2022 college basketball coaching carousel of progress

Now Schmidt supposedly has signed an extension with St. Bonaventure. UMass showed its hand too early.

Frank Martin is their next target.

 

Hard to see Martin having much more success in the industry.

 

Scuttlebutt around the URI board is that this is already done. Seems like an upgrade from McCall, at least.

 

Surprised Martin wants to keep coaching. I figured he'd retire to Miami.
Strange tenure at South Carolina: 10 years, one NCAA trip, one Final Four.

 

Also memorable that year the bracket was leaked and South Carolina learned it was one of the first teams out after being told it was in.

NCAA apologizes to South Carolina, says text errantly sent to school

And shouts to Devan Downey, legend. Even if he predates Martin.

 

The Schmidt-to-UMass thing left me scratching my head. Yeah, Olean is about as remote as it gets in Division I and that athletic department is not exactly a cash cow, but the Bonnies draw pretty well, even when they stink, and Schmidt could stick around and be the mayor of that town if he wanted. I know he's a Mass guy but is UMass really that alluring? Apart from the brief Calipari spurt in the 1990s it's been a paradigm of irrelevance for nearly its entire existence. You have to beg the Boston writers to drive two hours to cover games that averaged 2,248 fans this season, at a school with an enrollment of nearly 25,000! What's the draw here? Why not wait till the BC job inevitably opens up again in a few years.

 

Second time this has happened to UMass recently ... following Pat Kelsey's Abe Simpson-esque exit from Amherst.

 

Not sure what the details are of his extension, but I believe his salary was about $750k to $1M at Bonaventure. I think the budget for their entire department is around $18M, and UMass was (supposedly) offering 2x his base, in the $1.5M to $2M range. Double the salary plus being closer to home seems pretty tempting, even if UMass might be a somewhat lateral move. (Bonaventure is tiny and in the middle of nowhere, but he's had success there, whereas UMass' glory days are 20+ years ago, but they're kind of closer to civilization.)

 

Honestly, I think a basketball coach doesn't care about the where - give him a contract and he or she will coach. The arena doesn't matter, the alums don't matter, fan support doesn't matter. They can find 12 players to fill a locker room and get to work. I'm guessing its the same for most players.

 

Olean is closer to Buffalo than Amherst is to Boston, by about 20 driving miles. But you are right, Olean is in the MON, whereas Amherst is at least a little closer to Worcester (54 miles). My entire family (me included) was born in Olean, my dad and mom grew up about 10 miles away.

Schmidt can survive a couple of the inevitable bad years at SBU. I expect they'd want an immediate winner at UMass for almost $2 million a year.

 

From what I've read, St. Bonaventure either matched the UMass offer or came close enough to matching it, which persuaded Schmidt to stay.

 

UMass isn’t a guaranteed success, but it should be able to be mid-pack in the A10 without trying all that hard. Fordham, Duquesne, LaSalle and GW are all worse jobs, and I think St. Joe’s might have run off its unicorn coach. I don’t think Mason is going back to the glory days either.