NCAA Basketball: Top 10 impact head coaching hires from the year 2004
By Joey Loose
8. Trent Johnson (Stanford)
When Mike Montgomery left Stanford to coach the Golden State Warriors, the Cardinal were one of the best programs in the country. In recent years, they had been upset several times in the postseason but were at least a perennial NCAA Tournament team. Replacing Montgomery would be no easy task after nearly two decades of solid leadership, but Stanford found a pretty solid successor that they were already familiar with.
That name was Trent Johnson, who was at the time a big name for his recent work at Nevada. He has previously served as an assistant at Utah, Washington, and Rice, before spending three years on Montgomery’s staff with the Cardinal. He would then spend five years as head coach at Nevada, turning the program around and leading them to the Sweet Sixteen in 2004.
While Stanford was no longer one of the nation’s elite programs, Johnson still steered the Cardinal towards a bunch of wins and recruited the talented Lopez twins to Stanford during his tenure. He led Stanford to three NCAA Tournaments in his four years, including a run to the Sweet Sixteen in 2008. Soon after that run, he departed for the head coaching job at LSU, and Stanford basketball has been pretty unsuccessful ever since.