NCAA Basketball: Ranking best head coaching hires from the year 2000

9. Travis Ford (Eastern Kentucky)

The Colonels had not made the NCAA Tournament since 1979 and were virtually an afterthought in the OVC. They had won just 27 games the last four seasons combined before they tabbed Travis Ford as their next head coach. In fact, it had been six years since the Colonels had even been over .500 in conference play.

Ford played point guard at Missouri and Kentucky and was twice named to the All-SEC teams during his playing career. With his professional career mostly a dud, he got into coaching soon after, spending three seasons as head coach at Campbellsville, an NAIA school in Kentucky. He was only 31 years old when Eastern Kentucky brought him aboard, but he got results and got this program back on track.

Where previous head coaches had failed, Ford succeeded in slowly rebuilding this program back into prominence. The win totals steadily improved in each of his five seasons, even if the Colonels won just seven games in his first two campaigns. By year 5, he had led Eastern Kentucky back to the NCAA Tournament, winning their first OVC Tournament in more than 25 years.

Ford parlayed that success into the UMass job, with his same pension for building a program leading to much success for the rest of his career.