NCAA Basketball rewind: Most impactful coaching hires after 2012 season
By Joey Loose
Take yourselves back to the year 2012. A fantastic season from Anthony Davis and an impressive Kentucky roster led to coach John Calipari’s first national championship. Another star-studded season of NCAA Basketball gave us breakout performances by stars like Draymond Green, Doug McDermott, and Jared Sullinger, all First Team All Americans. Even at the mid-major level, players like C. J. McCollum, Damian Lillard, and Kyle O’Quinn adhered themselves to the college basketball world.
The end of another incredible NCAA Tournament meant the end of another season. It was time for several programs to undergo some major changes, with a number of head coaching changes in the offseason. There are all sorts of reasons for changes to occur, whether through performance or else wise. In this particular offseason, we saw teams like Illinois, LSU, and Virginia Tech looking for new leadership.
As those and other programs found out, it’s very important to hire the right head coach. Failing to do so will have severe, long-term effects on any program while nailing the hire could be program-changing in a fantastic way. With that 2012 offseason specifically in mind, we’re going to look at some of the best coaching hires from that offseason. We’ll limit our focus to the ten best, meaning there will be a few pretty good hires that won’t get mentioned, but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t important.
Without further ado, let’s get right into the list of the ten best coaching hires made nine years ago.