Way-Too-Early Grades for Men's College Basketball 1st-Year Head Coaches

The 2021-22 men's college basketball season was an incredible one for first-year head coaches. Tommy Lloyd led Arizona to a No. 1 seed. T.J. Otzelberger took Iowa State on a surprise run to the Sweet 16. Hubert Davis guided North Carolina to the title game. Indiana, Loyola-Chicago, Marquette, Texas and Texas Tech also made the dance in their first seasons under new leadership.

This season, there are 14 new head coaches at major-conference programs (six in the SEC alone). And after a little more than a month, some (Thad Matta at Butler, Kevin Willard at Maryland, etc.) are faring far better than others (Kenny Payne at Louisville, Lamont Paris at South Carolina, etc.)

We've given an early report card grade to each of those 14 new head coaches, based on a combination of where their teams stand in comparison to both the end of last season as well as preseason expectations. Recruiting also factored into the conversation to an extent, but at most, it affected grades in a "B becomes a B+ or B-" sort of way.

Using Matta as an example, Butler finished last season at No. 121 in the KenPom.com rankings and was No. 130 in the preseason KenPom rankings. He has the Bulldogs up to No. 70 and onto the fringe of at-large consideration. That's an easy A.

Coaches have been listed in alphabetical order by last name.

Missouri's 2021-22 Year-End KenPom Rank: 137
2022-23 Preseason KenPom Rank: 41
Current KenPom Rank: 60

Coach's Grade: B+

Missouri didn't win its ninth game last season until February, cobbling together a 12-21 mess before firing Cuonzo Martin. Of the seven leading scorers from that roster, the only ones who opted to return for another year were forwards Kobe Brown and Ronnie DeGray III.

Suffice it to say, Dennis Gates had his work cut out for him when he relocated from Cleveland State to Columbia. But the fact that the Tigers' preseason expectation was nearly 100 spots better than where they finished last season is quite the testament to how much work he put into the transfer portal.

Missouri entered Saturday's game against Kansas at 9-0 with seven players averaging at least 9.0 points per game, six of whom weren't on the roster nine months ago. Gates brought leading scorer D'Moi Hodge with him from CSU, but he got Nick Honor from Clemson, Noah Carter from Northern Iowa, DeAndre Gholston from Milwaukee, Sean East from Logan Community College and Isiaih Mosley from Missouri State.

That conglomeration has jelled into one of the more potent offenses in the nation.

We shouldn't prematurely overpraise the job Gates has done, as Missouri's defense has been quite lacking, and its first nine opponents had an average KenPom rank of nearly 250. Getting drilled by Kansas the first time it faced a real opponent wasn't a good look. But the Tigers were picked to finish 11th in the SEC and might be a top-half-of-the-league team right now. That's impressive work.

It also bears mentioning that Gates has signed three of the top 120 players in the 2023 recruiting class. Missouri had signed only 13 4- or 5-star recruits from 2011-22, so to get three in one class is a job well done.

Florida's 2021-22 Year-End KenPom Rank: 59
2022-23 Preseason KenPom Rank: 35
Current KenPom Rank: 55

Coach's Grade: C-

After getting San Francisco into the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1998, Todd Golden was the hottest name on the coaching carousel. Florida nabbed the then-36-year-old rising star in the hope that he might pan out as well as Billy Donovan, the 30-year-old it hired back in 1996.

Like Gates at Missouri, Golden hit the transfer portal hard, bringing in Will Richard from Belmont, Alex Fudge from LSU, Trey Bonham from VMI and Kyle Lofton from St. Bonaventure. All four rank among the top six on the team in scoring, pairing nicely with the Gators' lone impact returnee, Colin Castleton.

However, as far as wins and losses go, the early returns haven't been great.

The Gators got smoked by both Connecticut and West Virginia, gave up 90 points in a loss to Xavier and lost at home to Florida Atlantic. Their best win thus far was at Florida State, which isn't saying much, as the Seminoles are a disaster this year.

Simply put, if the NCAA tournament began today, Florida wouldn't be in it.

Worse yet, Golden hasn't done much on the recruiting trail. He did sign current freshman Riley Kugel shortly after getting the gig, but he has only one 3-star player thus far in next year's class. That's inexcusable for a program as noteworthy and as surrounded by high school talent as Florida is.

