6/13/2023 basketball Edit

How often do new coaches make consecutive March Madness trips?

Drew King • PowerMizzou

Basketball Writer

Missouri head coach Dennis Gates impressed and in some cases surprised many in his first year with the Tigers as he led the team to a 25-10 record, a fourth-place finish in the SEC and an appearance in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Gates did so despite having just three returners on the roster and being voted to finish eighth in the conference’s preseason poll.

Making it to March Madness in your inaugural season is a feat that’s challenging on its own. But how difficult is it to make it back to the tournament in a coach’s second year?

PowerMizzou.com dug into the histories of every head coach from the Power 6 conferences to find out how often it happens. Two groups of coaches have been omitted from the pool. The first group is coaches like Gates who made the NCAA tournament last year but have only spent one season at the school. That eliminated the following names:

Dennis Gates, Missouri

Jon Scheyer, Duke

Rodney Terry, Texas

Jerome Tang, Kansas State

Kevin Willard, Maryland

The second group is coaches whose first year at their school took place during the 2019-20 season when the tournament was not played, which eliminated 10 more names:

Mike Anderson, St. John’s

Mick Cronin, UCLA

Fred Hoiberg, Nebraska

Juwan Howard, Michigan

Eric Musselman, Arkansas

Nate Oats, Alabama

Kyle Smith, Washington State

Jerry Stackhouse, Vanderbilt

Buzz Williams, Texas A&M

Mike Young, Virginia Tech

That leaves a pool of 61 high-major coaches, of which just 16 reached the NCAA tournament in their first season. Here are those 16 coaches broken down into four different categories, and some context on what happened in each case.

Coaches who made the tournament in their first year but didn’t make it in their second year

Mark Adams, Texas Tech - Sweet 16 (2022), N/A (2023)

Brad Brownell, Clemson, - Round of 64 (2011), N/A (2012)

Hubert Davis, North Carolina - NCAA Championship Runner-Up (2022), N/A (2023)

Kermit Davis, Ole Miss - Round of 64 (2019), N/A (2020)

Kevin Keatts, NC State - Round of 64 (2018), NIT Quarterfinal (2019)

Adams kept up the momentum the Red Raiders built up under former head coach Chris Beard. Texas Tech went two rounds deep in the tournament in Beard’s final season with the team and Adams took them a round further in his first year. Adams lost a key pair of transfers in Kevin McCullar and Terrence Shannon Jr., though, and struggled throughout Big 12 play this year, going 5-13. Adams was suspended by the school on March 5 for making an "inappropriate, unacceptable, and racially insensitive comment" and resigned three days later.

Clemson made three consecutive appearances in the NCAA tournament under former head coach Oliver Purnell but hadn’t advanced past the first round. Purnell left for DePaul in 2010 and Brownell kept the status quo the following season, earning a bid first round and getting eliminated. However, Brownell lost a high number of seniors in 2011, replacing them with five freshmen. It took him seven years to get back to the tournament, eventually leading the Tigers to their first Sweet 16 appearance in two decades.

Hubert Davis was tasked with stepping into some big shoes taking over the Tar Heels after Hall of Fame head coach Roy Williams retired. North Carolina was bounced in the first round of the tourney in its final season with Williams, but Davis took them on an unexpected run to the NCAA title game despite only being a No. 8 seed. The Tar Heels were ranked as the preseason No. 1 team heading into this season but came up severely short of expectations this past year, failing to make the tournament altogether.

Ole Miss had gone 12-28 when it hired Kermit Davis. The head coach got off to a promising start, leading a Rebels team that featured current Sacramento King Terence Davis to an NCAA tournament appearance for the ninth time in school history. Terence Davis graduated, though, and Kermit Davis was never able to return to the postseason, leading to his departure this year.

NC State was 15-17 when Keatts was brought on. He helped turn things around in 2018 with a fifth-place finish in a fairly stacked ACC, making the school’s first March Madness appearance in three years. It took him a while to find the same success though, reaching the tournament for just the second time this past year.

