WH Ranking the A10 Coaches:
http://www.basketballforum.com/atlan...coaches-3.html
Re: Ranking the Coaches
There are two ways to rank coaches in broad terms: lifetime achievement or shorter-term window.
Lifetime achievement evaluates coaches over a career, recognizing that most have peaks and valleys. John Chaney is a Hall of Fame coach, but he was clearly fading in his last 5 years, at least based on comparison to his earlier career.
From a lifetime approach, Majerus is clearly No. 1 and Dunphy No. 2. Martelli is third and Baron fourth.
I have based my evaluations in prior years on effectively a four-year moving
average – judging coaches by their most recent performance. Charlotte’s new coach is a complete unknown since this is his first year, and Chris Mack really should not be judged yet. But I will.
1)Fran Dunphy. His teams are always well balanced and fundamentally sound on offense and defense. They don’t beat themselves. Dunphy is also the best coach in the league at developing players. His big downside is so-so recruiting. You’d think Temple would be getting higher-level recruits after three straight NCAA appearances and A-10 tourney titles. With Xavier-level talent, the Owls would be a Final 4 threat every so often.
2)Chris Mooney. Great rebuilding job at Richmond. Mooney has a good eye for talent and has recruited very well. He would do even better at a bigger school. The offense is well organized and the Spiders have become an above-average defensive team. Mooney is almost like Dunphy lite, though he has to have the same success for a number of years to match him. One caveat: the Spiders suffer more bouts of inconsistency than Temple.
3)Brian Gregory. Gregory has recruited exceedingly well at Dayton despite some problems finding a topflight point guard. His teams are athletic, tough and physical. Sure, the offense has been a sore spot at times, and Dayton still isn’t a consistently good road team, but Gregory’s pluses far outweigh his minuses. I think he grew a ton as a coach last year and we’ll see the fruits of it this season.
4)Rick Majerus. Big Rick looks ready to take his place in the top two if there are no roster disruptions this season. SLU has massively upgraded its talent level and the team is very organized at both ends of the floor. RM has a good eye for talent and develops players almost as well as Dunphy. He is the best coach in the league when he’s at the top of his game. The question is, does he still have a fastball? We’re about to find out.
5)Jim Baron. The Baron is recruiting as well as he’s ever done and the
Rams have been consistent winners over the past four years with … 89 wins! Hard to believe because URI has not made the NCAA tournament over that span. And that’s the problem to Rhody fans. Whatever Baron’s merit as a coach, postseason success (NCAAs) has eluded him. Fans rightly question whether he’s taken the program as far as it can go. Give Baron this. He’s willing to reinvent himself as a coach to find success. Most coaches are afraid of change.
6)Phil Martell. The second-longest serving coach in the A-10 has won fast and won slow, but lately he hasn’t won much at all. Martelli is a terrific X and Os guy when he has the right personnel. Problem is, his recruiting and player retention have been very spotty the past few years. This is a sideways program at the moment. I am not sure Martelli can get back to being the coach he was, either.
7)Chris Mack. He’s only been a head coach one year, but Mack grew steadily as a rookie boss and Xavier looked pretty ****ed good by season’s end. The offense smoothened out and the defense solidified. Those are marks of good coaching. What’s more, Mack is recruiting on paper as well as any coach in league history, based on his current and pending classes. Quite the fast start, even with all the advantages the Xavier program conferred upon him.
8)Ron Everhart. RE has made a
dismal program respectable in short order. Ask Fordham how hard that is to do. He finds good players in odd places and plays an exciting brand of ball. Every A-10 opponent has to be ready for Duquesne these days because no one knows what to expect. Now, can Everhart stabilize the talent base and bring more consistency to both sides of the ball? The Dukes have been helter skelter under his leadership.
9)Karl Hobbs. Hobbs has been very uneven the past four years, but he might be back on the rise. He took a very young squad last year and made it respectable right away. I saw more intensity and energy and just better play all around. Hobbs is into coaching again and no longer resentful on the sidelines after missing out on a big job. He did a great job recruiting for last year’s class and seemed to have followed up with more solid recruits. On his best days, Hobbs is one of the finest teachers of fastbreak basketball in the NCAA. I think he would do even better as a coach and recruiter at a high-level school in the SEC.
10)John Giannini. Dr G has been up and down in his A-10 tenure. He has proven he can coach and recruit, but not consistently. His teams often lack a key part or two and he can’t seem to get the offense and defense functioning properly at the same time. Partly that’s because of an unbalance roster that’s lacked sufficient ball handlers and shooters. It seems G has rectified those problems, though roster depth is shallow. Whether the fault is the coach or the school, LaSalle just needs to get all its ducks in a row to truly contend.
11)Tom Pecora. The new Fordham coach posted some excellent seasons in the Colonial. He has a good eye for talent and is a great motivator. Yet he never managed to break into the top echelon of a lesser league. Nor has he garnered an invitation to the NCAAs. I need to see how he does in the A-10 for at least a year to properly evaluate him.
12)Mark Schmidt. Former Xavier assistant has recruited better than I expected, but like Giannini, he can’t seem to accumulate all the necessary components of his roster at the same time. It feels like Bonaventure is running in place after Schmidt made the program respectable again. I don’t think the Bonnies have excelled offensively or defensively. They don’t really stand out in any one way.
13)Dereck Kellogg. Two years into his coaching career the jury is still out on the former UMass point guard. Sometimes the team looks great, sometimes it looks terrible. DK appears to be a terrific recruiter. He is bringing in loads of topflight talent.Yet the offense is erratic and the defense has been subpar. I don’t get the sense yet that DK has a handle on everything required of a coach.
14)Alan Major – incomplete. I like how much he’s talked about defense and he seems to be recruiting well in his first season. Changing a coach is always a gamble, but it was worth taking in Charlotte’s case. I am excited again about the Niners.