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It’s clear there was a trend with this significant SEC basketball coaching carousel
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If this coaching carousel taught us anything, it’s that there’s a blueprint for SEC basketball, and it resides in Alabama and Arkansas.
Let’s back up a second.
Six SEC basketball programs made hires (Florida, Georgia, LSU, Mizzou, MSU and South Carolina). In other words, nearly half the league is starting fresh at the No. 2 revenue-generating sport in the SEC. A changing of the guard is in store in many ways. It’s not just that the conference just saw a firing cycle that rivaled SEC football.
It’s a copy cat league, and dare I say, we just saw SEC teams try to copy the Alabama-Arkansas model.
That is, hire the mid-major coach with the atypical background and hope that he can take the program to new 21st century heights. Don’t worry about winning the press conference. Splashy hires? Meh. Who cares.
Shoot, who even needs Power 5 experience? Eric Musselman and Nate Oats had never been Power 5 head coaches before they were hired 3 years ago.
Of the 6 new SEC men’s basketball hires, Georgia’s Mike White is the only one with P5 head coaching experience.
It will be interesting to see how this hiring cycle plays out. Mid-major hires are like lottery tickets-many losers but sometimes a big winner.
— Brandon Zimmerman (@BZSEC) March 22, 2022
Regardless, the face of SEC basketball coaching has completely transformed. An influx of new, young energy will be replacing grizzled coaching veterans.
Frank Martin, Cuonzo Martin, Tom Crean and Ben Howland had 59 combined years of P5 head coaching experience.
— Brandon Zimmerman (@BZSEC) March 22, 2022
Yep. Brandon is right.
No program better exemplified this trend than Florida. There was an expectation that the Gators would take a big swing, especially after it didn’t have to fork over any sort of buyout to Mike White with him off to Georgia.
What did Florida do? It hired the 36-year-old coach who will probably get carded at any Gainesville bar in his first year. Why? Well, besides the fact that Todd Golden looks young, he’s also not a household name in the sport. Only the diehards know about his modern offense and why it’s basically what Gator fans were clamoring for after watching White’s dated approach to that side of the ball.
A look into Todd Golden’s offense at San Francisco. First, zoom offense using pin downs into dribble handoffs that are tough to guard with a spaced out floor. Modern basketball at it’s finest. @CoachToddGolden pic.twitter.com/KEV7bxZO1J
— Eric Fawcett (@Efawcett7) March 18, 2022
Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin didn’t look down on Golden’s résumé even though he only has 3 years as a Division I head coach. Much like we saw with Oats’ 3-point-heavy, up-tempo offense at Alabama, the goal for Florida is going to be to recruit to Golden’s style and hope that winning takes care of the whole “being a household name” thing.
And last I checked, it worked out pretty well the last time that Florida hired a baby-faced mid-major coach with the right offensive approach.
Every SEC program that just filled a vacancy is hoping to have their version of Billy Donovan. Or rather, their version of Oats and Musselman.
The team that Golden lost to in that epic opening-round game of the NCAA Tournament, Murray State, watched its coach bolt for LSU. LSU athletic director Scott Woodward, who is known for draining the pool with his splashy hires, went out and got 43-year-old Matt McMahon. How high the words “Ja Morant” are on McMahon’s résumé are unknown, but what he doesn’t have on there is a Sweet 16 appearance or any sort of experience as a full-time member of a staff in a power conference.
Sure, the likely possibility of NCAA sanctions following the Will Wade firing probably limited the usual scope Woodward works with when making a hire. He still followed the blueprint we’re seeing. Just because you have the money to pay a coach doesn’t mean it’s worth it. Instead, you can use that money on a potential extension/restructured deal if and when McMahon earns that.
LSU signed new basketball coach Matt McMahon to a seven-year deal. His salary starts at $2.6 million and increases to $3.2 million.
McMahon will receive an extra year if LSU gets a multi-year postseason ban or loses two scholarships for at least three years.
— Wilson Alexander (@whalexander_) March 22, 2022
At a place like Mizzou, the blueprint was also evident. Unlike 2 of the last 3 hires when Mizzou got experienced Power 5 coaches like Frank Haith and Cuonzo Martin, Dennis Gates brings a different background. The 42-year-old coach from Cleveland State should be able to recruit well in the ever-growing mid-major transfer portal market. The 2021 Horizon League Coach of the Year worked under Leonard Hamilton at Florida State from 2011-19.
Hamilton went so far as to compare Gates to another one of his former assistants, Kansas coach Bill Self (via Power Mizzou):
“I remember watching (Self) and I said ‘this guy is born to coach,” Hamilton said. “I feel the same way about Dennis. Dennis has that it-factor about him that you just know that he is going to be successful in whatever responsibility you give him.”
Mizzou fans would rather eat their own hair than admit they aspire to have what Kansas has, but if Gates is in the same breath as Self in a few years, that’d be a massive win. Either way, it’ll be a much different energy than the lackluster mood in the final days of the Martin era. And with the ability to perhaps have more mid-major success in the transfer portal, perhaps Mizzou can rebuild its roster the way we saw Arkansas and Alabama do.
Certainly that’ll be a point of emphasis for new MSU coach Chris Jans (from New Mexico State) and new South Carolina coach Lamont Paris (Chattanooga). This isn’t about just getting younger, though both of those programs did just that.
To be fair, South Carolina hiring Sean Miller would’ve gone against the mid-major trend. Paris didn’t appear to be the first choice. Having said that, the sell is that South Carolina can have a quick turnaround like we saw at Arkansas and Alabama. Like McMahon, Jans, Gates and Golden, nobody is starting off making more than $3 million annually. Neither did Musselman or Oats.
Both, however, got lucrative extensions and now look like 2 of the better bargains in the sport.
(Say what you want about the way this year fizzled out for Alabama. Oats still led Alabama to a sweep of the regular season and SEC Tournament titles in 2020-21.)
Not everyone can feast like those 2 have. There will be misses in this new group. Perhaps one of them will move into that upper echelon in Year 2, and we’ll praise the hire like we did with Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek and Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne.
Yurachek wasn’t worried about selling a coach who flamed out in the NBA, and Byrne wasn’t worried about selling a coach who was teaching high school math 6 years earlier.
Stricklin wasn’t worried about selling a baby-faced coach from San Francisco who was known for his belief in analytics.
“Sometimes people think that because you’re (UF) you can’t hire a guy from San Francisco,” Stricklin said (via Thomas Goldkamp). “But it’s like we’re buying fruit in the produce section: You don’t want something that’s ripe today, you want something that’s going to be ripe for a long time.”
SEC programs loaded up on fresh produce. If it’s anything like what we saw at Alabama and Arkansas, the juice will be worth the squeeze.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