Seton Hall's 2021-22 Year-End KenPom Rank: 52
2022-23 Preseason KenPom Rank: 48
Current KenPom Rank: 59

Coach's Grade: D+

While Todd Golden was the hottest name on the coaching market this past offseason, Shaheen Holloway wasn't far behind him by the time Saint Peter's magical run through the NCAA tournament concluded. He was a virtual lock to stay in New Jersey by going to Seton Hall, where he scored more than 1,500 career points from 1996-2000.

His homecoming hasn't exactly been triumphant, though.

The Pirates did pick up a nice buzzer-beating victory over Memphis in the ESPN Events Invitational, but they then lost consecutive games to Oklahoma, Siena and Kansas. The Siena loss was Seton Hall's worst misstep since losing home games against Fairleigh Dickinson and Saint Peter's in December 2013.

Seton Hall also lost to Iowa and is sitting at 6-4 overall.

The Pirates' defense has been mostly OK, especially against lesser foes, but the offense leaves a lot to be desired. That's hardly surprising after they lost Jared Rhoden, Myles Cale and Bryce Aiken and had to endure an injury-riddled offseason, but it's still disappointing.

All Hollaway has in next year's class this far is one unranked combo guard. Granted, Seton Hall has signed only one 4-star recruit in the past half decade—Brandon Weston (2021), who never even played for the Pirates before transferring to Rhode Island—so it's not like he dropped the ball there. Still, feels like a missed opportunity to have not at least somewhat capitalized on the sudden fame of last March.

Mississippi State's 2021-22 Year-End KenPom Rank: 49
2022-23 Preseason KenPom Rank: 53
Current KenPom Rank: 22

Coach's Grade: A

Chris Jans had an incredible half-decade run at New Mexico State, winning a Mark Few-like 79.2 percent of games coached and earning three trips to the NCAA tournament, all as a No. 12 seed. In that third trip, he finally got the Aggies over the hump, winning a first-round game (vs. Connecticut) after the program had endured 11 consecutive immediate exits dating back to 1994.

That got him the job at Mississippi State, which has also needed help getting over a hump. The Bulldogs had finished multiple games above .500 in each of the past five seasons under Ben Howland, but all they had to show for it in March was a first-round loss in 2019.

Things are looking up in Starkville, though, as Jans has led the Bulldogs to a 9-0 start, fueled by some of the best offensive rebounding in the nation and the best defense this program has played in two decades.

In the victories over Marquette and Utah in the Fort Myers Tip-Off, Mississippi State grabbed a combined 34 offensive rebounds while holding those opponents to 55 and 49 points, respectively. Ideally, the Bulldogs will start making shots at some point and won't need so many offensive rebounds to eke out wins in low-scoring games, but at least they've been able to make lemonade out of lemons when needed.

We'll see how they hold up in an SEC where Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas and Auburn all have Final Four potential, but it'd be hard to argue with what Jans has delivered through the first five weeks.

Butler's 2021-22 Year-End KenPom Rank: 121
2022-23 Preseason KenPom Rank: 130
Current KenPom Rank: 71

Coach's Grade: A+

Despite a .740 career winning percentage and a perfect 17-for-17 mark in the 'winning seasons' department, Thad Matta had a rather unceremonious exit from coaching in June 2017. He and Ohio State "mutually agreed" that the team needed a new leader after back-to-back seasons of both missing the NCAA tournament and losing players left and right to the transfer portal. (That was back before seemingly everyone started losing multiple players to the portal every year.)

But after five years away from coaching, Matta returned to the school where he used to play, and where he got his first opportunity as a head coach back in 2000.

Like riding a bicycle, Matta clearly has not forgotten how to coach.

Butler had been a mess under LaVall Jordan, finishing back-to-back seasons five games below .500. And while this team perhaps wouldn't make the NCAA tournament if it started today, at least the Bulldogs are competent.

All five starters are averaging double figures. The defense is respectable with a legitimate shot-blocking presence (Manny Bates) for the first time in decade. And they already have nice early wins over Kansas State, Yale and BYU.

Perhaps most impressive is that Matta has gotten out to this 8-3 start despite playing without two key frontcourt transfers. Ali Ali (from Akron) was expected to start at power forward and Jalen Thomas (from Georgia State) was supposed to be the first big man off the bench, but neither has yet to appear in a game. Ali has been sidelined because of a concussion, while Thomas is out indefinitely due to a pulmonary embolism.

But the Bulldogs have gotten by nicely with one of the shallowest rotations in the nation.

