NCAA Basketball: Way-too-early hot seat power rankings for 2021-22
6. Joe Dooley
Joe Dooley‘s second stint at the helm of the East Carolina Pirates has been anything but stellar – and has not yet produced the results Dooley experienced during his first stop with the Pirates in the late 90s, or during his five-year run at Florida Gulf Coast. Now, Dooley will enter the 2021-22 campaign coming off his worst season yet – and without his best player at East Carolina.
Hired at ECU for the second time after leading FGCU to 114 wins and five postseason berths in five seasons, Dooley has struggled in breaking the Pirates out of the basement of the American Athletic Conference, having finished 11th in all three seasons – with the first three seeing East Carolina finishing ahead of Tulane, before this past season produced a last-place, 2-8 conference record.
In addition to claiming his worst conference mark yet, Dooley also logged single-digit overall wins for the first time, finishing 8-11 in a shortened season that saw the Pirates win seven of their first eight games – and then go 1-10 throughout the 2021 calendar year. Ultimately, ECU finished substantially worse than where coaches had predicted – the AAC’s preseason poll had the Pirates slotted ninth while reigning AAC Player of the Year Jayden Gardner was selected to the Preseason All-Conference First Team.
Now, Dooley will face the challenge of filling the gaps left by a mass exodus of transfers. Six different Pirates – including Gardner – have opted to leave the program, while just one transfer – Wynston Tabbs, a double-digit scorer at Boston College – is slated to join the roster. In an effort to replace those departures, however, Dooley will be bringing in at least six freshmen, including a three-star commit in Alexis Reyes.
The pressure will undoubtedly be on for Dooley, who now enters his fourth season in his second stint – and desperately needs to show improvement in climbing out of the basement of a conference that sported just two NCAA Tournament teams.
The window of opportunity in improving in the AAC is wide, considering the bottom six teams finished with losing records overall and in conference play – and another year at the bottom of the AAC would not bode well for Dooley moving forward.