It took some time, but we might’ve finally reached the point that Vanderbilt fans are pining for the Kevin Stallings era.
Sure it soured in the end, but at one point Stallings led Vanderbilt to five NCAA Tournaments in six years. Sitting here today, as the Commodores endure a seventh straight year without an invitation to the dance — even when COVID—19 canceled the 2020 postseason, they were 11-21 — those look a lot like glory days, and they’re long gone.
Even when Jerry Stackhouse won SEC Coach of the Year last season, it was for almost making the tournament. When he followed that with a 9-23 record this season, his fifth at the helm and third with more losses than wins, athletic director Candice Storey Lee had no choice but to move on. There hasn’t been much Memorial Magic lately, as that quirky old gymnasium now gets overrun by visiting fans. When such an embarrassment happens often enough, it’s over for the guy on the sideline.
Of note: It might be time to stop hiring former NBA players with zero college head-coaching experience, because that dice roll has busted for most of them. Stackhouse, Kenny Payne (Louisville), Juwan Howard (Michigan), Penny Hardaway (Memphis), Patrick Ewing (Georgetown) and Chris Mullin (St. John’s) have all failed to live up to the hype, and most have been outright busts. So what now for the Commodores, who are 44-98 in SEC play since Stallings left?
Vanderbilt, which has finished last or next-to-last in the SEC five times in eight seasons without Stallings, needs to nail this hire.
Job evalulation
So here’s the catch: How good is this job, actually? Or perhaps more pointedly: How brutally hard is this job?
See, beyond Vanderbilt’s unique challenges within its own league — those pesky academic standards and such — the SEC decided to become kind of a juggernaut in men’s basketball about the time the Commodores started trending downward. These days, the top half of the conference is signing McDonald’s All-Americans and adding coveted transfers every offseason. The league is getting six to eight teams in the NCAA Tournament every year. There are no nights off.
Meanwhile, in the last dozen years, Vanderbilt had more losing seasons (seven) than 20-win seasons (two). How much more can the program reasonably aspire to now? There’s some solid history there, but also still plenty of room in the rafters at Memorial. The last of Vandy’s four total SEC regular-season championships came in 1993 under Eddie Fogler. The last SEC tournament title was a doozy, when Stallings’ best team, a 25-win bunch, upset eventual national champion Kentucky in 2012, but that is a distant memory now. Before that, the only other league tournament titles were in 1927 and 1951.
The program’s last Sweet 16 was in 2007, its only Elite Eight was in 1965. What we’re saying is: Can the Commodores compete at the highest level in this current era of college basketball? That’s what any quality candidate is going to be asking himself.
At least Lee can come to the table with this: Last February, Vanderbilt broke ground on a new basketball training facility as part of the massive Vandy United campaign — about $300 million in total athletics investment — to makeover the worst athletics facilities in the SEC. By next season, the new coach will be able to bring recruits into a glittering four-story, 90,000 square foot building that’ll include a state-of-the-art locker room, weight room, dining area and separate practice gyms for the men’s and women’s teams, which currently share one space.
Thanks to that, and what we’ve heard is a reasonably competitive NIL apparatus, the next hire shouldn’t be operating with both hands tied behind his back.
Call list (in alphabetical order)
Casey Alexander, Belmont head coach. You want a guy who knows how to win in Nashville? The 51-year-old Alexander spent nearly 20 years learning under legendary Belmont coach Rick Byrd as a player and assistant for the Bruins. And after coaching Lipscomb for six years, leading the Bison to three straight 20-win seasons, an NCAA appearance and the 2019 NIT title game, he returned to his alma mater as head coach and promptly ripped off three straight 25-win seasons. Overseeing a jump from the Ohio Valley Conference to the much, much stronger Missouri Valley in 2022 was no easy task, but Belmont has more than held its own. The Bruins were third last season and finished tied for fourth this year. Alexander has spent three decades in the Music City and he’s won a lot more than he’s lost. It would be worth taking a long look.
Mitch Henderson, Princeton head coach. The 48-year-old Henderson almost makes too much sense. You want to build a nationally competitive program at a place with rigorous academic standards? Look no further than the guy who started for three straight NCAA Tournament teams at Princeton (with wins over UCLA in 1996 and UNLV in 1998) and has coached the Tigers to four regular-season Ivy League titles and two Ivy tournament titles since 2017. Last year, he led Princeton to is first Sweet 16 in 56 years, upsetting No. 2 seed Arizona and No. 7 seed Missouri to get there. His Tigers are 24-3 this season, champs again, and recorded their 11th top-three Ivy finish in 12 seasons under Henderson, who has won 65 percent of his games. The big question with him is whether he’d actually leave his alma mater.
