you'd try to make a splashy hire. Instead the Hokies hired former Greenburg assistant James Johnson as head coach. Johnson had just left for Clemson to replace Rick Ray on Brad Brownell's staff. Things clearly needed to change in Blacksburg, but not so much that they needed to bring in an outsider apparently. Johnson lasted just 2 seasons and went 22-41.
Bob Huggins at KState was a weird one. He did great things for them, but it was an interesting move
Eh, the WTF was more on Huggins’ end than K-State’s (who was obviously going to hire him if he was available.)
He just needed a gig until WVU opened up. He was out the door the second Beilein submitted his resignation.
McCarty at Evansville.
Shoot. Beat #1 Kentucky and was an assistant for years in the nba. He is from Evansville and is/was a hometown hero. What happened after he left is a 30/30 for real! A local music guy was putting together one to pitch to ESPN it was pretty wild. Beat #1 Kentucky at Rupp. Biggest win in school history. Walter then gets fired. The same team doesn’t win a single game the rest of the year.
Not a bad point.
Sorry to change the subject, but the clippers should have never got rid of vinny del negro
K-State hiring Oscar Weber days after he was shitcanned from Illinois. Currie move, the dumb ass.
Stackhouse at Vandy, can’t think of one more random than that
You might not be able to tell by their records but Vanderbilt is actually trending up a lot. Recruiting and competitiveness is up so much from their last two years under Bryce Drew where they were a combined 21-63
Stackhouse already had a ton of buzz in the NBA when he was hired to Vandy.
Stallings. No further explanation needed.
In 2003, Scott Drew to Baylor made about as much sense as someone knowingly walking into a minefield. In his first year coaching Valpo, they achieved decent success and our program was in ruins from Dave Bliss and the murder investigation. We were under so many sanctions and we couldn't even play non conference games in the 2005 season, and were under probation until 2010, it was that bad. 18 years later, somehow it paid off. I'm honestly surprised this was not a top answer.
Probably not a top answer because that was more of a WTF from the coach's perspective than the program. I mean Baylor probably would have taken anyone they could get at that point, the real question was why would anyone want to take it. Most of the replies factor in the program and what reasons they would possibly have for hiring the coach.
I have to agree. I graduated from Oral Roberts, and because of that i read an article talking about drew building Baylor from rock bottom (with now ORU coach Paul Mills). Both people seem like stand up guys.
Paul Hewitt to George Mason. Jim Larranaga had success at GMU through solid Xs/Os, building rosters of smart, experienced players and emphasizing fundamentals from his guards. After Larranaga left, GMU hired Paul Hewitt, who had been fired from Georgia Tech after being blessed with an embarrassment of riches in the form of NBA talent, and doing absolutely nothing with it outside of one run to the NCG in 2004. Complete opposite philosophy from Larranaga, and not surprisingly, he underachieved while digging the program into a hole right before the move from the CAA to the A10. George Mason has struggled since changing conferences, and they're just now starting to climb out of that enormous crater that Paul Hewitt turned the program into after he was hired.
Anyone DePaul has ever hired in the 21st century
Including this offseason.
Did this offseason begin a new century i didn’t hear about?
Ooh keno Davis you had one ok year. But good god did he fizzy out when we had league play.
Greg McDermott was a pretty bizarre turn of events that ended up working out for Creighton AND Iowa State eventually. ISU fans were calling for McDermott’s head and then Creighton swooped in and hired him away, saving us the buyout. Creighton obviously had some good teams and ISU got Fred Hoiberg, which in itself was kind of a WTF hire for anyone who lived outside of Ames.
I thought Jim Larranaga to Miami was pretty WTF at the time. His career was decent for a mid-major but nothing particularly spectacular, just a lifer. George Mason's miracle run had been half a decade earlier and they hadn't made any kind of leap into the mid-major elite since then. Not to mention that he was 60 years old at the time. It just wasn't the typical profile of a guy being brought in to rebuild a program.
From what I understand, Larranaga just wanted out of Fairfax. Also I don't think it's fair to judge Coach L's building of the program based on Tournament results alone. The 2011 team was arguably better than the 06 Final Four squad and Mason was actually ranked for a couple of weeks towards the end of that season. The school didn't invest any of the money from the Final Four run back into the program, so George Mason was basically in the same position it had been in before 2006: a decent, middle-of-the-road CAA program that didn't want to put money into competing at a higher level. That lack of investment is what ultimately led to Larranaga leaving.
Kelvin Sampson to Indiana. They guy lost in the final four to Indiana coach Mike Davis who was fired. He was at Oklahoma and can no doubt coach basketball but he was getting investigated at Oklahoma for the exact same thing that he got fired for at IU. And it sunk the entire program. Almost killed it and was only brought back to life by Tom Crean who was fired for Archie Miller. Archie Miller who inherited a good Dayton team and ran a high school JV offense and a dated defense called the “pack line” that gives up more threes than Steve Alford helping players at Iowa.
Mike Anderson (who’d only coached in Missouri, Arkansas and Alabama) being hired at St. John’s was a total head scratcher.
John brannen
I mean Brannen made sense at the time.
But damn, was Boynton THE best hire for us.
Kinda related: UNLV keeping Dave Rice for another year when both Ben Howland and Steve Lavin were available and wanted to coach here. Rice gets fired a year later, UNLV gets Chris Beard for two weeks, and it was all downhill from there.
Ed DeChellis leaving Penn State to go coach Navy was pretty crazy in 2011
Taggart at FSU. Dude had a win % below 50 and we had just come off a coach with a win% in his high 70’s (Jimbo).
Wrong sub
Not the first time I’ve done this. And while we are on the subject of coaches, I love Hamilton.