In Reply to: I appreciate Dr.Bruin's effort, but his list isn't as broad... posted by nachosgrande on February 06, 2026 at 15:55:03
First of all, May and Dutcher are on my list.
One can name many candidates using different criteria. I purposely used recent success in the postseason for most because fans care much more about tournament success than regular season success. Many coaches have great regular season records, but underperform in the tournament most of the time. Preparing for in-season and post-season games is very different. Lloyd is a good example:
2022 #1 seed lost to a #5 seed
2023 #2 seed lost to a #15 seed
2024 #2 seed lost to a #6 seed
2025 #4 seed lost to a #1 seed
I gave several examples of successful mid-major coaches who flopped at a higher level. I also left out those with no head coaching experience. Too risky. Lavin and Farmer didn't turn out so well for us.
My contention is that if you give Cronin enough NIL funds to work with, you get good results. That's college basketball today. Kevin Young of BYU is a good coach, but he has a massive NIL war chest enabling him to pay AJ Dybantsa almost as much as UCLA's entire NIL budget. As far as Cronin's "plateau" goes: In 2024 he got caught without NIL money and had to grab those Euros who weren't ready for American college ball. In 2025 there was a difficult adjustment to playing in the Big-10 with the travel and increased competition. This season missing Clark has made a huge difference.
The whole purpose of this exercise was to show that finding the right replacement for Cronin if it ever became necessary would not be easy.