Last spring’s coaching carousel was a wild one, with 60 changes across Division I men’s basketball and turnover at some of the sport’s highest-profile jobs. While some, like Kenny Payne at Louisville and Kyle Neptune at Villanova, are off to disappointing starts, several first-year coaches are overperforming and have their programs well-positioned for this year and beyond. Here’s a look at five hires whose teams are surpassing expectations early on.
1. Jerome Tang, Kansas State
Scott Drew’s longtime right-hand man at Baylor has the Kansas State program in NCAA tournament contention far quicker than most people anticipated. The Wildcats are off to a 2–0 start in Big 12 play and are 13–1 overall after pouring in a record-setting 116 points in a road win at No. 6 Texas on Tuesday.
Tang was fortunate to inherit a talented veteran point guard in Markquis Nowell from the Bruce Weber era, and Nowell has raised his game this season, averaging more than 15 points and ranking second nationally in assists per game with 8.5 per contest. Tang then landed Florida transfer Keyontae Johnson, who has shined in his return to the floor following his midgame collapse while playing for the Gators nearly two years before. That duo, plus emerging juco product Nae’Qwan Tomlin, have given KSU enough firepower when combined with Tang’s defensive scheme to make this group competitive in the loaded Big 12.
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It has also been incredibly entertaining to watch Tang embrace the Kansas State program as his own. From sitting in the student section at football games to crashing fraternity basketball tournaments, he has clearly embraced the challenge of reenergizing the fan base. And in recruiting, the Wildcats have a big-time 2023 class coming in, headlined by top-60 prospects Dai Dai Ames and RJ Jones. The future appears very bright in Manhattan.
2. Dennis Gates, Missouri
Gates is no stranger to quick turnarounds after rapidly building Cleveland State into a Horizon League power, but it still seems like the Tigers are a bit ahead of schedule in his first year with the program. While Missouri definitely caught Illinois and Kentucky at the right time, winning both games essentially wire to wire vaulted the Tigers into the top 25 and has created a clear path to an NCAA tournament bid. A team that won just 12 games a season ago is now on track for 20-plus victories in what would be one of largest turnarounds among high-major teams this season.
The Tigers’ transfer-heavy group has immediately jelled together offensively, ranking third in KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency metric and third nationally in effective field goal percentage. They’ve done this despite getting virtually nothing from the team’s most highly touted newcomer in Isiaih Mosley, who hasn’t scored a point since November and didn’t make the trip for Mizzou’s game at Arkansas this week. But the Tigers have three players shooting better than 40% from three, and defensively Mizzou has forced turnovers at one of the highest rates in the country.
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3. Sean Miller, Xavier
After a year out of the profession, the longtime Arizona coach returned last offseason to where he got his first head coaching job and has the Musketeers trending up quickly in the Big East. He took over a program that had missed the NCAA tournament in four straight seasons for the first time since the early 1980s. That said, he did inherit a strong nucleus, including a potential NBA player in wing Colby Jones and a pair of veteran bigs in Jack Nunge and Zach Freemantle.
The lone area that desperately needed to be addressed in the offseason was point guard, and Miller landed what now looks like one of the best transfer pickups of the cycle in former UTEP guard Souley Boum. Boum has been a revelation, ranking second in the Big East in scoring and ninth in assists to catalyze what has been one of the best offenses in college basketball.
The Musketeers are off to a 4–0 start in conference play, including an early signature win over UConn. The next three games should go a long way in determining whether Xavier is a legitimate threat to win the conference in Miller’s first season, with a road test at Villanova this weekend before hosting Creighton and Marquette next week.
4. Matt McMahon, LSU
At one point last April, LSU didn’t have a single scholarship player committed for this season. But after weathering the storm of a mass exodus following Will Wade’s dismissal, former Murray State coach McMahon rebuilt this roster essentially from scratch and has the Tigers well positioned early in SEC play.
McMahon brought three key cogs over from the Murray State team he coached to a 31–3 record. Big man KJ Williams has had no trouble transitioning to the SEC, averaging 18 points and seven rebounds per game and looking like an all-conference player in the process. And after sitting out last season with an ACL tear, former Illinois guard Adam Miller has blossomed into a strong off-ball threat offensively, tallying more than 13 points per game and draining five threes this week in a close loss at Kentucky. Going dancing feels realistic, which is remarkable considering how depleted this roster looked at one point.
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5. Chris Jans, Mississippi State
The Bulldogs have lost three straight, but the team’s 11–0 start to the season turned plenty of heads and put Mississippi State in a strong position to go dancing in Jans’s first season in Starkville.
Perhaps the early success should have been more predictable, despite the Bulldogs being picked 10th in the conference preseason poll. Jans has a track record of winning—and winning quickly—at every stop in his coaching career: He won almost 78% of his more than 200 games at the junior college level, led Bowling Green to 21 wins after the program won just 12 the previous season in his lone year with that program and went a ridiculous 122–32 at New Mexico State.
The Bulldogs have been excellent defensively, making up for some offensive shortcomings that limit this group’s ceiling. With needle-moving wins over Marquette and Utah in nonconference play, a .500 season in league play would almost assuredly be enough to punch a ticket to the NCAA tournament.
