King's Court: How often do third-year coaches make the NCAA tournament?

I did a version of this article last year looking at how common it was for coaches to make it to March Madness in both of their first two seasons with a program. With Dennis Gates’ third year coming up and two wildly different seasons under his belt, I thought it’d be good to do a bit more digging and look at the coaches who have been in similar spots before and how successful (or unsuccessful) they were.

And the reason I want to specifically at look at whether or not they made the NCAA tournament is because, in general that’s the goal of every high-major program every single year. There are some programs who have higher expectations, for sure. But in general, unless you’re Shaka Smart at Texas, making it to March grants you some job security.

There were some ground rules in my research. I only looked at coaches who were active during the 2023-24 season. I only included high-major coaches because the process to get into the tourney is different if you’re a mid-major — the only way to get an at-large bid is to either rack up a few wins over big schools and/or dominate your conference in the regular season. I obviously couldn’t include coaches who, like Gates, haven’t reached their third year with their current program. And for coaches who had one of their first three years coincide with the 2019-20 season in which there wasn’t a tournament, I pulled a KenPom and just went with the consensus from BracketMatrix.com for that year (those coaches will have an asterisk by their name if they would’ve made the tournament that season).

Here’s what I found:

Coaches who didn’t make the tournament in their first, second or third year

Mike Boynton, Oklahoma State

Jeff Capel III, Pitt

Chris Collins, Northwestern

Scott Drew, Baylor

Steve Forbes, Wake Forest

Earl Grant, Boston College

Jerod Haase, Stanford

Leonard Hamilton, Florida State

Fred Hoiberg, Nebraska

Ben Johnson, Minnesota

Fran McCaffery, Iowa

Porter Moser, Oklahoma

Bruce Pearl, Auburn

Steve Pikiell, Rutgers

Kelvin Sampson, Houston

Craig Smith, Utah

Kyle Smith, Washington State

Jerry Stackhouse, Vanderbilt

Tony Stubblefield, DePaul

Buzz Williams, Texas A&M

Coaches who didn’t make the tournament in their first or second year, but did in their third

Dana Altman, Oregon

Rick Barnes, Tennessee

Tony Bennett, Virginia

Andy Enfield, USC

Bobby Hurley, Arizona State

Dan Hurley, UConn

Tom Izzo, Michigan State

Tommy Lloyd, Arizona

Brad Underwood, Illinois*

Coaches who made the tournament in their first and second years, but didn’t in their third

Greg Gard, Wisconsin

Mike Woodson, Indiana

Coaches who made the tournament in their first, second and third years

John Calipari, Kentucky

Mick Cronin, UCLA*

Chris Holtmann, Ohio State*

Juwan Howard, Michigan*

T.J. Otzelberger, Iowa State

Bill Self, Kansas

Shaka Smart, Marquette

I don’t have much to say about these groups because their situations aren’t necessarily applicable to Gates’. But I still wanted to include them for posterity because, dang it, I did a lot of research on this!

There are plenty of coaches in those first two groups who aren’t very good and/or got fired this offseason. But I think people might be surprised by some of the big names included in there — Izzo! The Hurleys! Bennett! Drew! Mike Krzyzewski and the great Norm Stewart would’ve been in that first group if they were still coaching. Jay Wright would’ve been in the second.

Looking at the second and fourth groups makes you realize how important the third year is for head coaches. There are some exceptions — Enfield, Holtmann and Howard were dismissed by their schools — but everyone else in those groups either was or is very established with where they’re at. You can’t really say the same about the pair of guys in group three. Coaches who didn’t make the tournament in their first year, made it in their second, then missed it in their third