Coaching Cornucopia

By: Eli Kaberon

The greatest basketball teacher of all time, UCLA legend John Wooden, once said, “A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.”What the Wizard of Westwood - the proud owner of ten national titles in a 12-year span during the 1950s and ’60s - meant is that the main goal of the person with the clipboard and whistle is to help players improve. Any random fan that paid for a ticket can yell out their opinion on how a player should get better, and they often do. But a coach’s job, according to Wooden, is to get the player to give 110% without hurting their psyche. Then the player will want to give all that effort, and should play better.

I’m not one to tell Coach Wooden what to do - and according to a new UCLA rule, I’m not allowed to approach him at his courtside seat at Bruins games - but I would suggest that he tune into some Big Ten basketball action. The league is filled with outstanding coaches who have long resumes of success in college hoops. These guys know how to inspire players and bring out the best from their talent. It may not show in the standings or polls all the time, but the Big Ten has the best collection of basketball coaches in the country right now.

Michigan State coach Tom Izzo is the elder statesman of the conference’s coaches. He’s been the man in charge in East Lansing since 1995 and has been on the campus since 1983, when he started as a 28-year old assistant to former Spartans coach Jud Heathcote. Izzo has had tremendous success, winning over 20 games in a season eight times (it looks like number nine will be this season), going to ten consecutive NCAA tournaments - including four Final Fours - and winning the national championship in 2000. His program has produced a number of successful NBA players, from Jason Richardson to Zach Randolph, and his current squad has been ranked in the top ten all season long. Coach Izzo is so entrenched that the student section at the MSU’s Breslin Center is known as the Izzone. The nearly 2,300 Spartans fans in the group wear white and green shirts to every game, and help give Michigan State a huge edge on their home court.

Izzo isn’t the only national title winning coach in the Big Ten. New Minnesota head man Tubby Smith, the former coach at Tulsa, Georgia and most famously Kentucky, won it all in 1998 with the Wildcats. This past April he left the bluegrass state and moved north, and has done great thus far in the Twin Cities, leading a Golden Gophers squad that was 9-22 last season to a 12-5 record in the early going this year.

Many felt that Smith - a veteran of 14 consecutive NCAA tournaments - had lost his touch. His Kentucky squads had won only that one National Title in his ten years in Lexington, which sounds good to the average fan but falls under ‘unacceptable’ with the Wildcat faithful. Even more than that, UK hadn’t won a regular season or conference tournament title in the SEC for two years - nevermind that there were some pretty good Florida Gators squads in their way - and Kentucky fans just couldn’t handle it.

Smith was not enjoying all the pressure and scrutiny of having one of the most prestigious basketball jobs in the country, so he packed his bags and headed up to Gopher Country. It has been a good choice, because the citizens of the Land of 10,000 Lakes have embraced him, displayed in increased attendance at Williams Arena and the 20th-ranked recruiting class (according to Rivals.com) that is set to hit campus in the fall.

Smith and Izzo may be the only current Big Ten coaches to cut down the nets at the end of a Division I season, but they aren’t the only champs among the 11 guys in charge around the league. Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan won four NCAA Division III titles in the 1990’s, while running the show at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. The trademark of those teams was fantastic defense, with the 1997 squad setting a D-III record by only allowing 47.5 points per game. That trend has continued in the move from Platteville to Madison, as Ryan’s Badger teams are always near the top of the stat sheets in most defensive categories. He has won more than 72 percent of his games as the UW head coach, and the Badgers haven’t missed the NCAA tournament since Ryan took over. His 525 all-time wins - combined D-I and D-III - surpass both Smith and Izzo, and place him first among active Big Ten coaches.

One thing Ryan has never done is taken his Wisconsin team to the third weekend of the NCAA tournamen. But there are three other Big Ten coaches besides Izzo and Smith that have done that. Just last March, Thad Matta took the Ohio State Buckeyes all the way to the national title game behind now-departed freshmen Greg Oden and Mike Conley, Jr. In 2005, Bruce Weber’s University of Illinois Fighting Illini were ranked #1 in the country all season, and also fell one game short of winning it all, losing to the North Carolina Tar Heels. And back in 2002, Kelvin Sampson’s Oklahoma Sooners lost in the national semifinal; 73-64 to Indiana, where Sampson now runs the program.

