Perhaps not surprisingly, coaches with previous head coaching experience performed better than coaching who were first time head coaches. What is interesting is that neither group out-performed their predecessors. Teams with new coaches who had previous coaching experience had an average of 2.46 less wins on the season. Teams with a new coach who did not have previous head coaching experience had an average of 5.55 less wins on the seasons.
Taking a deeper dive, we broke down the coaches who had previous head coaching experience into two categories: those who had been fired or forced to resign from their previous jobs and those who left their previous jobs to pursue another opportunity. Teams who hired head coaches who had been fired from their previous jobs won an average of 3.75 fewer games than the previous year. Teams who hired head coaches away from other schools won an average of 1.75 fewer games.
All that is to say, after just one year of data it appears the best coaching candidates are those who already had success as a head coach. The worst candidates are those who had no head coaching experience.
As far as individual success goes, nobody was more successful than Chris Beard. Beard joined Little Rock and in his first year improved their win total by a whopping 17 games. He also took them to the NCAA Tournament where they upset Purdue. Unfortunately for this data set, Beard has already left Little Rock to take over the head job at UNLV. It will be interesting to follow his trajectory particularly because his only previous head coaching experience was at the Division II level.
Just behind Beard in individual performance was Eric Musselman, head coach at Nevada. Nevada improved their wins by 15 over last year. Musselman is another interesting case because he had some head coaching experience before taking this job but all of it was at the NBA level. In college he had only served as assistant and associate head coach. Still, the Wolfpack have to be pleased with his first year performance.
Other High Win Differentials:
- Montez Robinson, Alcorn St. (+9 wins)
- Steve Forbes, East Tennessee St. (+8 wins)
- Jeff Neubauer, Fordham (+7 wins)
- Matt McCall, Chattanooga (+7 wins)
On the other hand, there were some hires that are already smelling pretty putrid. Topping that list is Chris Mullin at St. John's. Look, maybe Mullin will end up being a Hall of Fame coach, but if his first year is any indication, he is much more likely to be unemployed. The Red Storm were a 20+ win team a year ago under Steve Lavin. This year, they didn't even win 10 games. They won just 1 Big East game all season long and were at times flat out bad. Just an awful basketball team. Mullin should get more than one season to prove himself, but if the results don't change quickly, St. John's will be searching for a head coach again soon.
Perhaps unfairly, Matt McMahon is the other coach who significantly lowered his team's wins in his first season. Murray St. won 12 fewer games in his first season than they did in the previous year. We say that is perhaps unfair to McMahon because Murray St. won 29 games the year before he took over and lost 2 of their 3 leading scorers from that team. It would have been hard for Coach K to win 29 games at Murray St. this season. Murray St. did still finish in first place in their division in the Ohio Valley Conference, so McMahon has plenty of successes to point to.
Like we said at the top, we know one season does not determine the successes and failures of a new head coach. Since that's true, we're going to follow this group of coaches for several years to see who has the most and least success. We're trying to answer the question: "Where do the best head coaches come from?"
