Just four years ago, Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski, Jay Wright, Jim Boeheim and Tony Bennett were all still coaching college basketball, with 12 national championships among them.
All five left the coaching rat race, retiring just as name, image and likeness and unlimited transfers shook up the sport. Each played a role in selecting their successor at their respective institutions.
How’s that been working out?
Duke has one of the best teams in the country in Jon Scheyer’s third year. Hubert Davis, of course, reached a Final Four in his first season, though North Carolina fans were less than enthusiastic when he received a contract extension over the summer, which wasn’t announced until near the end of another underwhelming campaign.
The rest of the lot has been a disappointment, and nowhere is it worse than at Villanova with Kyle Neptune.
Fans have been calling for Neptune’s firing since early last season, and they may finally get their wish after the Wildcats blew a late lead in a 75-73 loss at Georgetown on Tuesday in their regular-season finale, officially torpedoing any hopes for the NCAA Tournament.
Last year’s embarrassments included losses to Penn, Saint Joseph’s and Drexel, leading to a last-place finish in the newly formatted Philadelphia Big 5 tournament. Early this season, Villanova lost to a Columbia team that is now 1-12 in the Ivy League.
More to the point, in Big East play, Villanova keeps losing in the same way. On Tuesday, the Wildcats pulled ahead 69-60 with 3:43 to go. They melted down due to bad turnovers and worse defense, and the Hoyas pulled ahead for good.
Just like Villanova’s first meeting with Georgetown, when it led basically the entire game but allowed a game-ending 9-0 run to lose by a point. Or when the Wildcats snatched defeat from the jaws of victory late in games against Xavier, Creighton and UConn.
A program that won national titles in 2016 and 2018 and made the Final Four in Wright’s last year has gone nowhere since. Neptune, the former coach of Fordham recommended by Wright, is on the hottest seat of any of these successors.
That doesn’t mean Adrian “Red” Autry has bathed himself in glory up in basketball-crazed Syracuse. Autry got Boeheim’s endorsement and is currently following up a 20-12 first season with a 12-18 (6-13 ACC) also-ran campaign. That’s not sitting well with fans, even if they’ve recruited Carmelo Anthony’s son to play there next season.
There were conspiracy theories that Bennett waited until October to retire from Virginia so he could name his good pal Ron Sanchez the interim coach and ensure he gets a chance. Sanchez, who had one 20-win season in five years at Charlotte before rejoining Bennett’s staff at UVA, has been mediocre at best.
Villanova and Virginia, in particular, may be a step below the blue-blood status of Duke and North Carolina, but both are programs that won national titles in the past 10 years. It shouldn’t suddenly be impossible to succeed there because of NIL, conference realignment or whatever other excuses might get tossed about — as long as you have the right coach.
It seems these Hall of Famers who retired were much worse at scouting future coaching talent than they were at scouting basketball players.
