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

6. Mark Turgeon (Wichita State)

Despite their successes, especially in the last decade, Wichita State was not always one of the potent mid-major hotbeds in the country. At the turn of the century, it had been nine years since their last NCAA Tournament appearance, leaving the Shockers to turn to a young coach named Mark Turgeon to turn things around.

Turgeon had played point guard for Larry Brown and spent time on the coaching staffs of Kansas and Oregon, learning under mentor Roy Williams before following Jerry Green to the West Coast. Having also briefly spent time on the staff of the Philadelphia 76ers, Turgeon got his first taste of head coaching at Jacksonville State but took over in Wichita after just two seasons with the Gamecocks.

The Shockers still weren’t that mid-major hotbed, but Turgeon won plenty of games in his seven years at the helm, including getting them back to the NCAA Tournament in 2006. Turgeon led Wichita State to 128 wins in those seven seasons, including three trips to the NIT among the mix. He certainly didn’t experience the level of success as Gregg Marshall but turned that success into building some pretty good programs at Texas A&M and Maryland in the following years.