The Impact Of A Home Run Head Coach Hire

Last night’s Big Ten Tournament loss to Michigan State should officially end Maryland men’s basketball season, but the Head Coaching search in College Park is heating up and, hopefully, winding down.

And while we don’t know who the next Terps Head Coach will be, we do know that this is one of the most important hires in the program’s history. Getting this right is crucial for a number of reasons. Here are some of the bigger ones:

• The University of Maryland University sits between two major pro markets — Baltimore and Washington, D.C. It is very easy to lose local interest if the product isn’t good. Just look at the football team and how hard it is for them to draw a crowd even in their more successful seasons. That’s what years of a bad product will do to a fan base in this market. This year was abysmal by Maryland standards. Can’t have many more of those.
• To that point, fan apathy has already begun to set in this season. This isn’t just from one bad season. It is from years of a stale product from former head coach Mark Turgeon mixed with a perennially weak OOC schedule that excites no one. Most of the Big Ten games against the conference’s top teams still draw sellout or near sellout crowds, but other games not so much.
• While one bad season doesn’t necessitate a total rebuild, a fan base can only thrive off of a 20-year-old national championship for so long. Although Maryland had been the second-winningest team in the Big Ten since joining the conference (entering this year), it has not resulted in many banners. This program needs not only regular tournament appearances, but also tournament success. Making the tournament and winning there is hard. It’s going to take a coach that knows what they’re doing to restore Maryland to that level.
• Part of the reason Maryland moved to the Big Ten was because the Athletic Department was struggling financially. It’s still not a program flush with cash. If they screw this hire up, where’s the money coming from to fix the problem? When programs screw up coaching hires, the only ones that make it out alive are the ones that can afford a buyout.
• Athletic departments across the country rely on football and basketball programs for revenue. Some schools are football schools, some are basketball schools. It’s not a secret that Maryland is the latter. For an athletic department that’s not rolling in dough, hiring the right coach for the school’s biggest revenue sport is a must. Now, with Maryland’s expected roster attrition as well as the transition to an entirely new coaching staff, no one realistically expects whoever is hired to have the Terps in national title contention next season. But by year two, ‘23-’24, the fruits of the labor need to start to show.

With all of that being said, setting the stage for how important this coaching hire is, there’s good news. It’s doable and it has been done before! We’ve seen plenty of schools make the wrong hire in the past and set their basketball programs back years. But focusing on the positive here, let’s take a look at some of the success stories. Some of the rebuilds that should put into perspective the importance and potential of Maryland’s next hire.

Scott Drew – Baylor

I’ll start by saying this: building a basketball culture and a winning program at a school like Baylor is much more of an uphill battle than what the next Maryland coach will face. The culture is there in College Park and the history is stronger than what Drew took over in Waco. Yet, Baylor is sitting on a national championship from last year and Maryland is struggling to find its footing. If they can do it, the Terps certainly can.

In 2004, Drew took over a Baylor program that was nothing more than an afterthought in the Big 12. It was also just slapped with severe NCAA sanctions stemming from the previous coaching regime. The Bears had just come off 12-16 and 14-14 seasons and the sanctions made a quick rebuild unrealistic. In fact, Baylor only won 21 games combined in Drew’s first three years. But since a 15-16 record in 2007, Drew has brought Baylor to a level of consistency that has yielded 14 straight winning seasons, nine NCAA Tournament appearances, and that historical national championship.

How did Drew do it? Aggressive recruiting for one. Some in college basketball circles claim that he does not exactly play by the rules of recruiting, but Drew has never been found guilty of any serious recruiting violations. Secondly, he has had a string of success bringing in impactful junior college players such as Pierre Jackson in 2012. And finally, a tough style of play to prepare for. Versatile guards who can hit threes as well as drive and dish, mixed with lineups that have the athletes to switch one through five on defense, and Drew seemingly has found the secret sauce for building a program to national prominence.

Kelvin Sampson – Houston

Before Sampson’s arrival, Houston was just a middling American Athletic Conference team that would occasionally pop for a tournament appearance, but nothing more. The program had good history but lay dormant for years. After several subpar years in a row, the Houston athletic department decided they needed to make a splash by hiring a coach that could help them gain a stronghold on a conference that is winnable year in and year out.

The Cougars have done just that. In Sampson’s nearly seven full seasons in Houston, the Cougars are 180-50 with a Sweet 16 and a Final Four appearance. Simply put, AAC coaches just can’t hang with Sampson’s coaching and recruiting. He has NBA coaching pedigree and is able to attract and nurture athletes as a result. Dealing with some of the same media market volatility that Maryland faces as being a college in a major metro area, Sampson was the perfect hire to keep the Cougars relevant.

Bob Huggins – Cincinnati

Cincinnati was one of college basketball’s first dynasties. The Bearcats made five consecutive Final Fours from 1959-63. But by 1989 the program was sputtering and wasn’t even a threat in its own conference — the Metro Conference at the time. Enter Bob Huggins who came from Akron and took about two years to recruit his type of players to Cincinnati.

Like Drew, Huggins built many of his rosters with junior college players and D-I transfers. He knew what type of player he was looking for and he went after them aggressively. It led to the Bearcats reaching 14 straight NCAA Tournaments and only once winning fewer than 22 games in the Huggins era. Since Huggins’ departure for West Virginia, Cincinnati has been able to maintain its level of respectability largely in part to the foundation Huggins built.

Lute Olson – Arizona

Arizona was not always the West Coast powerhouse we’ve come to know in recent history. The program had some success in the early 1970s but the 80s were a disaster for the program and the Wildcats needed a big jolt of energy.

Olson had taken Iowa to the Final Four in 1980 and the Sweet 16 in 1983. He came to the desert with plans of a rebuild and it didn’t take long. By 1985 he had the Wildcats back in the NCAA Tournament and they would not be denied a spot in the field for the next 25 years.

There are many more examples I could turn to, but the point is that no matter how bad it gets, the right coach can bring almost any program to the promised land. And many of these coaches did it at schools that either don’t put basketball first like Maryland does or didn’t have the basketball facilities or recruiting hotbed that you’ll find in College Park.

The candidates that Maryland is said to be looking at include a nice mix of past success and recruiting prowess. But it will take the right fit and the right person to right the ship as quickly as Terps fans would like to see. The foundation is there, it’s just time to hire the right architect for the job.