Longtime basketball coaches who have recently retired include, from left, North Carolina’s Roy Williams, Davidson’s Bob McKillop, Villanova’s Jay Wright and Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski.
File photos from AP, News & Observer
Mark Turgeon and Chris Mack had the kind of college basketball jobs in Maryland and Louisville, respectively, that you don’t walk away from. However, both made the rare move of leaving Power 5 conference men’s basketball jobs in the season.
Jay Wright, who led Villanova to two of the last six national titles, announced his retirement still at the peak of his career at the age of 60.
Those examples come after North Carolina Hall of Famers Roy Williams and Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski resigned in back-to-back seasons, as well as longtime Davidson coach Bob McKillop.
There is a changing coaching landscape in college basketball induced by a perfect storm of the pandemic, name, image and likeness (NIL) and the transfer portal.
“There’s no question, there’s no denying it’s the biggest turnaround we’ve probably ever had,” Virginia coach Tony Bennett said. “And it’s been all at once.”
Bennett said some coaches might have felt it was the “time,” but added coaches face a different kind of crucible now.
Williams noted during his final season at UNC in 2020-21 that keeping his team in isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, constant testing, and the uncertainty that often surrounded games was one of the toughest seasons he had endured in his coaching career. that spanned five decades.
It took a toll on coaches in all sports, especially those like basketball, whose championship was canceled in the spring of 2020. But NC State coach Kevin Keatts said it seemed to affect basketball more with the changes that accompany the sport.
“Coming out of the pandemic, you would think it would be back to normal, but then it added a few different pieces that weren’t there in the past,” Keatts said. “And I think it’s up to us as coaches to adapt to the situation. You’re going to have to adapt, or you’re going to have to leave. Because I don’t think I’m going to come back.”
Florida Atlantic coach Dusty Mays said he has spoken with several fellow coaches in their 50s who indicated they were leaning toward leaving the profession because it no longer matches the way they envisioned coaching.
The transfer portal has changed the way most managers view roster management and recruitment. Because the size of the roster is limited to 13 scholarship players, any defection can have a much bigger impact than it says for a football team.
It has led many coaches to abandon the way they approach team building and no longer emphasize recruiting high school players. They first look towards the portal.
NIL is still new, but the uneven application that varies from state to state has many coaches concerned about its fate. Concerns about his impact in the locker room appear to be largely unfounded, but there have been plenty of complaints from coaches about potential recruits asking for deals up front.
“Now the task is to start succeeding on the mission,” Charlotte coach Ron Sanchez said. “And I think that for all of us who really value what we do, we are educators first. We are training young men, not just basketball coaches. And I think that’s what you’re starting to see, that change is happening; it seems that now it is not so important to make sure that young people graduate”.
Sánchez called it a “monsoon of change” and said the key was learning, “how to reinvent the way you’ve been doing things.”
That’s not all bad according to Arkansas coach Eric Musselman.
Musselman speaks as an experienced NBA coach who decided to go to college. In the NBA, he said changes were constant, whether it was free agency or lineup changes or rule changes, like zones of play and defensive three seconds.
Musselman doesn’t have the angst of a college basketball coach used to one or two transfers in four years.
“Everything is evolving.” Musselman said. “College basketball was so stagnant in so many different ways for so many years.”
Evolve seems to be the buzzword now.
Marquette’s coach, Shaka Smart, said the coaching profession is “evolving faster than ever.” But he doesn’t know if the impact of the last three years can really be processed now.
“Really, it won’t be until, I don’t know, five or 10 years from now and everyone looks back and says, ‘Wow, that was different,’” Smart said. “There are certain challenges that exist now that didn’t exist before. But you know what, it’s still a lot of fun. And the best thing about it is that when that ball goes up in the air on November 7, all of a sudden, training becomes the same as always, trying to get a group to play as one.”
This story was originally published July 31, 2022 6:15 a.m.
CL Brown covers the University of North Carolina for The News & Observer. Brown brings more than two decades of reporting experience, including stints as a senior writer at Indiana University and the University of Louisville. After a long stint at the Louisville Courier-Journal, where he won an APSE award, he was on ESPN.com, The Athletic and even tried running his own website, clbrownhoops.com.