Maryland Basketball: Examining the pros and cons of hiring Juan Dixon

Cons

Look, when you are seriously considering an individual for a head coaching position, you have to take some time to review their resume before you make a final decision. Unfortunately for Juan Dixon, he hasn’t found a ton of success as a head coach at Coppin State.

In four full seasons with the Eagles (he is currently in year 5), Dixon accumulated just 33 wins and racked up 85 losses in the process. Dixon did help the Eagles win the MEAC regular-season title last season, but they fell to Morgan State in MEAC Tournament Semifinal and missed out on the NCAA Tournament for the 13th straight season.

Joey Loose (another contributor at Busting Brackets) recently wrote an article detailing 7 coaches that could potentially take over for Mark Turgeon after the 2021-22 season, and there is a reason why those 7 specific coaches made the cut in the article. Essentially, John Beilein, Ed Cooley, Andy Enfield, Sean Miller, Nate Oats, Mark Schmidt, and Kevin Willard have all demonstrated that they can be effective coaches at the Division 1 level.

At this point, Maryland is looking for a coach that can finally get them over the hump and lead them deep into the NCAA Tournament year in and year out. Can a coach who has struggled at the low-major level accomplish that at the highest level of college basketball? My guess would be no, but I’m not necessarily saying that it’s impossible to successfully make the jump from the low-major level to the high-major level.

Steve Pikiell is a coach that started his Division 1 head coaching career at Stony Brook, but he was able to slowly work his way up to Rutgers. Pikiell’s first 4 years at Stony Brook were disastrous (36-81 record), but he quickly turned things around in New York by leading the Seawolves to 4 America East regular-season titles, an America East Tournament Championship, and an NCAA Tournament appearance.

What happened next? Well, Pikiell had a tough time moving Rutgers’ program forward when he first arrived in Newark, but his commitment to overcoming early adversity helped him guide the Scarlett Knights to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in over 20 years last season.

It might be a good idea to revisit the idea of hiring Juan Dixon later down the road, but he clearly has a lot of work to do before he can even think about being a top candidate for a high-major head coaching job like Maryland. Once Dixon finally experiences a breakthrough at Coppin State (like Pikiell did at Stony Brook), it’ll make more sense to seriously consider him for a position of that magnitude.

Once again, Dixon is and will always be a Maryland legend, but it would be a shame to damage his reputation (to some degree) by handing him a job that he’s not currently ready to handle. I doubt that Dixon would want individuals to claim that he’ll never cut it as a high-major head coach if he failed to get the job done at Maryland, which is why it would be foolish to pull the trigger on a guy who is still figuring out how to win at the low-major level.

It’s nice that Dixon’s name is even in the mix for the job, but I think that it would be wise for the Terrapins to hire a seasoned coach who they can trust to guide the program in the right direction, and Dixon just isn’t that guy at the moment.