Late one night during the first few weeks of Micah Shrewsberry’s tenure at Penn State, he was in his office, still trying to get a handle on all the tasks and responsibilities that came with being the new head coach of the Nittany Lions. Then his phone rang.
On the other line was Minnesota coach Ben Johnson, also in his office late at night, also trying to get a handle on everything that came with being a new head coach.
“He was doing the same thing as me,” Shrewsberry said. “We’re both in the office late, he’s asking me questions. ‘How are you doing this? Is this happening to you too?’ Our answers were so similar.”
Shrewsberry and Johnson are members of the small fraternity that is part of a new but growing trend in college basketball coaching, of former assistants getting their first head-coaching jobs at high-major programs. Before the spring of 2021, such a hire was considered rare in college basketball. High-major schools nearly always went with the hot mid-major name or a retread high-major coach.
“Sometimes as an assistant coach, you felt like you wouldn’t even be considered for certain jobs because you didn’t have head-coaching experience,” said Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd, previously a 20-year assistant at Gonzaga. “Well, how are you going to get head-coaching experience?”
Even before Duke assistant Jon Scheyer was named Mike Krzyzewski’s successor in the spring, the Blue Devils’ elite reputation within the game had helped the school serve as a rare exception to the industry’s rule around assistant hires at top programs. Johnny Dawkins (Stanford in 2008), Chris Collins (Northwestern in 2013) and Steve Wojciechowski (Marquette in 2014) all made the immediate leap to high-major head coach from Coach K’s bench. (Dawkins and Wojciechowski were eventually fired by those schools; Collins is set to begin his ninth season at Northwestern).
Outside of those moves, and Washington hiring Syracuse assistant Mike Hopkins in 2017, assistant hires by high-majors over the past decade were all promotions from within: Chris Holtmann (Butler, 2014), Greg Gard (Wisconsin, 2015), Mike Boynton (Oklahoma State, 2017), Wyking Jones (California, 2017) and Travis Steele (Xavier, 2018).
All but one of the other current high-major head coaches to get their first job via elevation from an assistant role were also promotions: Jim Boeheim (Syracuse, 1976), Tom Izzo (Michigan State, 1995), Jamie Dixon (Pittsburgh, 2003), Tony Bennett (Washington State, 2006) and Frank Martin (Kansas State, 2007).
The outlier among this group, the only other current high-major head coach who didn’t have college head-coaching experience or extensive NBA experience before making the jump, was Leonard Hamilton, who was hired by Oklahoma State from Kentucky in 1986.
1:07
Jay Williams has high praise for Coach K’s successor at Duke.
So, yes, it’s rare. But last spring nearly matched the last decade’s numbers for assistant-coaching hires on its own.
There was Shrewsberry, hired from Purdue by Penn State, and Johnson, hired from Xavier by Minnesota. Arizona hired Lloyd, while DePaul hired Oregon assistant Tony Stubblefield. There were three promotions, too. North Carolina replaced Roy Williams with Hubert Davis; Duke named Scheyer its coach-in-waiting; and Texas Tech elevated Mark Adams, although he had Division I head-coaching experience in the 1990s at Texas-Pan American.
“I think it’s great, as a game you’re seeing the young energy, the new ideas,” Collins said. “Getting some younger guys that haven’t had a chance, getting them a chance to come in and put their own stamp and imprint on the game and on their program is a good thing. And maybe some schools are starting to see that and it’s a chance for a fresh approach.”
Why has it taken so long for assistants to get to high-major head-coaching positions? It’s not a foreign concept in college football, where major programs have regularly hired coordinators for the top spot. Dabo Swinney was never a head coach before he was chosen as the interim and then permanent head coach at Clemson following Tommy Bowden’s resignation in 2008. Nine of the 14 current SEC football coaches had their first Division I head-coaching job at the Power 5 level.
That circumstance had led to plenty of frustration on the basketball side of the coaching industry.
“There are football coordinators that get big-time college football jobs,” one industry source involved in coaching searches said. “To me, why shouldn’t big-time basketball assistants that are successful and prepared and ready to be CEOs of their own program, why shouldn’t they get big-time jobs?”
That same source told ESPN last year he often heard comments by decision-makers arguing that football coordinators have more responsibility than basketball assistants, and that’s why they’re hired at a higher rate than their hardwood counterparts.
“I hear, ‘Coordinators run a side of the ball, so you can see what they do. We don’t know what [basketball assistants] do,'” he said last year. “That’s lazy, it’s a cop-out.”
The common refrain among athletic directors and key people involved in the search process — not only at the high-major level, but even certain jobs at the mid-major level — had been: “We want someone with head-coaching experience.” High-major assistants couldn’t even get an interview for most high-major head coach openings. Some assistants couldn’t get serious looks for lower-level D-I coaching jobs either.
“People at the Power 5 level are worried about experience,” Collins said. “As an AD, to have the balls to hire someone that’s never called a timeout, you have to really believe in that person. … I think that’s probably part of it. It’s easier to win the press conference with someone who’s done it.”
“People don’t like to take risks, they don’t,” Steele added. “But at the same time, it’s not a risk. Sometimes people love — it’s the domino effect. Once one guy does it, ‘Oh, it’s accepted. Now let’s do that.’ That’s what’s become a little bit of a pattern. … Nobody wanted to be the first one to do it.”
0:44
Jeff Borzello breaks down Arizona’s hiring of Gonzaga assistant Tommy Lloyd and explains how his international recruiting chops can pay dividends for the Wildcats.
The difficulty in finding opportunities had forced some longtime high-major assistants to settle for jobs with limited tradition of winning. “There’s a lot of really hard jobs out there,” Lloyd said. “It doesn’t matter how good of a coach you are, you can be a really good coach, but you take a low- or mid-major job and … And then you don’t win, you’re not going to get the next job. Why would I leave Gonzaga and take a hard job?”