LSU's 2021-22 Year-End KenPom Rank: 21
2022-23 Preseason KenPom Rank: 40
Current KenPom Rank: 63

Coach's Grade: B-

After seven years at Murray State, Matt McMahon stepped into a near-impossible situation at LSU.

Amid sanctions for recruiting violations, the Tigers fired Will Wade the day before Selection Sunday. And then before the tournament even ended, every single scholarship player was either out of eligibility, had declared for the NBA draft or was in the transfer portal, leaving McMahon to start over from scratch.

He did manage to convince Mwani Wilkinson, Adam Miller and Justice Williams to "un-portal" and remain in Baton Rouge, but McMahon lost eight of the nine leading scorers and had to go all-in on transfers.

The good news is he brought three good ones with him from Murray State in Justice Hill, KJ Williams and Trae Hannibal. He also landed major-conference transfers in Cam Hayes (NC State) and Derek Fountain (Mississippi State). Miller, who transferred from Illinois last offseason before missing the entire season with a knee injury, also should count as a major-conference addition for McMahon.

However, there was no telling how it would all come together. And, frankly, we still don't have a good read on this team, as the nonconference schedule has been quite weak. But 8-1 with the lone loss coming by a two-point margin against a solid Kansas State team isn't too shabby.

The Tigers might not make the Big Dance, but it does look like they could be a factor in the middle of the SEC. That's more than can be said for Georgia or South Carolina under their first-year head coaches.

Xavier's 2021-22 Year-End KenPom Rank: 53
2022-23 Preseason KenPom Rank: 38
Current KenPom Rank: 29

Coach's Grade: A-

Former Arizona head coach Sean Miller was out of work for less than a year before returning to where he got his start.

He was Xavier's head coach from 2004-09, leading the Musketeers to four consecutive NCAA tournaments before heading out west. And the X-Men brought him back, hoping he would be the one to carry them out of a disappointing four-year stretch under Travis Steele. (They finished above .500 in all four years but never made the tourney.)

Though the record (7-3) isn't all that impressive, Xavier is clearly a tournament-caliber team. It put up valiant fights in the losses to Indiana, Duke and Gonzaga. In particular, the Musketeers had Gonzaga on the ropes in Portland, Oregon, leading by as many as eight points with six minutes left. But the Zags caught fire, closing out the game with 25 points for a four-point victory.

Unlike most of the coaches on this list, Miller benefited from a ton of returning talent. Jack Nunge, Zach Freemantle, Colby Jones and Adam Kunkel all came back for another year. But Miller got Souley Boum as a transfer from UTEP, and the guard has been Xavier's leading scorer.

The biggest change, though, has been on the recruiting trail.

Miller has done well with the returning talent, but he also convinced top-100 recruits Kam Craft and Desmond Claude to stick with Xavier after Steele was fired, and he has already signed a trio of 4-star recruits in the 2023 class.

The Musketeers have had good recruiting pull for a while now, but they're on another level now. It might not be long before Miller lands the first 5-star recruit in program history.

Villanova's 2021-22 Year-End KenPom Rank: 10
2022-23 Preseason KenPom Rank: 19
Current KenPom Rank: 52

Coach's Grade: Incomplete

After ending the 2011-12 campaign with a 13-19 record, Villanova went a full decade without having a sub-.500 record at any point in any season.

So, as weird as it was to see someone other than Jay Wright on the sideline, it was even weirder that the Wildcats started out 2-5 under Kyle Neptune.

But can we really give Neptune a grade when he was without likely 2023 lottery pick Cam Whitmore (thumb) through the first seven games and is still trying to figure things out while they await the return of veteran leader Justin Moore (Achilles)?

Neptune isn't the only first-year head coach who has had to deal with multiple injuries. Both Thad Matta and Jon Scheyer have navigated those same waters without much trouble. But Butler's absentees aren't nearly as crucial to the team's success as Villanova's. Not only did Duke have both of its missing stars back within the first week of the season, but it had plenty of other talented players able to fill in the gaps.

In Whitmore's first game back, Villanova beat Oklahoma. In his next two games, he scored a combined 40 points against Penn and Boston College and was the KenPom MVP of both contests. Things are already looking up for Villanova, and this may well be one of the 25 best teams if and when Moore returns and gets up to full speed.

