Coaching no longer can be viewed as biggest obstacle for Georgia basketball

Hiring Tom Crean does not guarantee Georgia’s men’s basketball immediate, or even eventual, success.

But here’s what it does accomplish. It eliminates coaching as the biggest obstacle that’s holding the Bulldogs back from at least reaching its potential. Exactly what that potential is, now that remains a mystery.

Certainly, Georgia can produce some respectable teams from time to time. Whether it can achieve and maintain national relevance remains unclear.

At the pro and major college level, there are few great coaches but many good ones. A great coach isn’t going to go to Georgia unless it’s by pure happenstance. Hugh Durham was a great coach. Tubby Smith was a good coach who re-energized the program after Durham was fired. But even Smith failed to recruit at a high level in Athens.

If there is a Nick Saban of college basketball out there — a huge “if” — he wasn’t coming to Georgia. There’s not even a Kirby Smart. That is to say there’s no highly qualified assistant with a championship pedigree and ties to Georgia just waiting for that triumphant homecoming.

Crean is a good coach, but so is Mark Fox, and he couldn’t win enough at Georgia, either.

Crean’s résumé would suggest that he’s an upgrade from Fox. A Final Four appearance at Marquette, three Sweet Sixteen seasons at Indiana.

Whether that’s fact rather than just perception is debatable. Crean was 30-28 in his first two seasons at Marquette. The next two seasons produced 53 wins. Having Dwyane Wade helped. You think?

Crean’s first three seasons at Indiana were miserable — 28-66. But then the Hoosiers were 138-69 over the next six seasons. That included the 2012-13 team that began the season as No. 1 in the Associated Press poll and finished fourth. That team had Victor Oladipo and Cody Zeller, both consensus All-America players and the second and fourth players, respectively, taken in the 2013 NBA draft.

Expert analysis: When Crean had great players, he was a good coach. When he didn’t, not so much. Imagine that.

Fox never had a great player. The closest to it was Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, who was a first-round NBA draft choice (eighth overall) in 2013.

J.J. Frazier was an exciting little player, but he wasn’t drafted. Yante Maten was SEC Player of the Year this season, but does not project as a first-rounder.

Before Caldwell-Pope, you have to go all the way back to 2003 to find a Bulldog who was drafted in the first round — Jarvis Hayes, 10th overall by Washington.

Or, look at it this way. Going back to that season — a span of 16 seasons — Georgia has had more head coaches (three, excluding interim coach Pete Herrmann) than first-round draft picks (two).

Yes, recruiting falls on the head coach. Fox never managed to land a top-ranked signing class. In a twist of cruel irony, he had just assembled his best class, but it started falling apart as rumors of Fox’s firing grew louder.

Mark Richt’s football tenure at Georgia was more successful than Crean’s time at Indiana. Richt got fired, and Crean has been lauded as a home run hire.

But that’s because Georgia expects to win national championships in football.

In basketball, not so much. The goal is simply to be competitive more often than not.

After Thad Matta turned down the job, the Bulldogs’ choices were limited.

They could have turned to a highly regarded assistant coach from a big-time program. Auburn tried that with Tony Barbee. That didn’t work out so well.

They could have hired someone seen as an up-and-comer from a lesser-known program. Been there, done that with Fox, who won at Nevada. One could argue that such a candidate works 70 minutes away. But at the time of the interviews, Ron Hunter was busy coaching Georgia State in the NCAA Tournament.

One area in which Smart was an upgrade from Richt was this: he demanded more from his superiors and those with influence. Crean will have to do the same. Those with the power to make Georgia basketball better than it has ever been need to heed the words of Fox, who expressed this advice both privately to Athletics Director Greg McGarity and publicly:

“You need to have someone you can have a partnership with. If he can’t have it with me, then hopefully he can have it with the next coach.”

Fox is a good coach, and so is Crean. If this change doesn’t prove successful, then coaching wasn’t the root of the problem after all.

This story was originally published March 17, 2018 at 2:27 PM with the headline "Coaching no longer can be viewed as biggest obstacle for Georgia basketball."