I've been wondering for four years what this story would look like.
If you're a regular reader, you're aware that I don't grade coaching hiring in the days, weeks or even a year after they get made. Sure, immediate grades are easy fodder for clicks, but I'm more interested in letting the stew cook and giving a coach four full seasons after they get a job to hand out a proper review. It is the fairest — instead of fastest — way to do this. (Obviously, for good and bad, some guys don't make it four years.)
I look at the entire body of work: overall record, conference success, NCAA Tournament appearances and win rate in the Big Dance (depending on what job the coach takes). There's also recruiting hits/misses and, in recent years, how coaches have managed the transfer portal. How good was the situation when a coach took the job and where does it stand four years later?
I normally reserve this annual feature for the high-major hirings, but 2020 was different. With the coronavirus pandemic in full throe, that year's coaching carousel cycle was the dimmest we had in decades. In fact, only one high-major program made a coaching change. In total as just 24 jobs switched that year. (Compare that to 2024, which had a whopping 64 flips.)
For previous report cards, here are my four-years-later evals from hirings in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
It would be no fun to only look at the one power-conference hiring of 2020, though, right? Right. So, for this year only, I'm including five other mid-major hirings from four years back that worked out very well. Here are the most notable coaching moves four years removed from the COVID-impacted carousel. May we never experience anything like it again.
Grading 2020's most successful/notable coaching hires
| 1 |  |
| The hire: Steve Forbes The lone high-major hiring of 2020. Forbes got the Wake job after a 30-4 season with ETSU. (That team would've been a super-trendy Cinderella pick had there been a 2020 tournament). Since getting to Winston-Salem, Forbes has a 71-54 record (.568 win percentage). In the ACC, Wake Forest has finished 14th, fifth, eighth and fifth in Years 1-4. ACC record: a sub-.500 37-41. Bear in mind, the ACC hasn't been exceptional the past four years, either. Forbes is yet to coach in the NCAA Tournament but has come close twice, having his second-year team and his team from last season finish top-35 at KenPom. All things considered, he's done an acceptable job at one of the tougher posts in the league; he won the 2021-22 ACC Coach of the Year award as well. But ... you gotta make the NCAAs. Forbes' forte has been that of a portal magician, having vastly improved the reputations/stature of many players after they transferred to Wake. Namely: Alondes Williams (2022 ACC POY), Jake LaRavia (2022 first round pick), Tyree Appleby (2023 All-ACC First Team) and Hunter Sallis (2024 All-ACC First Team). Forbes figures to do the same next season with former five-star prospect/Iowa State transfer Omaha Biliew. Wake Forest hasn't been a top-40 program since Forbes took over, but it's unquestionably better than where it was in 2020 and the years prior. Beyond the on-the-court stuff, Forbes also trudged through last season caring for his wife, who suffered a stroke in the summer of 2023. (She's getting better each week, thankfully.) I detailed their battle back in February. Take into consideration what the Forbes family has been through, and it's even more impressive that Wake Forest got to 21 wins. GRADE: B- | |
| 2 |  |
| The hire: Bryce Drew After his firing from Vanderbilt in 2019, Drew took one year off before accepting GCU's offer in 2020. It's been a party out there ever since. The Antelopes (which got to D-I in 2013) have made three of the past four NCAA Tournaments under Drew and own a 94-32 (.746) record in that span. In the WAC, Drew's had two first-places finishes, two fourth-place finishes and gone 50-18. His Lopes team from last season was a 12-seed and upset Saint Mary's in the first round, giving the program its first NCAA Tournament victory and its first 30-win season in program history. Drew also brought on Tyon Grant-Foster, a former player at Kansas and DePaul, who had heart failure in 2022 but returned to basketball and wound up becoming the WAC Player of the Year. It's a wonder Drew is even still coaching at the mid-major level, but the consolation is he gets to live in Phoenix and has one of the 15 best mid-major jobs in the industry. GRADE: A | |
| 3 |  |
| The hire: Rick Pitino What a bolt from the blue this was back in early April 2020 when news broke that Pitino was leaving Greece to come back to college basketball. Many believed it would never happen after the way he was fired at Louisville and all the calamity attached with the NCAA. But Pitino is a survivor and a thriver, and he proved it again at Iona. He coached three seasons in the MAAC before getting the St. John's job in 2023, of course. Let's look back on what Pitino did with the Gaels: a 64-22 record with two NCAA Tournament appearances and four total MAAC titles (two postseason, two regular season). Iona became relevant and Pitino managed to win his way to the big time once more. An unquestioned success. It was the right move and the right time for Pitino, for Iona, for college basketball. GRADE: A | |
| 4 |  |
| The hire: Andy Kennedy This is probably the most overlooked quality good hire of the 2020 cycle. Kennedy was away from coaching for two seasons after exiting Ole Miss but was brought back into the game by his alma mater. It proved to be a wise move for all involved. Kennedy's taken the Blazers to two NCAA tourneys (2022, 2024) and won 12-plus games in league play every year -- which includes the upgrade from Conference USA to the AAC last season. Kennedy's record at UAB is 101-37 (.782) with two top-two conference runs, plus a third and fourth place finish. Overall conference mark: 53-21. He's gotten UAB to the No. 12 line twice and coached some fun offensive teams. Love when a plan comes together like this. GRADE: B+ | |
| 5 |  |
| The hire: Mark Byington A four-year run for Byington at James Madison; he was just hired in March to take over at Vanderbilt. Back in 2020, Byington got the job after seven years running Georgia Southern. At JMU, Byington guided the Dukes through a conference transition, moving from the CAA to the Sun Belt. JMU went 82-36 (.695) in those four years with first-, second-, fourth- and eighth-place finishes. The culmination came last season with James Madison breaking through to the NCAA Tournament in 2024 after an 11-year drought. Byington led a 32-win team to the second round of the NCAAs after upsetting 5-seed Wisconsin. It was the winningest season in school history and elevated JMU's potential in the years ahead under new coach Preston Spradlin. GRADE: B+ | |
| 6 |  |
| The hire: Bucky McMillan From coaching high school -- with zero college experience -- to running a 29-win NCAA Tournament team in four years' time. That's the Bucky McMillan story arc in Birmingham, Alabama. Samford is 77-41 overall and 42-23 in the SoCon (three total league titles) since McMillan started running the show. It's one of the best four-year runs in school history, which culminated in March when the Bulldogs got a No. 13 seed and might have upset Kansas in the first round if not for an egregious foul call on a clean block in the final minute of play. No matter: McMillan is poised to have another good team next season. Our David Cobb went down to visit McMillan earlier this year and wrote a great profile on a unique coaching story. If he replicates it, Samford's probably going to have to find a new coach in 2025. GRADE: B+ | |