If we had to give a grade here, it wouldn't be great. Probably a D-, because this annual title contender wouldn't even make the tournament right now. But Neptune gets an incomplete until Villanova is no longer incomplete.

South Carolina's 2021-22 Year-End KenPom Rank: 99
2022-23 Preseason KenPom Rank: 78
Current KenPom Rank: 168

Coach's Grade: D-

Much like Matt McMahon at LSU, former Chattanooga coach Lamont Paris had to deal with a near-total reset of the roster at South Carolina.

A handful of role players stuck around through the regime change, but all six of the leading scorers left—five of them as transfers.

As if that wasn't tough enough to overcome, the player who Paris brought in from Coastal Carolina (Ebrima Dibba) to presumably serve as his starting point guard suffered a season-ending Achilles injury over the summer, leaving a rebuilding situation without a key veteran leader.

As such, it would feel wrong to give a failing grade here. But the Gamecocks did add Meechie Johnson from Ohio State, Benjamin Bosmans-Verdonk from Illinois, a top-notch freshman in Gregory "GG" Jackson II and a volume scorer from The Citadel in Hayden Brown.

They were starting over, but they had enough talent to potentially be one of the best versions of this program in the past 15 years, save for the 2016-17 team that made it all the way to the Final Four.

But the Gamecocks have fallen drastically short of expectation, blown out by Colorado State, Furman and George Washington while going 3-4 in November. They did beat Clemson and won an overtime game at Georgetown, but they plummeted from a potential top-75 team to outside the top 150 in a matter of weeks.

Maybe they'll bounce back from this rough start to make a little bit of noise in league play. But for the time being, South Carolina looks like the worst team in the SEC without a close runner-up.

Louisville's 2021-22 Year-End KenPom Rank: 127
2022-23 Preseason KenPom Rank: 91
Current KenPom Rank: 237

Coach's Grade: F

To be clear, no one expected Louisville to be good this season. The Cardinals went 13-19 last year and lost three of the four leading scorers from a roster that didn't have a single double-digit scorer. And aside from El Ellis, their guard situation heading into this season was a bunch of question marks and crying emojis.

No matter who they brought in to be the head coach, it was going to be a rebuilding year. Handing that situation over to a first-time head coach—one who had been an assistant in the NBA over the past two seasons, no less—all but ensured it would be tough sledding in 2022-23.

However, no one expected Louisville to be this awful.

And, honestly, this is no knock on Kenny Payne.

He was John Calipari's right-hand man for a decade at Kentucky. It's about time he finally got a shot with his own program.

If you put this long-time assistant in charge of a good roster situation like the one Tommy Lloyd got in Arizona last season, maybe he thrives to an equal degree. And if he gets three years to build something at Louisville, he'll probably accomplish it.

It's just hard for anyone to show up and salvage a sinking ship, let alone a guy who has never overseen a program—rebuilding or otherwise—and who spent the past 12 years as an assistant to NBA-level talent, whether at Kentucky or with the New York Knicks.

This team legitimately might be worse than the 6-25 record that Utah had in Larry Krystkowiak's first season at the helm in 2011-12, which is the baseline for major-conference futility in recent years. The Utes won 21 games under Krystkowiak two years later, though.

So while he gets a failing grade here for dropping well over 100 spots on KenPom in a month's time, let's give Payne some time to find his footing.

Duke's 2021-22 Year-End KenPom Rank: 8
2022-23 Preseason KenPom Rank: 15
Current KenPom Rank: 13

Coach's Grade: A-

While every other coach on this list had to change schools and try to build a team—most of them largely through the transfer portal—in the span of a few months, Jon Scheyer knew well over a year before his first game as head coach of Duke that he would be inheriting this role.

Not only that, but as the former lead recruiter for Mike Krzyzewski, he had essentially been building his roster for a while.

Without even factoring in the whole "replacing the GOAT." factor, Scheyer's situation was very different from the others.

But despite the intense pressure to fill the shoes of a legend and despite the preseason injuries to extremely highly touted freshmen Dereck Lively II and Dariq Whitehead—who missed early action and still barely look like shells of the stars we expected them to be—Scheyer has done an admirable job.

The 19-point loss to Purdue in Portland snowballed in a hurry, but Duke is 10-2 with quality wins over Xavier, Ohio State and Iowa, as well as a near-win over Kansas in the Champions Classic.

The Blue Devils are basically co-favorites with Virginia to win the ACC and rank among the 10 betting favorites to win the national championship, per DraftKings Sportsbook.

