NCAA Basketball: Ranking best head coaching hires from the year 2001

8. Todd Lickliter (Butler)

Today, Butler is a Big East program because of the progress this program made during the first two decades of this century. In 2001, they had just won their first NCAA Tournament game in nearly 40 years and watched coach Thad Matta depart for Xavier. This was still a mid-major on the rise, looking like one of the stronger programs in the Horizon League, but their next hiring helped push them further along on that journey.

Getting the call was Todd Lickliter, who had been on staff and graduated from Butler two decades earlier. He had been a high school head coach in Indiana but this was his first collegiate job leading a program. Inheriting what Matta had already built, Lickliter took this Butler program to the next level.

The Bulldogs won three Horizon League titles in his six seasons, including a pair of appearances in the NCAA Tournament. During both of those trips, 2003 and 2007, Butler made the Sweet Sixteen after a pair of Tourney wins. Lickliter would nab the Iowa job shortly after that second run, though that job didn’t go well for him. Back in Indiana, the Butler program was on an even higher rise than when Lickliter was hired, but the real heights were coming just a few years later.