Over the last five years there have been 45 coaching changes at the power conferences, Big East and a handful of other programs that have a high profile/top-25 team (New Mexico, VCU, UNLV).

I thought it might be useful to take a look at how the vacancies were filled.

2011 – 10 changes: 4 Power Moves; 3 Mid-Majors; 2 Assistant Coaches; 1 Ex-Coach/TV analyst

2012 – 8 changes: 3 Power Moves; 4 Mid-Majors; 1 Assistant Coach

2013 – 6 changes: 2 Power Moves; 1 Mid-Majors; 3 Assistant Coaches

2014 – 10 changes: 2 Power Moves; 3 Mid-Majors; 3 Assistant Coaches; 2 Ex-Coaches/TV Analysts

2015 – 11 changes: 2 Power Moves; 4 Mid-Majors; 2 Assistant Coaches; 2 Ex-Coaches/TV Analsyts; 1 NBA Front Office/Alum

Power Moves (hiring another coach directly from a power conference or major program): 13

To —– Coach  ——— From —  Year

1. Arkansas — Mike Anderson — Missouri — 2011
2. Missouri  — Frank Haith — Miami — 2011
3. Maryland — Mark Turgeon — Texas A&M — 2011
4. Oklahoma — Lon Kruger — UNLV — 2011
5. South Carolina — Frank Martin — Kansas State — 2012
6. Kansas State — Bruce Weber — Illinois — 2012
7. TCU — Trent Johnson — LSU — 2012
8. UCLA — Steve Alford — New Mexico — 2013
9. Texas Tech — Tubby Smith — Minnesota — 2013
10. California — Cuonzo Martin — Tennessee — 2014
11. Virginia Tech — Buzz Williams — Marquette — 2014
12. Texas — Shaka Smart — VCU — 2015
13. Tennessee — Rick Barnes — Texas — 2015

From this list, five of the coaches were pushed/jumped or just fired that same year from their previous school (Haith, Weber, Johnson, Smith and Barnes).

When you can pull it off, it tends to work pretty well (Duh). 9 of the 15 schools that went this route seem happy at the moment. There’s just no guarantee on immediate returns.

Mid-Major Hires, hiring a head coach from a mid-major program: 15

To —– Coach  ——— From —  Year

1. Miami — Jim Larranaga — George Mason — 2011
2. Georgia Tech — Brian Gregory — Dayton — 2011
3. Texas A&M — Billy Kennedy — Murray St. — 2011
4. Penn State — Pat Chambers — Boston U. — 2012
5. LSU — Johnny Jones — North Texas — 2012
6. Nebraska — Tim Miles — Colorado St. — 2012
7. Illinois — John Groce — Ohio — 2012
8. USC — Andy Enfield — FGCU — 2013
9. Missouri — Kim Anderson — Central Missouri (DII) — 2014
10. Oregon St. — Wayne Tinkle — Montana — 2014
11. Boston College — Jim Christian — Ohio — 2014
12. Wake Forest — Danny Manning — Tulsa — 2014
13. Arizona St. — Bob Hurley — Buffalo — 2015
14. Florida — Michael White — Louisiana Tech — 2015
15. Iowa St. — Steve Prohm — Murray St. — 2015

With 6 of of the 15 hired in last two years, the jury is out on a bunch (though, good early returns on Tinkle and Prohm). Overall, I put it at a bit over 50% hit for the programs that went this way.

Assistants (Promoted from within, hired from another program, NBA): 11

To —– Coach  ——— From —  Year

1. Utah — Larry Kyrstkowiak — NBA, NJ Nets — 2011
2. UNLV — David Rice — BYU — 2011
3. UConn — Kevin Ollie — UConn — 2012
4. Minnesota — Richard Pitino — Louisville — 2013
5. Rutgers — Eddie Jordan — NBA, LA Lakers — 2013
6. New Mexico — Craig Neal — New Mexico — 2013
7. Marquette — Steve Wojcechowski — Duke — 2014
8. Northwestern — Chris Collins — Duke — 2014
9. Butler — Chris Holtman — Butler — 2014
10. VCU — Will Wade —  VCU —  2015
11. DePaul — Dave Leitao — Tulsa — 2015

Some wild range here. Utah, UConn and VCU really, really nailed it. UNLV, Minnesota, and Rutgers — ugh. Butler looks solid. DePaul, well they were already at the bottom so they couldn’t go much lower. Seems like the boom or bust route.

Now the Ex-Coaches/TV Analysts. These are the guys who were fired or something else from their last job and did TV for at least a year (i.e., rehabbing their image) before getting back into coaching. 5

To —– Coach  ——— From —  Year

1. Mark Gottfried — NC State — 2011
2. Auburn — Bruce Pearl — 2014
3. Washington St. — Ernie Kent — 2014
4. Alabama — Avery Johnson — 2015
5. Mississippi St. — Ben Howland — 2015

Mildly surprised that this looks better than I thought it would (owing in no small part to my distaste for Gottfried). Probably helped by the fact that all of these teams were below .500 (or well below) when brought in. Still no reason to give Seth Greenberg the time of day, but very respectable.

Finally there is one other case. Other. Really it is an alumni hire.

1. St. John’s — Chris Mullin — Sacramento Kings front office — 2015

Recruiting seems fine there, but wins…

Props to schools like Mizzou that make the list twice. Oddly so did Ohio, as they were raided twice — and that is going so well for Illinois and BC. Murray State however, has churned out two good ones.

The other tricky thing on this list is where the school was at the time of the hiring. A lot of these programs were not in good shape. Pitt for all the issues, and concerns for the immediate future is a better than average program coming off a better than average season (in terms of all power conference teams, not the standards we want at Pitt).

Power Move Hire

• UCLA
• Texas
• Kansas State

Mid-Major Hire

• Florida
• Iowa State
• Texas A&M

Assistant Hire

• UNLV
• UConn
• New Mexico
• Marquette
• Butler
• VCU

Those appear to be the only programs that were in reasonably decent shape when they hired a new coach.

I don’t see Pitt going the Assistant Coach hiring route. Only Marquette went away from promoting from within or  in the case of UNLV, hiring an assistant with ties to the program (alum, David Rice).

Recruiting has been good for the Golden Eagles, but they bottomed out at 13-19 in his first year. I like Brandin Knight, but he is still too much of an unknown quantity. At the very least, it is time for him to work as an assistant elsewhere.

This essentially tracks the early “who could Pitt look to as its next coach” articles. Obviously, Sean Miller at Arizona will be approached. And as an alum, he’ll take the call. I’ll be extremely surprised if he jumps.

After that, it’s the mid-major head coaching list.