Atlantic 10 Basketball: Top 5 coaching performances of 2017-18

Matt McCall: Massachusetts Minutemen

If you knew nothing about the 2017-18 Minutemen, and I told you that two walk-ons saw decent minutes as well as a football player that was recruited out of desperation, what would you assume their record was? You would probably be curious if they won more than a handful of games. After all, in that type of situation, it would have been excusable if they didn’t, right?

Ultimately, Matt McCall and the ragtag group described above went 13-20 (5-13 in conference). Normally I wouldn’t put a coach with that record in the top half of performers, but these are special circumstances. McCall’s detractors might say that he still had plenty of talent, and point to guys like Luwane Pipkins and Carl Pierre. I would ask them if they’re aware that Pipkins went from 10 points to 21 points per game and 31% to 43% from 3 point-range under McCall, or that Carl Pierre held no other division 1 offers before McCall found him.

As I said above, it would have been excusable for this team to be horrendous – zero conference wins horrendous – but somehow they managed to be a normally bad A10 team – one that, it’s worth mentioning, beat Providence and Georgia and swept Dayton. It wouldn’t be fair to the other coaches on this list whose teams performed greatly to put McCall above them, but expect him to break into that elite group now that he has a real basketball team to work with.