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

5. Thad Matta (Xavier)

In the early days of college basketball, Xavier wasn’t an impressive program, though that all started to turn around in the 1980s. By the turn of the century, coaches like Pete Gillen and Skip Prosser had fired up this program and turned it into one of the A-10’s best, but there was still plenty of work to be done, especially to maintain that momentum.

The hiring of Thad Matta did all of that and more. Matta was coming off a single season as head coach at Butler, leading the program to their first NCAA Tournament win in nearly four decades. He was a former assistant at a handful of schools, including under Herb Sendek at Miami-Ohio, but had just that one season of head coaching experience on his resume.

Simply put, he was the right man for the job and his three years with Xavier proved that without doubt. In each of those three seasons, the Musketeers won 26 games, including a pair of A-10 regular-season titles. Though his third season ended in a 4th place finish, the Musketeers had their best postseason success, making an Elite Eight run as a 7-seed. Ohio State came calling soon after, but Matta had certainly contributed to the upward climb of this Xavier program.