April in college basketball signifies five things:
For the purposes of this post, we’ll home in on that last item. It’s been a busier-than-expected season on the coaching carousel, due in part to dominoes that came into play with some big jobs (St. John’s, Cincinnati, Arkansas, Vanderbilt) late into March and April. For a primer on which schools have had changes, you’ll definitely want to head over to our carousel tracker.
The potentially rewarding but still sort of vexing hiring of Mike Anderson by St. John’s last week was the last closing of a big job in college basketball. So let’s look at the decisions made at the most notable of programs. These are not grades, but rather quick, over-the-shoulder reactions to the schools/athletic directors/presidents picking the men they picked.
Once again, with the list of newly signed hires, I am setting the NCAA-Tournament-appearance over/under for 2020 at 3.5. And like in 2019 with Kermit Davis and Ole Miss, one of the coaches below is going to break through and dance in 2020 despite not being expected to do so when the season begins.