Georgia Tech point guard Mfon Udofia is a junior. He has spent two seasons in the ACC. He’s a bright kid. But ask him to name all 12 ACC basketball coaches, and he’s stumped.
He started OK. Looking around the room at last week’s ACC Operation Basketball in Charlotte, he nailed probably the hardest one first by naming Wake Forest coach Jeff Bzdelik (proper pronunciation and spelling not required).
He rolled off gimmes with Mike Krzyzewski at Duke, Roy Williams at North Carolina and Seth Greenberg at Virginia Tech, then dove in deeper with Jim Larranaga, the former George Mason coach entering his first season at Miami.
Then Udofia started to whiff. He gave “new coach” responses for Maryland, Clemson, and Boston College, even though both Brad Brownell and Steve Donahue are entering their second seasons at Clemson and Boston College.
He wanted points for knowing Mark Gottfried was “the guy from Alabama” now at N.C. State. Virginia’s Tony Bennett seemed to be on the tip of his tongue, but he still needed prompting. The only other coach Udofia got right was Leonard Hamilton at Florida State.
In all, Udofia named only seven of the 12 ACC basketball coaches, including his own new coach, Brian Gregory.
This is no knock on Udofia. It’s not like he’s alone. Even Clemson’s Tanner Smith, a senior and a three-time All-ACC Academic from Alpharetta, didn’t want to take a stab at it.
“That’s really tough,” he said, joking. “I don’t know if I can name all the coaches on our staff.”
In a league fighting to regain its prominence on the national college basketball scene, the ACC has some work to do, even before expansion comes with the addition of Syracuse and Pittsburgh in 2014. At a time when players’ early departures for the NBA leave coaches as the game’s most recognizable figures, the ACC clearly is lacking.
This kind of turnover is unprecedented. Never in its 58-year history has the ACC had four new coaches in one season. Another four have joined since March 2009, accounting for two-thirds of the league. Bennett was the only new coach when he started at Virginia in 2009. Now he has the fifth-longest tenure.
Gregory, who was hired to replace Paul Hewitt on March 28, knows how he feels.
“I’m a first-year coach, and I was on the job two, three days, and I was already 10th in seniority,” Gregory said. “I’m like I’m the old guy around.”
Gregory, Gottfried and Larranaga all were in place when Gary Williams retired from Maryland in May, so Mark Turgeon’s hire moved Gregory up to ninth.
Krzyzewski is the grizzled veteran of the group, entering his 32nd season as head coach at Duke. Only Hamilton, who’s entering his 10th season at FSU, is in double-digits in the ACC. Williams enters his ninth season at North Carolina.
Krzyzewski compared this turnover, at least by percentage, to when he, Bobby Cremins (Tech) and Jim Valvano (N.C. State) entered the ACC in 1980 and 1981, when the ACC had eight teams.
“That turned out pretty good,” Krzyzewski said. “So maybe it’s time. And we’re stable. We’re strong as a conference, infrastructure-wise. It’s probably a good time for this expansion and newness. And I’m happy I’m still around to be a part of it.”
Valvano won an NCAA title three seasons into his tenure at N.C. State. By the late 1980s, Krzyzewski had built a dynasty that would see Duke advance to seven Final Fours in nine years from 1986-94, including two of his four national championships. In 1985, in his fourth season at Tech, Cremins started a run of nine consecutive trips to the NCAA tournament, including the 1990 Final Four.
“If some of us new guys can do what Valvano and Cremins and Coach K did — I think, poll us, we’d all take it,” said Brownell, smiling.
Clemson went 22-12 last season and advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament, making Brownell the only first-year coach in the nation to take his team to last year’s NCAA tournament. But Brownell is quick to point out he inherited a veteran team from Oliver Purnell, who departed suddenly for DePaul.
Brownell thinks a fair expectation for coaches to establish a program is five seasons. By then two or three of their recruiting classes are upperclassmen.
“You’ve got to give time to get used to a setting, get used to a situation, build some momentum, get used to the league,” Brownell said.
He points to Virginia as a program on the rise in Bennett’s third season.
“In two or three years, all of those programs are going to be solid and the same good ones, guys who have been here, are going to have great programs,” Brownell said. “So I think our league is getting back to where it maybe was.”
Pittsburgh and Syracuse are still bound by a 27-month exit window by the Big East before they can join the ACC. So unless something changes, the ACC has to keep looking from within to find teams to contend with traditional powers Duke and North Carolina.
In the meantime, fans — and players, too — have a chance to get to know new coaches such as Turgeon. He might have been recognized last week only for his Maryland shirt, when he came up behind Williams, sitting at a table full of writers on media day.
“I’ll be right over there if you guys need me,” joked Turgeon.
Williams was one of the few in the room who knew him well. Turgeon was an assistant coach for Williams for four years at Kansas.
“I can tell you stories about that guy,” Williams said. “He’s going to be a great addition to our group.”
For now, it’s still a matter of taking his word for it.
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