Even the less-accomplished Big Ten coaches have had a lot of success. Michigan’s new coach, former West Virginia leader John Beilien, went to overtime in the Elite Eight a few years ago and has been a winning college head coach for over 25 years. Matt Painter took over for the legendary Gene Keady at Purdue, and took the defending (and eventual repeat) national champion Florida Gators down to the wire in the second round of last year’s NCAA tournament. And new Iowa head coach Todd Lickliter won the 2006-07 Division I Coach of the Year Award from the National Association of Basketball Coaches after leading Butler University to the Sweet Sixteen. (Interestingly enough, Painter was the coach at Southern Illinois after Weber left for U of I, and Lickliter took over at Butler after Matta went to Ohio State)

But how does this crop of coaches compare with guys in other conferences? The ACC has more national championship-winning leaders with Mike Krzyzewski as well as Roy and Gary Williams. The Big 12 has Texas Tech’s Bobby Knight, the sport’s all-time winningest coach. And the SEC has the current king of college hoops, Florida’s Billy Donovan. But ESPN basketball analyst Stephen Bardo says that despite those other top-notch resumes, the Big Ten’s coaching roster is the best in the country. [Full disclosure: Bardo played at and graduated from the University of Illinois]

“I think they [the Big Ten] have as good coaches as anyone in the country, any conference,” Bardo said before last Thursday’s Michigan State-Northwestern game. “You put Tom Izzo, who has got a national championship and four Final Four’s, Bruce Weber has been to the national championship game, Tubby Smith has won a championship, Beilien has had tremendous success at West Virginia, Todd Lickliter did a wonderful job at Butler, Thad Matta got to a championship game, Kelvin Sampson’s been to a Final 4. I can go on and on. The Big Ten, coach-wise, I put them right up there with the best conferences in the country.”

So is this anything new? Just a few seasons ago, Gene Keady was nearing the end of his Purdue career, Jim O’Brien was leading Ohio State into major NCAA violations and Mike Davis was trying to follow Bob Knight at Indiana. The coaches were different, but the Big Ten was still sending lots of teams to March Madness. Michigan State All-American point guard Drew Neitzel, a senior, says that he can see some change in the league based on the guys roaming the sidelines.

“I think it’s gotten better, the coaches have gotten more experienced,” said Neitzel. “Better coaches, more known coaches have come back into the league. It has gotten better in that aspect, and there are no easy games in the league.”

Most agree, though, that while the coaching in the conference is great now, it won’t last forever. The days of Keady staying at Purdue for 25 years at the same time that Knight was at Indiana for 29 seasons, while Jud Heathcote coached at Michigan State for 19 years and Lou Henson led Illinois for 21 seasons, won’t happen again. There is too much pressure on coaches these days; not only from their universities, but also from fans and fellow coaches. Consecutive bad recruiting classes can get a coach fired, even before those classes are upperclassmen and expected to contribute on the floor.

“The money is too great, the pressure is too much, the players have so much pulling at them in terms of the internet, TV, radio, blogs,” Bardo said. “I think it’s difficult to maintain stablilty, and maintain a high level [of play] to satisfy college administrators. It’s just gotten to be too much.”

Since it won’t last forever, enjoy the current crop of Big Ten basketball coaches now. I sure will, and I’m guessing that even far away in Los Angeles, John Wooden is as well. He is a Big Ten alum after all - Purdue, Class of 1932 - and he knows great coaching better than anybody.

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Eli Kaberon is a 2005 graduate of Evanston Township High School and currently is attending Columbia College in the loop, majoring in print journalism. A life-long fan of the Cubs, Bears and Bulls, Eli also works as a seat vendor at Wrigley Field and has sold hot dogs to everyone ranging from Bears tight end Greg Olsen to Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. Eli can be reached at ekaberon@yahoo.com.

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