NCAA Basketball rewind: Most impactful coaching hires after 2015 season
By Joey Loose
Take yourselves back to the year 2015. An amazing display of talent resulted in Duke winning their fifth NCAA Basketball Tournament, putting Mike Krzyzewski in even more rarified air. The biggest story of the season was the run of unbeaten Kentucky, who finally lost in the Final Four to Wisconsin. Names like Frank Kaminsky, Jahlil Okafor, and D’Angelo Russell dominated the headlines all season long, with those undefeated Wildcats getting John Calipari a number of coach of the year honors.
After another fantastic season had finished, it was time to move forward. Many programs were facing coaching changes, whether from retirement, from poor play, or from losing their coach to another program. The coaching carousel began its yearly spin, with Alabama, Florida, Iowa State, and Texas among the biggest openings this time.
As has been said in every piece in this series, it’s vitally important for each and every college basketball team to nail their head coaching hires. Hiring the wrong coach can turn the program downwards for years, while that home run hire can really put a smaller program back on the map.
With regards to 2015, these statements ring as true as ever, which we’ll see in the following. We’ll be focusing on the ten best hires made during that coaching cycle. There isn’t room to run through all the hires from that offseason; we’ve instead identified what amount to the ten best.
Without further ado, let’s get right into naming the ten best coaching hires from six years ago.