Possible Wake Forest Coaching Candidates Analysis

[PhDeac]

Thanks, Waldo. That backs up my post on the coaching candidates thread showing UNCG over the last 8 years doesn't really stand out.

So who do you hire if you don’t get home run tier? Assistants at P6 schools? I mean if you’re not targeting up and coming coaches of smaller schools and haven’t landed a top tier coach who are you left to hire? Or is the point that mid major coaches who have come up through the ranks and landed at a program that has consistently been decent are better targets?

The post basically answers the question. Look again. The successful coaches were all Top 55, not Top 100. All the coaches who reached top 55 except Donahue are doing pretty well. Raise the threshold.

2010
Cornell (#46) - Steve Donahue - Flamed out at BC
Murray State (#53) - Billy Kennedy - Doing well at A&M but having a down season.

2011
Belmont (#23) - Rick Byrd - Still winning at Belmont.

2012
Belmont (#25) - Rick Byrd - Still winning at Belmont.
Murray State (#35) - Steve Prohm - #15 Kenpom at Iowa
Long Beach State (#36) - Dan Monson - Doesn't really count for this. He's a P6 retread.
Harvard (#41) - Tommy Amaker - Kind of falling off, but made the NIT last year.
Middle Tennessee State (#49) - Kermit Davis Jr
Iona (#54) - Tim Cluess

2013
Belmont (#43) - Rick Byrd - Still winning at Belmont.
Middle Tennessee State (#44) - Kermit Davis Jr - #39 at Ole Miss

2014
Louisiana Tech (#37) - Mike White

 

[jaybone]

This is an emotional take versus an objective one. It's how WF has had Randolph Childress for the last two coaching hires as well. And it's basically the opposite of people who hate Wes Miller because he went to a blue school down the road. Find the best coach that WF can period. Don't worry about past allegiances (good or bad), just simply find the best person. If Kelsey is the best option without the bias of his past WF associations, then cool. With that said, enthusiasm for the school and knowing how to market it to recruits is important so that factor would most likely be a positive for Kelsey.

This.

Prosser had no area ties and we almost lost him to Pittsburgh before Pitt was in the ACC.

Dave Odom was a long-time UVa assistant under Terry Holland. Bother were very successful coaches at Wake.

Odom could coach. Prosser could motivate, inspire and run intense practices. I wouldn't necessarily say he was a great coach. In a lot of ways, Dino was a better "coach." But we learned through Bzd that a knowledgeable Xs and Ox "coach" does not a great head coach make, or even a good head coach if you can't recruit, motivate or inspire.

One thing that got me thinking recently is that if a Wake Forest basketball coach's job were to prepare their players for professional careers, all of Wellman's basketball coaches or hires (Odom, Prosser, Dino, Bzd, and now Manning) have done at adequate job. It doesn't make our sucktitude taste any better, worse maybe, but I would hazard to guess that more Wake Forest basketball scholarship players over the last decade are either currently earning a living playing basketball or are gainfully employed as compared to most schools in the ACC. I bet we are in the top half or top third - assuming Duke and UVa are definitely more successful in that regard, but that is it.

 

[PhDeac]

Can't edit, but I left out Cluess and White. Cluess made 3 straight NCAAT but is struggling this year. White is obviously doing well at UF.

I'd say P6 hires out of the Top 55 were 4 of 5. That's pretty good.

Hiring a Top 100 coach just looks like a horrible idea. A Top 100 low major coach needs to get a mid-major job and make the Top 50 first before getting a P6 gig.

 

[Wakeforest22890]

Thanks, Waldo. That backs up my post on the coaching candidates thread showing UNCG over the last 8 years doesn't really stand out.



The post basically answers the question. Look again. The successful coaches were all Top 55, not Top 100. All the coaches who reached top 55 except Donahue are doing pretty well. Raise the threshold.

2010
Cornell (#46) - Steve Donahue - Flamed out at BC
Murray State (#53) - Billy Kennedy - Doing well at A&M but having a down season.