Stubblefield had been involved in head-coaching searches before, including as recently as 2017, when he interviewed at New Mexico State. But he says he felt a similar catch-22 to Lloyd.
“When they say there’s no head-coaching experience — you’ve gotta give me the opportunity to get some head-coaching experience,” he said. “It’s just the opportunities weren’t there.”
The spring 2021 hiring season changed the narrative, with a couple of college basketball’s biggest brands leading that charge. North Carolina and Duke had so much success under Williams and Mike Krzyzewski, why not lean into continuity and keep things within the family?
Elsewhere, one of Minnesota’s biggest issues over the last few years was its inability to keep top prospects in the state for college; Johnson is a Minneapolis native who graduated from Minnesota in 2005 and has experience recruiting the state.
But the Golden Gophers could have just as easily gone for someone like Cleveland State’s Dennis Gates, just as Penn State could have hired Ohio’s Jeff Boals, Arizona could have opted for BYU’s Mark Pope and DePaul could have picked Pacific’s Damon Stoudamire.
Those moves might have been the safer route. But outside-the-box coaching hires in recent years, including Oklahoma State elevating an assistant to the head role in 2018, and Michigan having success with an NBA assistant who had no head-coaching experience in 2020, may have helped lay the groundwork at places like Minnesota and Penn State.
“Mike Boynton doing it, that helps the next AD be like, ‘OK, this is OK,'” Shrewsberry said. ” Juwan Howard coming from the NBA, the success he’s had. There’s more examples now to point toward.”
One potential reason for the uptick in high-major assistant coaches getting involved for sought-after head-coaching jobs last spring is the lack of clear-cut, home-run hires among mid-major head coaches. Seven or eight years ago, the Shaka Smart-Archie Miller-Chris Mack-Chris Holtmann group was mentioned with seemingly every big opening. Over the last few years, the likes of Porter Moser, Steve Forbes and Wes Miller have been constantly linked to high-major openings.
With Moser (Oklahoma), Forbes (Wake Forest) and Wes Miller (Cincinnati) all taking bigger jobs in recent years, the next group of can’t-miss mid-major head coaches needs to emerge.
That makes current high-major assistants more optimistic about their chances — if things go well with the six hired last spring.
“It all depends on this group,” one assistant said. “ADs are follow the leader, flavor of the month. If that’s the flavor, they’ll do it. But as soon as it doesn’t work, then the whole thing doesn’t work. Instead of looking at each individual situation, they’re going to categorize and stereotype the whole thing.”
The newly hired head coaches understand they are tasked with laying the groundwork for the next group of assistants.
“I don’t know if they get opportunities if we don’t have success,” Shrewsberry said. “If Mike Boynton and Juwan don’t do what they do, I don’t get an opportunity and Ben doesn’t get an opportunity. So now we have to do the same thing. And success looks different everywhere, but success means I need to do everything the right way. … If I’m doing that and people see that, [athletic directors] can feel good about the next guy getting an opportunity.”
While each of the new coaches expressed surprise at the increase in workload — “Wow, this keeps coming” and “Wow, this is nonstop” were said by Lloyd and Shrewsberry, respectively — most said the basketball aspect is the easiest adjustment. Coming up with a gameplan or recruiting a high school prospect isn’t new territory, but the other stuff — dealing with donors, administration, marketing the program, etc. — is the real reason assistants need to adapt to the new role.
But Davis laid it out in the simplest terms.
“It is an adjustment being a head coach, but at the end of the day, specifically for college: Do you know basketball, do you know and love kids, do you know and love the institution that you’re coaching at?” he said. “If you check those boxes, you can be a head coach.”
0:48
Jeff Borzello outlines the keys for Hubert Davis to start his head-coaching career with the Tar Heels successfully.
Which current assistants are up next?
In the summer of 2020, ESPN’s college basketball trio of Jeff Borzello, Myron Medcalf and John Gasaway voted on the 40 best college basketball coaches under the age of 40. The first two assistants on the list — Jordan Mincy (Jacksonville) and Jon Scheyer (Duke) — have already landed head-coaching jobs, and three others in the rankings — Darris Nichols (Radford), Kim English (George Mason) and Kyle Neptune (Fordham) — were also hired as head coaches last offseason.
Multiple names on that list could be in play as potential internal successors. Brian Michaelson has been at Gonzaga in different capacities for the last 13 years and also played in Spokane; with former coach-in-waiting Tommy Lloyd now at Arizona, can Michaelson become a potential Mark Few replacement?
Syracuse’s Gerry McNamara has been mentioned as a possible Jim Boeheim successor, and his biggest competition could be another current Syracuse assistant coach — Adrian Autry.
One name that didn’t appear on the list was Houston’s Kellen Sampson, the head-coach-in-waiting for the Cougars.
Outside of internal candidates, another name not on our list was Florida State’s Charlton Young, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him get in the mix for head-coaching jobs next spring. Young has head-coaching experience at Georgia Southern (2009-13) and has established himself as one of the best recruiters in the country during his time in Tallahassee.
Here were the other assistants on the 40 under 40 list: UConn’s Luke Murray (then at Louisville), Texas’ Ulric Maligi (then at Texas Tech) and Jerrance Howard (then at Kansas), Nebraska’s Matt Abdelmassih, Arizona State’s Joel Justus (then at Kentucky), Virginia Tech’s Christian Webster, Wisconsin’s Joe Krabbenhoft, Colorado State’s Ali Farokhmanesh and Washington State’s John Andrzejek. Two others that received votes — Miami’s Chris Caputo and Stanford’s Adam Cohen — have been linked to head jobs in the past as well.