NCAA Basketball: Best head coaching hire from each of last 25 seasons

2015: Eric Musselman (Nevada)

This is one of those years with a few high-profile hires that simply missed the cut. It could be argued that Rick Barnes’ work at Tennessee is deserving of this spot, but we’re instead focusing on a very impressive hire by a mid-major program. No, it’s not Steve Forbes (ETSU) or Nate Oats (Buffalo) or Mark Pope (Utah Valley), it’s the man who transformed Nevada back into a powerful program.

Musselman had been everywhere in basketball before this point, though this was his first job as a college basketball head coach. He was a former head coach in the NBA, CBA, and G-League, having led the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings. He had gotten into college ball on the staffs at Arizona State and LSU before taking the Nevada job in 2015, inheriting a program that had won just nine games and were under .500 in four of the last five seasons.

In year one, Musselman won the CBI, but that was just the beginning. He led the Wolf Pack to three straight MWC regular season titles and three trips to the NCAA Tournament, including a Sweet Sixteen run in 2018. In total, he won 110 games across those four seasons in Reno before departing for Arkansas in 2019. This four-year run wasn’t just one of the most successful in the nation, but it was truly built out of nowhere with where this program had been in the years prior.