Pat Kelsey, Charleston head coach. How has a high-major program not already hired Kelsey? The 48-year-old former Xavier point guard won the Big South regular season four times — and league tournament three times — in six years at Winthrop, and now he’s won back-to-back CAA regular-season and tournament titles at Charleston. The Cougars are 58-11 the last two seasons under Kelsey. He’s won nearly 70 percent of his games in 12 years as a head coach.
Matt Langel, Colgate head coach. Again, if you’re looking for a profile fit, the guy who starred at Penn, learned under Fran Dunphy and has led the Raiders to five straight NCAA Tournaments would make plenty of sense. The 46-year-old Langel just won his fifth Patriot League regular-season title in six years (and fifth Patriot League Coach of the Year award in seven years) after starting this season 8-8, because Colgate then rattled off 12 straight victories. The Raiders also won the league tournament yet again and will take a 25-9 record into the NCAA Tournament. You want revenge of the nerds in Nashville? Langel graduated from the prestigious Wharton School of Business, so he can certainly navigate the SEC’s smart-kid school.
Chris Mack, former Louisville head coach. The 54-year-old Mack has been out of the game since his unceremonious ouster at Louisville in the middle of a season, on Jan. 26, 2022, amid a bizarre scandal involving an extortion attempt by fired assistant Dino Gaudio, whom Mack secretly recorded. The on-court results also weren’t great at the end of his time there — Louisville went a combined 19-15 in the COVID-shortened season and his final half-season — but Mack had plenty of success before that. He guided Xavier to eight NCAA Tournaments in nine years, including four Sweet 16s and the 2017 Elite Eight. He had the Cards ranked No. 1 in December 2019, and they beat No. 3 Duke a few weeks later. After a two-year hiatus, Mack recently indicated he’s ready to see what’s out there.
Ritchie McKay, Liberty head coach. How valuable is the 58-year-old McKay? Tony Bennett lured him away from the first stint as the Flames’ head coach to become his top assistant at Virginia. But he’s pretty good at being his own boss, having done so at Portland State, Colorado State, Oregon State, New Mexico and Liberty (now twice). He’s won two-thirds of his games and is approaching 400 career victories. He went 26-7 and made the NCAA Tournament at New Mexico in 2005. This time around with the Flames, he’s won 27-plus games three times, made two NCAA Tournaments and went 30-4 and won the Atlantic Sun regular season and tournament titles in 2020 before the NCAA Tournament was canceled. He was the Big South Coach of the year in 2016, Atlantic Sun COY in 2020 and 2021.
Bucky McMillan, Samford head coach. Should the Commodores want to make an outside-the-box hire that could be a very fun experiment/gamble, give Bucky Ball a call. The 40-year-old McMillan is a fascinating story. He was born and raised in Birmingham, Ala., and just … never left. He was a local high school star, played college ball at Birmingham Southern, stepped immediately into the head coaching job at his former high school, led it to five state titles, then jumped straight to Division I head coach (still in his hometown) when Samford AD Martin Newton took a chance on him. All McMillan has done is win Southern Conference Coach of the Year the last three seasons, win the regular-season league title the past two seasons, and now takes a (school record) 26-win team to the program’s first NCAA Tournament in 24 years. His always-pressing defense and fast-paced, 3s-and-layups offense make for an extremely watchable product, which Vandy could use.
Drew Valentine, Loyola-Chicago head coach. Porter Moser’s understudy took the Ramblers and ran with them. They went 25-8 his first season and won the Missouri Valley tournament to earn an NCAA bid. In this, his third season, after a bumpy transition year to the Atlantic 10, Loyola is 23-8 and earned a share of the A-10 regular-season title. Valentine has tremendous pedigree, having worked under Greg Kampe at Oakland (where he played), Tom Izzo at Michigan State and Moser during the Ramblers’ Cinderella run to the 2018 Final Four. Just 32 and only three years into his head-coaching career, the only question is whether he’s ready for a jump to the SEC.
And the hire is …
Henderson feels like the best fit, McMillan the boldest choice and Mack the safest hire. There seems to be a lot of smoke around Mack, and he is the most proven high-major head coach that Vanderbilt could realistically land, so that would be our early lean.
(Photo of Chris Mack: Joe Robbins/ AP)
