MVC – Coaching Hotbed

(St. Louis, MO) – Is the Missouri Valley the greatest ‘hotbed’ for college basketball coaches? Is the Valley the place to go to launch a head coaching career? Are lessons learned in the MVC key to national success?

There are coaching trees and there are coaching hotbeds. If certain programs perform at a high level, then assistant coaches get opportunities to coach else where and a coaching ‘tree’ is formed. You can’t hardly swing a dead cat around some of these regional sites without hitting someone with ties to Kentucky coach John Calipari or to the Wildcat program.

Then there are coaching hotbeds or green houses where coaches begin or continue their careers away from the bright lights of Final Fours, but in the trenches learning how to recruit, draw up plays and work with boosters. There may be no better league for the upwardly mobile coach of this generation than the MVC.

Of the 68 teams in this year’s March Madness bracket, at least nine of them have Valley roots. Of the 13 ‘power 5’ conference teams in the Sweet 16, three of them are coached by former MVC head coaches. Oregon’s Dana Altman (Creighton, as pictured in our headline photo) is still standing as we head into the Elite Eight.

This writer has no allusions that the Valley is some pristine, holier-than-thou league that ‘does it better’ than everyone else, but there are values in the Valley that I see less of when I travel to witness other environments, leagues and programs.

Valley coaches, athletic directors and sports information directors understand the things that matter most. The MVC is a place where coaches appreciate coverage of their teams, they don’t tolerate it. Conference administrators engage with the campus leaders, rather than dictate to them. The ‘Three Musketeers’ slogan of ‘one for all and all for one’ seems to permeate this valuable hotbed of American basketball coaches.

Some coaches (thankfully) come to the Valley and make a career of it, like Ben Jacobson of Northern Iowa (eleven seasons) and Wichita State’s Gregg Marshall (ten) and the ‘Dean’ of Valley coaches Barry Hinson, who has 14 MVC seasons under his belt in two programs.

Very little is done in a vacuum and to ignore other influences isn’t accurate. To say that Matt Painter (Purdue) and Bruce Weber (Kansas State) have Valley roots would be accurate. To ignore that they came from the Gene Keady ‘tree’ in Purdue wouldn’t be honest. But where did Painter and Weber get their first head coaching job and where did they cut their teeth as the ‘deal closing’ recruiter, how did they learn their lessons on working an official or when to call a timeout or to sit a star player? In the Valley!

Nine out of 68 head coaches in this year’s field coached in the Valley. Those nine coaches won ten games in this season’s tournament and collected six single digit seedings heading into the Madness.

As an avowed Valley watcher and fan, I never want good coaches to leave for ‘greener pastures’, but many have and many have thrived. So when the Drake job becomes available, you are forced to consider the career possibilities in one of the top mid-major conferences in the country.

So as I watch Elite Eight games this weekend, we know at least one mid-major will reach the Final Four, since Gonzaga and Xavier collide in one of the qualifying games, and we’ll be pulling for Altman’s Ducks, hoping to see one of ‘our guys’ step on to the highest stage.

Do Good

(Former Valley coaches in the tournament this season – Weber – Kansas State; Painter – Purdue; Altman – Oregon; Steve Forbes a former assistant at Wichita State – East Tennessee State; Tim Jankovich – SMU; Mark Turgeon – Maryland; Greg McDermott – Creighton; Steve Alford – UCLA; Current Wichita State team & coach Gregg Marshall)