2011
Belmont (#23) - Rick Byrd - Still winning at Belmont.

2012
Belmont (#25) - Rick Byrd - Still winning at Belmont.
Murray State (#35) - Steve Prohm - #15 Kenpom at Iowa
Long Beach State (#36) - Dan Monson - Doesn't really count for this. He's a P6 retread.
Harvard (#41) - Tommy Amaker - Kind of falling off, but made the NIT last year.
Middle Tennessee State (#49) - Kermit Davis Jr
Iona (#54) - Tim Cluess

2013
Belmont (#43) - Rick Byrd - Still winning at Belmont.
Middle Tennessee State (#44) - Kermit Davis Jr - #39 at Ole Miss

2014
Louisiana Tech (#37) - Mike White

Fair enough. So Casey Alexander from Lipscomb fits the billing.

 

[Wakeforest22890]

You are descending into the way RWers attacks. This is the second time you have tried to take one part of an issue, extract it and not the totality of the post.

I didn't just say 2-11 only or only losing to Rutgers shows the weakness of the rankings. You're better than this.

How are results against bad teams silly?

How are overall results silly?

What's silly is believing a computer's theory over actual results.

This has been explained to you probably a hundred times by now and I’m not going to do it again.

Penn state’s margin per game in big 10 play is -5.7 even with 11 losses. They also have two wins over top 10 KP teams (VPI and Michigan).

 

[RacerDeac]

Sorry, there is no rational way to make this shitshow be ranked #58.

Every major ranking system in college basketball has them ranked between 58-70 out of 353 teams. You're just unsmart.

 

[RJKarl]

This has been explained to you probably a hundred times by now and I’m not going to do it again.

Penn state’s margin per game in big 10 play is -5.7 per game even with 11 losses. They also have two wins over top 10 KP teams (VPI and Michigan).

Who cares about the spread? Two wins against good teams does not overcome more losses to terrible teams than that.

My bad, then 11th commandment was "Thou shall not question KP under any circumstances".

 

[wsc8521s]

Thinking like RJ's is why 84% of spread bets were on Michigan -7 last night. That was not a winning bet

 

[Wakeforest22890]

Who cares about the spread? Two wins against good teams does not overcome more losses to terrible teams than that.

My bad, then 11th commandment was "Thou shall not question KP under any circumstances".

Margin of victory or defeat is probably the most predictive stat out there as to strength of a team moving forward. Games that are within five points could’ve easily gone either way (win or loss) and with small sample sizes in college basketball, people vastly overvalue the results of one or two or even five games and use this to fit their narrative.

 

[RacerDeac]

My bad, then 11th commandment was "Thou shall not question KP, Sagarin, BPI, NET or the opinion of actual informed people under any circumstances".

FIFY

 

[RJKarl]

Thinking like RJ's is why 84% of spread bets were on Michigan -7 last night. That was not a winning bet

I very, very rarely bet games. This has nothing to do with my premise that KP's of PSU is terrible.

The 73 win Warriors lost to the 33 win Bucks and Nuggets. Do those wins for the crappy teams make them middle of the pack in NBA?

 

[RJKarl]

Margin of victory or defeat is probably the most predictive stat out there as to strength of a team moving forward. Games that are within five points could’ve easily gone either way (win or loss) and with small sample sizes in college basketball, people vastly overvalue the results of one or two or even five games and use this to fit their narrative.

It's TWENTY-FOUR games...that's 80% of their season. Their record is 9-15, 2-11.

If their results don't count, why keep them?

 

[CharlotteDeac1]

I very, very rarely bet games. This has nothing to do with my premise that KP's of PSU is terrible.

The 73 win Warriors lost to the 33 win Bucks and Nuggets. Do those wins for the crappy teams make them middle of the pack in NBA?

The point of the argument is average margin of defeat/victory, not a one game sample

 

[RJKarl]

The point of the argument is average margin of defeat/victory, not a one game sample

My point has been that it's not just the loss to Rutgers or a win against Michigan. This team is in LAST place in their league. They have lost to three of the other four worst teams in the league as well as a couple of bad OOC losses. There is no legitimate way to reconcile this record with being ranked in the Top 60 in the nation in basketball.

