I wasn’t expecting another Buzz Williams. I thought it was very unlikely. The vast majority of proven Power 5 coaches aren’t interested in moving. Williams was a special case scenario. He wanted out of Marquette, and a deal with Auburn fell through when the Tigers elected to hire Bruce Pearl instead, so Buzz fell into Tech’s lap. It was never realistic to expect another Buzz Williams type of hire, and I wrote that last week.
Still, when the process began last week, I did not expect it to end with Mike Young. I didn’t think Wojo was realistic, because he would have been walking away from a potential Sweet 16 team at Marquette to win probably 13 or 14 games at Virginia Tech for roughly the same amount of money. Gregg Marshall once turned down a $4.6 million per year deal from Arkansas I hear, so he’s all about the money, and Tech couldn’t afford him. Mick Cronin has lived and worked in Cincinnati almost his entire life, and he isn’t likely to leave unless it’s another city market (we hear he prefers that over a rural setting).
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By Saturday morning, perhaps even by mid-day Friday, I was pretty certain that most of the “big names” were not going to work out mostly due to situations out of Tech’s control. That’s when I started to turn more towards Ryan Odom, and he was my No. 3 choice in my coaching search article last week anyway. I was totally good with Odom, because I think he’s a good enough coach, and he has plenty of coaching contacts and recruiting contacts in the region. He personally recruited guys like Deron Washington, Jeff Allen and AD Vassallo to Virginia Tech. He checked most of my boxes.
Young checked some of them as well, but I was awfully concerned about recruiting with him as head coach, and I still am. On the other hand, he also brings some traits that I believe are very important, and what we need right now at this moment in time. I’ll cover the recruiting aspect of it first, and then get into the rest.
The Recruiting Question
I think Mike Young is a good enough coach. If you aren’t a good enough coach, it doesn’t matter what kind of a recruiter you are. See Danny Manning as an example, who I think has recruited some good players, but he can’t coach them. Still, even good coaches need good players, and Young’s recruiting experience at the ACC level, or any level above the Southern Conference, is non-existent.
All of Mike Young’s coaching experience has come in the Southern Conference. Here is his career coaching record broken down year-by-year…
That’s not a great look at first glance, but remember that Wofford jumped from Division II to Division I in 1995. It can take awhile to build a program, especially when you are poorly funded. Young made about $160,000 at Wofford, as compared to the $425,000 that Ryan Odom makes at Maryland-Baltimore County, which is in a similar low-major conference. That shows exactly how well-funded (or not well-funded in this case) the Wofford program is.
Still, the 55.1% overall winning percentage and the 58.2% winning percentage in the Southern Conference are concerning to me. When hiring a coach from a low-major conference, I’d greatly prefer to see more consistency and a better winning percentage. Ryan Odom doesn’t have the years of experience as Young, but here are his numbers at UMBC…
That’s more consistent winning.
The other example of consistent winning at a low-major is what Gregg Marshall did at Winthrop in the Big South. Marshall took over a program that went 51-113 in the previous six seasons and did this…
Those are some impressive numbers. It’s not like Marshall and Ryan Odom inherited winners. They inherited perennial losers and did a great job (or in the case of Odom, he’s currently doing a great job). There are no losing records, and the winning percentages are very strong.
With Young, even if you throw out those first seasons when the program was building, there are still losing records in recent history, specifically…
2012-13: 13-19, 7-11
2015-16: 15-17, 11-7
2016-17: 16-17, 10-8
As great as Wofford was this past year (30-5 overall, 18-0 in conference), it was just two and three seasons ago that they had losing records and weren’t that far above .500 in the Southern Conference. That concerns me.
I don’t think those seasons happened because Young is a bad coach. I think they happened because his recruiting is inconsistent, and that’s the concerning part. If your recruiting is inconsistent, you’ll have some rough years in the ACC. You need talent to win. Buzz Williams won two ACC games in his first year because he didn’t have players. He would have struggled again next year (2019-20) because of a lack of players.
Not having good players will make a good coach look like a bad one any day of the week, and Young’s lack of experience at the Power 5 level concerns me with regards to recruiting.
First and foremost, he’s never personally recruited above the Big South level. This will be new to him. Second, I was told that he’s "not a big fan of AAU basketball." You have to be able to at least tolerate it to be an effective recruiter, so that concerns me as well. Third, he’s known as a very loyal guy who only hires guys he’s worked with before or whom he knows well. While commendable, if he hires a bunch of guys with no recruiting experience at the Power 5 level, then he isn’t likely to succeed long-term at Virginia Tech.
At least two of his assistants, and preferably all three, need to be effective Power 5 level recruiters. We saw what happened to Buzz Williams’ recruiting at Tech at the end when he didn’t have effective recruiters on his staff. It dropped off despite the fact that Buzz himself is a very experienced recruiter. Young absolutely has to have effective recruiters and go-getters around him to be successful.
Rating the Mike Young Hire
I spoke with three basketball sources from the college scouting and college coaching industry who all either know Young or are very familiar with his coaching, his staff, his history, etc. I asked them to rate the Young hire on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the best. Here’s what they came up with…
Source One: 5. This source is adamant that Young must hire a staff full of excellent, proven recruiters.
Source Two: 4. Like source one, this source believes that assistant coaches will be the key to Young’s tenure. He said his rating could change to a 5 or a 6, depending on which coaches Young hires.
Source Three: 5. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the success of his tenure will depend on his assistant coaches, according to this source.
As far as they are concerned, this is a middle-of-the-road hire. It's not a bad one, but it's not a great one.
Young was asked about assistant coach hires, and he was adamant that he would do what’s best for Virginia Tech. Some are concerned because of yesterday’s article from goupstate.com where Young said he would like to bring all of his assistants to Blacksburg. Here are the two paragraphs in question, and I highlighted the parts I deem important…
“Young said he would like to bring the entire Wofford staff to Virginia Tech. That includes assistant coaches Jay McAuley, Kevin Giltner and Will Murphy. David Land, who just finished his first season with the team as athletic performance coach, is already on board.
“I will want to take them all,” Young said. “I know I’m taking David right away. Their strength coach went with Buzz to Texas A&M. So I’ll take David with me immediately. I would certainly like to take Kevin, Jay and Will, maybe in different capacities, early on. I certainly hope that Jay is the next basketball coach here at Wofford. I’ve expressed that to Richard. Jay has been great. Kevin would also be a great choice. It’s not my call. I’m the basketball coach at Virginia Tech. I’m not in a position to influence anything here any longer.”