It's still unsettling to not see Coach K on the sideline, but Scheyer has maintained business as usual in Durham. That includes the recruiting front, where he has put together a 2023 class of five 5-stars, per 247 Sports.

Kansas State's 2021-22 Year-End KenPom Rank: 61
2022-23 Preseason KenPom Rank: 77
Current KenPom Rank: 54

Coach's Grade: A-

After that brief Scheyer hiatus, we return to the standard "drastic roster overhaul" situation that most of these coaches had to endure.

In Jerome Tang's case at Kansas State, the only returnees were point guard Markquis Nowell and forward Ismael Massoud. Nowell was a major one, though, as the veteran leader averaged 12.4 points, 5.0 assists and 2.2 steals per game in 2021-22. If you have to build a roster around one person, that's a great choice.

But from there, it was transfer central.

Tang brought in a few high-majors in Cam Carter, Jerrell Colbert and David N'Guessan. He snagged a few up-transfers in Desi Sills, Tykei Greene and Abayomi Iyiola. Nae'Qwan Tomlin came via the JUCO route. And the biggest wild card of all was Keyontae Johnson, who hadn't played since December 2020 following cardiac arrest.

Colbert is redshirting, but the other seven are each averaging double-digit minutes per game. Most notable among them is Johnson, who has scored in double figures in each game for the 9-1 Wildcats.

This "Frankenstein's monster" sort of roster was almost unanimously picked to finish dead last in the Big 12 in the league's preseason coaches poll, but they look like a viable NCAA tournament team.

Even if the Wildcats fall short of the dance, a .500 overall record would be an improvement for a program that had gone 34-58 over the past three seasons. They already have more nonconference wins over KenPom top-90 teams (three) than they did in the previous four seasons combined (two).

Georgia's 2021-22 Year-End KenPom Rank: 219
2022-23 Preseason KenPom Rank: 93
Current KenPom Rank: 109

Coach's Grade: B+

It only took Mike White 25 days to get his seventh win at Georgia, surpassing last year's horrific 6-26 mark under Tom Crean.

Granted, all seven of those wins came against teams ranked well outside the KenPom top 200, but that's progress, right?

The former Florida head coach didn't bring anyone with him across SEC lines, but he did stock up on transfers. Six of them, to be exact, most notably Terry Roberts from Bradley, who is leading the Bulldogs in points, assists and steals.

But while the Dawgs certainly appear to be better than last year, they have fallen behind KenPom's preseason expectations. It's not nearly the drop experienced at Louisville or South Carolina, but a drop all the same. And it's mostly because this offense just isn't good.

Georgia was terrible last year, but those shortcomings were predominantly on the defensive end. The 2021-22 Dawgs were at least somewhat competent on offense and did a fine job of both getting to and converting from the free-throw line.

This year's team—despite mostly facing poor competition—is committing a lot of turnovers and is shooting below the national average from both two-point and three-point range. And if that continues, this team is going to get eaten alive on a regular basis in SEC play.

It's hard to give White an "A" because of that, but he deserves better than a "C" for at least bringing this program back from the abyss.

Maryland's 2021-22 Year-End KenPom Rank: 83
2022-23 Preseason KenPom Rank: 56
Current KenPom Rank: 17

Coach's Grade: A+

Kevin Willard revived Seton Hall, bringing the Pirates back to a point where at least 20 wins became the annual expectation. But he stagnated there, seemingly always hovering right around 20 wins and never able to reach the second weekend of the NCAA tournament.

As such, when he decided to leave for the Maryland opening, fans in New Jersey weren't exactly broken-hearted, especially since it opened the door for Shaheen Holloway to come home.

But maybe Willard just needed a change of scenery, too, because he has already elevated Maryland from "might be able to sneak into the NCAA tournament" to "might be able to win the Big Ten."

The Terrapins were one of the biggest surprises of November, beating their first seven foes by an average margin of 21.9 points. That included blasting both Saint Louis and Miami on neutral courts while vaulting from no preseason votes up to No. 13 in the AP poll.

After losing the two leading scorers (Fatts Russell and Eric Ayala) from a sub-.500 team, Maryland wasn't supposed to be good.

The Terps are now 8-2 after close losses away from home against Wisconsin and Tennessee, but no shame in either of those results. If anything, they validated Maryland as a team that can hang with anyone.