NCAA Basketball: Stevens, Huggins among top head coaching hires of 2007
By Joey Loose
1. Brad Stevens (Butler)
Over the last decade, Butler had come into its own as one of the country’s better mid-major programs. They were fresh off their second Sweet Sixteen in five years and were establishing themselves as the best team in the Horizon League. Todd Lickliter used that success to nab the open job at Iowa and left one of his assistant coaches in control of the program, making one of the finest hires of the 21st century.
A decade earlier, Brad Stevens was still a student and basketball player at DePauw, a D3 school in Indiana. He joined Lickliter’s staff two years after graduating and spent six years on the Butler bench. Stevens had no head coaching experience or any relevant experience beyond those years as an assistant. And yet, Stevens was the perfect hire for Butler and did things for that program that few thought possible.
His first two seasons delivered a pair of NCAA Tournament appearances and Horizon League titles, but that was just the beginning. His 2010 team returned to the Big Dance and made it all the way to the national championship game as a 5-seed, a dream season for any mid-major program. His 2011 team did the impossible in repeating the feat, this time as an 8-seed.
Stevens just spent the last eight years coaching the Boston Celtics because of what he did for Butler, a program that’s now in the Big East. No coach has ever come out of nowhere and had such an impressive impact on a program as Stevens.
Next. Top head coaching hires of 2006. dark
That’s the end of our look at some of the best coaching hires from 2007; which of these were the best and most impactful?