With the calendar very recently turning over to March, we’re on the eve of the NCAA Tournament and nearly at the end of the regular season. Conference tournaments are already starting, teams are being eliminated, and magical moments are already happening. This year’s NCAA Basketball coaching carousel is already starting to spin as well, with jobs like Ole Miss and Notre Dame opening in recent weeks. There’s always an interesting crop of new head coaches and we’re focusing on those today.
Not every coaching hire is made equal; some can be simply catastrophic like the one at New Mexico State this year; or others could be extremely underwhelming like the play at Louisville and Villanova. We’re not focusing on the bad today, we’re focusing on the good that these recent head coaching hires have done. We’ll be looking closely at the ten best first year head coaches based on what we know so far this season. Obviously, someone could make a run in their conference tournament in the next two weeks, but we’re mostly basing this on their initial regular seasons. We’ll get right into the list after briefly touching upon a couple of honorable mentions:
Mike White – Georgia
After seven years at Florida, White made the strange move next door to Georgia and the results have been solid in his first season in Athens. Not much was expecting of the Bulldogs, but they’re at 16-14, with a respectable 6-11 mark in SEC play, a significant increase over last season where they won just six total games and were a disaster on defense. Georgia got impressive home wins over Auburn and Kentucky and might finally be on the right track under White after Tom Crean failed to make waves in recent years.
Chris Jans – Mississippi State
After impressive work at New Mexico State, Jans took over the Bulldogs and won his first 11 games of the season, including an increasingly-impressive win against Marquette back in November. SEC play has been far less kind, sitting just 8-9 in conference play, though they have won some impressive games in recent weeks, beating Arkansas on the road and winning against TCU and Texas A&M. Mississippi State made waves early but just isn’t that consistent contender yet; but Jans has them on the right track in year one.