Coaches who made the tournament in their first year but didn't go as far in their second

Jim Boeheim, Syracuse - Sweet 16 (1977), Round of 32 (1978)

Bob Huggins, West Virginia - Sweet 16 (2008), Round of 64 (2009)

Tommy Lloyd, Arizona - Sweet 16 (2022), Round of 64 (2023)

T.J. Otzelberger, Iowa State - Sweet 16 (2022), Round of 64 (2023)

Bill Self, Kansas - Elite Eight (2004), Round of 64 (2005)

Roy Danforth helped establish Syracuse as a solid program, making four straight NCAA tournament appearances from 1973-76. When Danforth was hired away by Tulane, the school promoted Boeheim, his young assistant coach. Boeheim took the team to its fifth-ever Sweet 16 appearance the following season and took the program to new heights across his 45 years with the Orange before retiring this year.

After runs to the Elite Eight and Sweet 16 in 2005 and ‘06, respectively, and winning the NIT championship in ‘07, John Beilein left to become the head coach at Michigan, creating an opening at West Virginia. Huggins was hired and made five consecutive tournament appearances, including a trip to the Final Four in 2010.

Though Sean Miller made it to March Madness seven times in his dozen years at Arizona, he wasn’t able to reach the postseason in any of his final three seasons with the Wildcats. Lloyd, a longtime assistant from Gonzaga, has had the program back on track so far.

Iowa State had one of its worst seasons ever in 2020-21, going 2-22 in Steve Prohm’s sixth year with the Cyclones. Otzelberger righted the ship immediately and has the team on an upward trajectory.

Like Hubert Davis, Self had to follow in the footsteps of Roy Williams but has held up the Kansas' standards, making the tournament every season he’s been the head coach of the Jayhawks.

Coaches who made the tournament in their first year and went just as far in their second

Mike Brey, Notre Dame - Round of 32 (2001), Round of 32 (2002)

Greg Gard, Wisconsin - Sweet 16 (2016), Sweet 16 (2017)

Chris Holtmann, Ohio State - Round of 32 (2018), Round of 32 (2019)

Though the Fighting Irish had made several deep runs in the tournament throughout their history, Notre Dame went on a decade-long postseason drought all through the 1990s. Brey helped restore the program’s relevance with back-to-back trips to the second round and accomplished a lot more before stepping down from his position this year.

Gard took over for former Badgers head coach Bo Ryan mid-season in 2016 the year after Wisconsin finished as the runner-up in the NCAA Championship game. Though he had good runs in the tournament in his first two years, he hasn’t been back to the Sweet 16 since.

Longtime head coach Thad Matta was replaced by Holtmann after going consecutive years without reaching the tournament. Holtmann has made it to March Madness in all but one of his seasons with the Buckeyes but hasn’t had the same success as Matta did in his prime, unable to make it past the Round of 32.

Coaches who made the tournament in their first year and went farther the next

John Calipari, Kentucky - Elite Eight (2010), Final Four (2011)

Shaka Smart, Marquette - Round of 64 (2022), Round of 32 (2023)

Mike Woodson, Indiana - Round of 64 (2022), Round of 32 (2023)

Billy Gillispie was fired by the Wildcats after losing in the first round of the NCAA tournament in his first season and missing out on March Madness in his second year. Calipari proved to be the right replacement, winning Kentucky its eighth national title in program history within his first three seasons at the helm.

Though Marquette had made it to the tournament every year from 2006-13, they made just two appearances in the eight seasons that followed, seven of them under former head coach Steve Wojciechowski. Smart’s back-to-back postseason trips have the Golden Eagles returning to form.

Indiana went through its longest NCAA tournament drought in 50 years during its four seasons under former head coach Archie Miller. Woodson has the Hoosiers returning to prominence and could give the team its first run to the Sweet 16 since 2016 in the near future.