NCAA Basketball: UNC, Kansas among top head coaching hires from 2003

2. Scott Drew (Baylor)

This series will be going for several weeks, but there will never be another article like this one, where the top two both deserve to be number one. In 2003, the Baylor program was an indescribable disaster in every way. After what Dave Bliss did to the Bears program, most of the talent was gone and a program in shambles and probation was left behind for the next head coach to fix.

The man destined to turn things around at Baylor was a young coach named Scott Drew. After graduating from Butler, he joined father Homer’s coaching staff at Valparaiso, helping build talent that went to a long string of NCAA Tournaments, including 1998’s Sweet Sixteen run. He took over as head coach after his father’s retirement in 2002, spending one season before Baylor came calling.

Drew put in the hard work to turn the Bears around and had them back in the NCAA Tournament by 2008. Elite Eight runs followed in 2010 and 2012 and a decade later this had become an elite basketball program. Drew’s legacy was cemented this past season as Baylor won their first national championship, an insane rise from where this program sat at the time of his hiring. Drew’s legacy is one of the greatest program rebuilds in college basketball.