8. WCC Basketball coach power rankings – Kerry Keating (Santa Clara, 2007-2016)
After national success as a recruiter and assistant coach, helping build several Final Four teams at UCLA, Keating took his first head coaching job with the Broncos in 2007. As previously mentioned, nothing was really happening in Santa Clara since Steve Nash was around, but that doesn’t mean Keating didn’t accomplish a few things with the Broncos in his time.
Though they never truly competed at the top of the league, Keating finished in 4th place four times and led the Broncos to a pair of postseason runs. His 2011 team won 24 games and the CIT title while the 2013 team topped that, with 26 games and the CBI title. These were unfortunately also the only seasons where the Broncos won more than 16 games or were over .500 in WCC play.
Keating was fired in 2016, but those two postseason runs are still impressive for a program like Santa Clara. We cannot say that he put this Broncos program in a better position than the one he inherited, but Keating was still a solid coach for the program. Until a Steve Nash-type talent walks through those doors, it’s unlikely that we’ll see Santa Clara back in the NCAA Tournament in the near future.