Cincinnati Basketball: John Brannen a marvelous hire for Bearcats

After losing Mick Cronin to UCLA, the Bearcats have just hired former Northern Kentucky head coach John Brannen to replace him. Let’s take a look at why this was a marvelous decision made by Cincinnati Basketball.

A long and winding head coaching search led the UCLA Bruins to hire Cincinnati head coach Mick Cronin, who had spent 13 years with the Bearcats. Cronin led this program to the NCAA Tournament in each of the last 9 years, but failed to advance past the first weekend on all but one of those trips. Cronin will be missed, but to some people, a change isn’t the end of the world for this program.

The head coaching search to replace Cronin had a number of intriguing candidates but the Bearcats just announced the hiring of John Brannen, the head coach at Northern Kentucky. While some people have reacted negatively to Brannen’s hiring, this was a magnificent decision made by the Bearcat athletics department.

Brannen’s coaching career began after playing college basketball for a pair of seasons at both Morehead State and Marshall. He was an assistant at Charleston, Eastern Kentucky, and St. Bonaventure before he was hired to join Anthony Grant’s staff at VCU in 2006. When Grant got the Alabama job in 2009, Brannen followed him and spent six years on the Crimson Tide coaching staff. After Grant was fired in 2015, Brannen became interim head coach, coaching Alabama during their two NIT games.

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After the 2015 season, Brannen was released following the hiring of Avery Johnson, but was hired to lead Northern Kentucky a few weeks later. The Norse had only just completed their transition to Division 1 and were joining the Horizon League upon Brannen’s arrival. He replaced Dave Bezold, who spent 11 years leading NKU, but who struggled as the team adjust to D-1 play. Butler was no longer members of the Horizon League, but moving from D-2 to the Atlantic Sun to the Horizon League in a three-year span was still a significant challenge.

But this was a challenge that Brannen took on, and he saw great success with the Norse. Their initial season was an understandable struggle, but things really improved from there. Brannen won the Horizon League Tournament in his second season, the first of two NCAA appearances he would have with the Norse. He couldn’t lead Northern Kentucky to a Tourney upset, but he did win 22 or more games in each of the last three years with the program. During that time, his team was 40-14 in conference play, dominating the conference his team had only just entered.

This success may have been at a mid-major, but no man has had such success building a new D-1 program in recent memory as Brannen. He was making great strides on the recruiting front, landing Kentucky Mr. Basketball’s Carson Williams and Trevon Faulkner. He also developed Drew McDonald into a great forward and 2019 Horizon League Player of the Year.

Recruiting at Cincinnati is a different ballgame than at Northern Kentucky, but Brannen had plenty of experience at Alabama. He also has plenty of experience recruiting in the area, as Northern Kentucky is located mere miles from Cincinnati across the river. Brannen will be tasked with trying to keep together as much of this roster as possible, but he’s the kind of guy who will bring talent onto this Bearcats team.

There may have been other candidates with more bigtime experience, either as assistant or head coach, but few men have the recent accomplishments that Brannen brought to the table. It will be interesting to see how he handles the transition from Horizon League to AAC, but the Bearcats should continue to be a contender in the young conference.

No matter what anyone else says or believes, the Bearcats made an excellent hire in bringing aboard Brannen. He’s familiar with the area, has shown experience and talent on the recruiting front, and has already turned around Northern Kentucky in a short time. If he can put together a solid coaching staff around him, then he could have these Bearcats competing for Sweet Sixteens (and even further) in the next few years. Anything less than that, and he’ll be chewed out by Bearcats fans, especially the few unenthused by this hire.