Candid Coach: Who was college basketball’s best high-major coaching hire in 2024?

CBS Sports college basketball insiders Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander spent a month surveying more than 100 Division I men’s basketball coaches for our annual Candid Coach series. They polled across the sports landscape: some of the biggest names in college basketball, but also small-school assistants in lower-major leagues. The coaches agreed to share unfiltered opinions in exchange for anonymity. We asked them 10 questions and will post the results over a three-week period.

Our annual Candid Coach series typically consists of 10 questions, most of which are designed to touch on topical issues that often change from one year to the next. But we also have questions we bring back each year because it’s always nice to know which teams and players and recruits coaches appreciate.

We have already published some of them this week.

Which school do the coaches believe will win the 2025 NCAA Tournament? “It happened in Kansas,” he told us.

Who do the coaches believe will be the game’s best player this season? He told us it was the Cooper Flagg of Dukes.

Today, we’re publishing the results of the third question we ask each offseason.

Who was the best high-major coaching hire of 2024?

Others who received votes: Jake Diebler (Ohio State), Darian DeVries (West Virginia), Andy Enfield (SMU), Chris Holtmann (DePaul), Steve Lutz (Oklahoma State), Eric Musselman (USC), Danny Sprinkle (Washington)

Quotes that stand out

On John Calipari

• “Calipari is the best hire. [His] The track record at every stop is the highest level of the game. … Arkansas may be at its best stop with all the power of the reserves and fans. And a background of less attention [will give] He’ll have some freedom to breathe. He’ll have more fun there.”
• “Only a Hall of Fame guy is hired by anybody. That’s it.”
• “Cal was at Kentucky too long. He knows that now. But I talked to him on the street, and you can just tell a burden has been lifted off him. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t go to another Final Four. He’s going to win big again. He has everything it takes to win big again.”
• “He will be extra motivated by being at a school in the SEC that has more than enough resources to compete at the highest level. There is no one better than Cal at re-inventing himself and creating the ‘us vs. the world’ mentality that will ultimately lead him back to the top.”

in dusty May

• “The Michigan brand. The way Dusty carries himself. It’s perfect. I don’t think I expected it to happen, because I didn’t think the job would open up at Michigan. But when it opened up, it made all the sense in the world. Michigan is perfect for Dusty. He’s perfect for Michigan.”
• “You’re never going to get the biggest void at Michigan, so you have to evaluate and identify guys who can play for you and play in your system, and Dusty is one of the best guys at that. He had a loaded team at FAU when they had limited resources and poor facilities. He took a lot of guys who weren’t heavily recruited coming out of high school and got them to the Final Four. He can do the same thing at Michigan.”
• “He was able to maintain a mid-major program at a top-25 level [for multiple years]Imagine what he could do with real resources.”

On Mark Pope

• “He’s not a guy who’s looking for a microphone every 10 minutes to make his case. He doesn’t make a lot of excuses. Basketball is what drives him. Underrated recruiter, very good talent evaluator and knows how to stay ahead of the curve offensively and be impossible to guard in space. Uses his personnel like a surgeon. Everybody on the field is really good at something and they’ll accept that role.”
• “I know this is not the guy Kentucky fans thought would replace Cal – but he’s already won them over. He’ll do very well there. And he’s a really great offensive coach. So not only will he do well there, but he’ll be fun to watch. He may not dominate the recruiting rankings like Cal because a lot of schools are using NIL. But he’ll get good players and win big.”

conclusion

As one coach said, John Calipari is “the only guy in the Hall of Fame who somebody appointed.” Could Dusty May, Mark Pope or anyone else on this list eventually join him in the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame? Sure, I guess. But it’s undeniably true that Calipari is “the only guy in the Hall of Fame who somebody appointed.” So it’s not surprising that the 65-year-old from Moon Township, Pennsylvania, received more votes than anyone else by a considerable margin.

I have his Razorbacks ranked 13th in the top 25 and 1Which goes to show that no coach at any new school is better positioned than Calipari to compete for a Final Four in Year 1. And I can’t tell you how many people in the profession, even Calipari’s closest friends, have told me over the past four months that being more or less yanked out of Kentucky, a place where he had long planned to stay until his retirement, would motivate and re-energize Calipari, who some believe has become too comfortable and stubborn after spending 15 years at UK.

I can’t say anything properly on this subject.

It’s not like Calipari stopped enrolling elite recruiting classes. The talent was always there to excel every year. For example, last season’s team had three players selected in the first round of the 2024 NBA Draft, among them the third pick (Reed Shepard) and the eighth pick (Rob Dillingham). FYI: UConn is the only other school to have two top-eight picks — and the Huskies won the national title while Kentucky lost to Oakland in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, ensuring Calipari would go nine consecutive seasons without going to the Final Four and five consecutive years without an appearance in the Sweet 16.

With this the pressure increased.

The situation got worse.

Understandably, Calipari became interested in the off-ramp that Arkansas could provide — and his colleagues throughout the sport think he will quickly reestablish himself as one of the biggest forces in college athletics. History is certainly on his side. Before moving to The Natural State, Calipari coached collegiately at UMass, Memphis and Kentucky. He led each of those schools to a No. 1 ranking in the Associated Press Top 25 poll, leading each of those schools to a Final Four. Will he find the same level of success at Arkansas? Who knows? But the coaches we spoke to made it clear that they believe Calipari is this year’s best hire and largely suggested they’re expecting greater things from a man who has already been a notable part of the sport for more than three decades.