re: Tide Hoops | Recruiting

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Coaching Carousel Grades: Evaluating Holloway, Miller, Payne Hires and More

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Mississippi State: Chris Jans

Mississippi State is a “roll up your sleeves” job, and few are better suited to do just that than Jans. Jans got his start as a junior college head coach who won big in small towns across the country before making the jump into D-I and standing out as an assistant under Gregg Marshall at Wichita State. Then, after an unceremonious departure at Bowling Green for inappropriate conduct, he became the latest coach to win big at New Mexico State, another job that requires scouring every avenue available to add talent. That tenure was capped by knocking off UConn in the NCAA tournament this March, just days before he officially departed for Starkville.

Would Jans have been the best coach for, say, Florida in this cycle? No. But so much of what makes hires succeed or fail is fit, and the fit between Jans and Mississippi State is perfect. I think he’s well equipped to get the most out of a program that is considered one of the trickiest places to win in the SEC.

Grade: A

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Georgia: Mike White

White parachuted within the SEC from Florida to Georgia after he had seemingly worn out his welcome in Gainesville. How you view his tenure with the Gators is essentially a Rorschach test for how you see the Florida job in the post–Billy Donovan era. White never finished worse than .500 in league play, would have reached five straight NCAA tournaments in a row heading into this past season if not for COVID-19 and won at least one game in all four Big Dances he made. He also recruited pro-level talent and went to an Elite Eight in 2017. But following the best coach a program has ever had is never easy, and White could never escape Donovan’s shadow.

Of course, Georgia hasn’t had nearly the success on the hardwood that Florida has had. If White was to accomplish exactly what he just accomplished at UF in Athens, it would be the most consistent run of success UGA has ever had. But how much harder is it to recruit and win at Georgia than Florida? I guess we’ll find out.

Grade: A-

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Florida: Todd Golden

There’s certainly some risk involved here for AD Scott Stricklin, who handed a top-20 program with national championship history to a 36-year-old with three years of head coaching experience and a 23–22 career record in the WCC. But Golden is universally lauded among industry insiders as a rising star in the profession, and what he was able to accomplish at San Francisco is far more impressive than his record indicates. He’s the first coach in two decades to bring a WCC team not named Gonzaga, BYU or Saint Mary’s to an at-large NCAA tournament berth, using an analytically savvy approach to build a winner at an under-resourced program.

The big question here is whether Golden can navigate the tricky recruiting waters of the SEC against powerhouses like John Calipari, Eric Musselman, Rick Barnes, Bruce Pearl and Nate Oats. Early transfer signings of Will Richard (Belmont) and Alex Fudge (LSU) are a somewhat encouraging sign on that front.

Grade: B+

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Missouri: Dennis Gates

Gates has been a hot commodity for high-major ADs in the last two cycles after winning a share of the Horizon League in consecutive seasons. His eventual destination: Missouri, where he’ll look to turn around a program that got stale late in Cuonzo Martin’s tenure. Gates made his name in the profession on Leonard Hamilton’s staff at Florida State, and his quick rebuilding job at Cleveland State in his first head coaching test made him a solid fit for pretty much any high-major program.

Gates is clearly an accomplished recruiter and got the most out of his teams at Cleveland State. My lone concern: None of his CSU teams even cracked the top 150 in KenPom. Gates will likely bring some energy to the Mizzou program and won’t go 12–21 like Martin did this season, but will he build good enough teams to go to the NCAA tournament regularly?

Grade: B-

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LSU: Matt McMahon

As mentioned above with Golden, the primary challenge for all these SEC hires is whether they can recruit against some of the sport’s best. McMahon has two further challenges: Walking into a gutted roster (all but two scholarship players departed) and the potential for significant NCAA sanctions following the notice of allegations that got former coach Will Wade fired. Those two reasons are why LSU gave McMahon a seven-year contract: This is a rebuilding situation.

McMahon built some tremendous teams at Murray State. He coached and recruited Ja Morant and won an NCAA tournament game with him, then rebuilt and put together a team this season that had the best record of any men’s D-I team and advanced to the second round of the tourney. But it is worth noting that, well, everyone has won at Murray State. Three of Murray’s five worst KenPom finishes in the last 25 years came with McMahon at the helm. Was he a product of a program that churns out high-major coaches or a true standout?

Grade: C+

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South Carolina: Lamont Paris

Paris parlayed a 27-win season in 2021–22 into a high-major job at South Carolina, which moved on from Frank Martin after six straight years without an NCAA tournament berth. Paris wasn’t the program’s first choice, as the Gamecocks took swings at Miller and McMahon before eventually landing on the Chattanooga coach to take over in Columbia.

The biggest thing Paris brought to the Mocs was some stability. He slowly built a program from three conference wins in his first season to 14 in his final one, a stark contrast to the quick flips pulled off by Wade (LSU) and Matt McCall (UMass), who moved on after two seasons each. But does Paris have enough recruiting firepower to really keep up in the SEC, especially in the NIL era? I have my doubts.

Grade: C

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