My criteria for thinking about this, in rough order of importance:
1) Multiple years of success as a head coach at the D1 level – either turned around a program (positive trajectory of improvement year to year) or taken over a successful program and maintained that success (or better) with a different player group
2) At least one year of success as a head coach at a mid-major or better
3) Experience recruiting at high major level as an assistant
4) Regional recruiting ties
5) Part of a large coaching tree – speaks to ability to build a staff
6) Under the age of 50
Now, obviously this is a bit of a wish list. Most candidates that pass each of these bars with flying colors are likely beyond Wake’s reach, and there are some great candidates who would fail on one or multiple of these criteria (for example, Brad Stevens and Gregg Marshall), but I think if a coach ticks most of these boxes then he is probably a pretty damn good candidate. For what it’s worth, I would say [Redacted] only ticked #2 and Manning only ticked #2 and #5.
Here’s how I would rank the coaches I have seen on this thread, plus a few of my additions (Musselman, Hurley, and Fife):
Tom Crean (#1,2,3,5)
Eric Musselman (#1,2,3)
Dan Hurley (#1,2,6)
Pat Kelsey (#1,3,4,5,6)
Earl Grant (#1,2,3,4,6)
Dane Fife (#1,3,5,6)
Nick McDevitt (#1,4,6)
Wes Miller (#1,4,6)
Nate Oats (#1,6)
Scott Nagy (#1)
Micah Shrewsberry (#3,5,6)
Levelle Motion (#1,4,6)
Mike Young (#1, 4)
I know I am down on Grant vs others, but I am just really uneasy about how he lines up against #1. I have seen a couple of his games, and, in both, it looked like CoC was getting by on sheer talent. Then I look at the KP trajectory, and, despite the better record, the team actually took a significant step-back this year (from 89th to 118th) as a result of the defense falling off the cliff.
I am also down on Miller vs the overall group. He has no experience recruiting at the ACC level, and I am not confident that he could build a staff that does. I was actually surprised Kelsey ended-up as high on my list as he did.
I didn’t include Matta because I just don’t buy that he is healthy enough. I didn’t include Patrick Beilein because we should absolutely not hire a D2 guy.