 

[CharlotteDeac1]

A good example of this in the opposite way is Wake's 2016 team.

The start to the season we were 9-3 with narrow wins over UMBC, UCLA, Indiana, Arkansas, and Coastal.

The average margin of victory was +0.7. We then got run through in conference. You could tell our luck would run out eventually.

Against teams in the top 100 we were 4-3 with an average scoring margin of -3.29.

You could tell we were not as good as our winning record seemed to indicate.

We were 9-3 in OOC and 101st in Kenpom with wins over four good teams.

 

[Wakeforest22890]

It's TWENTY-FOUR games...that's 80% of their season. Their record is 9-15, 2-11.

If their results don't count, why keep them?

Because the system is predictive for future games, not one that rates teams on how good their season has been.

 

[JamesSokolove]

My bad ACTUAL long-term stats don't matter. you GEEKS have a "KenPom"

 

[WFUWaldo]

So who do you hire if you don’t get home run tier? Assistants at P6 schools? I mean if you’re not targeting up and coming coaches of smaller schools and haven’t landed a top tier coach who are you left to hire? Or is the point that mid major coaches who have come up through the ranks and landed at a program that has consistently been decent are better targets?

My initial inclination is that the bolded statement is the best route. The following conferences were consistently mid-majors from 2010-2014: Mountain West, Atlantic 10, Missouri Valley, Conference USA, West Coast, Horizon, WAC, Colonial, and MAC. This is slightly askew due to conference realignment, but held fairly steady during that time period. From 2010-2014, the top 28 programs by average KenPom from those conferences were-

School (Avg. Rank)
Wichita St. (25.00), Gonzaga (26.20), New Mexico (33.25), BYU (35.60), San Diego State (36.25), UNLV (36.25), Temple (38.25), Saint Mary's (38.40), VCU (39.60), Xavier (46.75), Memphis (47.00), Denver (47.00), Butler (51.50), Saint Louis (58.60), Dayton (60.20), Creighton (64.25), Utah St (69.50), Southern Miss (73.20) , Northern Iowa (74.40), Richmond (75.20), Colorado St. (82.00), Middle Tennessee (89.00), UTEP (94.80), New Mexico St (96.40), Ohio (101.80), Akron (103.20), Tulsa (106.20), St. Bonaventure (109.60)

These 28 schools had 38 coaches working for them during the 2010-2014 time period (38 to match the low-major count of 38).

Gregg Marshall, Mark Few, Steve Alford, Craig Neal, Dave Rose, Steve Fisher, Lon Kruger, Dave Rice, Fran Dunphy, Randy Bennett, Shaka Smart, Chris Mack, Josh Pastner, Joe Scott, Brandon Miller, Brad Stevens, Rick Majerus, Jim Crews, Archie Miller, Brian Gregory, Greg McDermott, Dana Altman, Stew Morrill, Donnie Tyndall, Larry Eustachy, Ben Jacobson, Chris Mooney, Tim Miles, Kermit Davis Jr, Tim Floyd, Tony Barbee, Marvin Menzies, John Groce, Jim Christian, Keith Dambrot, Danny Manning, Doug Wojcik, Mark Schmidt

Clearly that list of coaches is of a higher-caliber, though that shouldn't be surprising due to the greater prestige of the basketball programs.

In this group you get some odd groupings - coaches with great success at their next step (Brad Stevens, Dana Altman), coaches who flamed out at the next step (Danny Manning, John Groce), coaches who did fairly well, but fell short of high expectations (Steve Alford, Shaka Smart), coaches who may never leave their mid-major (Greg Marshall, Mark Few), and former-high caliber coaches using the mid-major as a way to close out their career (Tim Floyd, Rick Majerus).

So while the mid-major route seems more certain than low-major, it still leaves a lot of question marks.

 

[RJKarl]

Because the system is predictive for future games, not one that rates teams on how good their season has been.

Then it should be showing that they will continue losing. If it's truly predictive, that's what it should do.

 

[DeacDaddy]

Hiring a good coach is a crap shoot and for WFU the operative word is the former.