Well, America, you’ve done it. You’ve made me write a piece defending Doug Gottlieb. At least defending the coach, not the media personality. I readily acknowledge the goofball that is Gottlieb. He’s generally been critical of transfers despite being a two-time transfer himself. He was reluctant to support players getting paid despite having made purchases with stolen credit cards as a freshman. He mostly seems to dump on the current generation as inferior to his own. And as others have pointed out, it’s not hard to imagine him clowning another coach if that coach was simultaneously coaching a D-I basketball team to a 2-11 record while holding down a completely different job.
Gottlieb has been on the wrong end of almost everything this week and unfairly so. First, he dunked on Adam Schefter for a fairly ridiculous tweet about Sacramento State’s NIL budget but somehow ended up the loser in the court of public opinion. Then his Green Bay team lost to D-II Michigan Tech, which was the kind of embarrassing loss that all sports fans seemed to be waiting for. It didn’t help that the game finished early on a weekday afternoon with really nothing else going on to compete with it.
But the loss wasn’t really that bad. Green Bay is not that good this year, mostly through no fault of Gottlieb, and Kenneth Massey had Michigan Tech as a mere 8-point underdog. It’s possible the game wasn’t even the biggest upset of the 11 AM ET window on Wednesday as then 1-10 East Texas A&M took down WAC contender Abilene Christian at the same time. (For a true embarrassment, on Thursday, NAIA UNT-Dallas beat Rice as a 38-point underdog per Massey.)
Then, after the game, a video clip surfaced of Gottlieb allegedly referring to Michigan Tech as “Nobody U.” although in context it’s obvious he wasn’t referring specifically to Michigan Tech. Then, he didn’t post for his Fox Sports Radio show, which many thought was due to the loss, but was actually a planned absence.
After all that, Green Bay is now 2-11 and riding an 8-game losing streak. They’re ranked 329th and the rest of season looks bleak. The Phoenix may only be favored in two of its remaining games, one of which is against an IU Indy team that already beat them. They’re projected for a 7-24 record heading into the Horizon League tournament. Their leading scorer, Anthony Roy, is out indefinitely with an injury.
Part of the reason for the ridicule is that Gottlieb is undertaking a bizarre experiment whereby his primary source of income is still from hosting a national radio show five days a week. That’s pretty silly but I don’t blame Gottlieb for this. It’s kind of admirable that he convinced an athletic director of a Division-I school to allow him to maintain a completely different job while coaching the basketball team. Especially considering a guy without previous coaching experience doesn’t really have any leverage. The whole situation is unprecedented in the modern era.
And things have gone poorly for Gottlieb so far, but not that poorly, at least relative to pre-season expectations. Gottlieb took the job in May, weeks after most new coaches get to take over. It would be difficult to build a competent roster anywhere that late in the offseason, let alone at a middling Horizon League program. Green Bay started the season #309 in my ratings. They were supposed to suck.
But things actually started off really well. The Phoenix were competitive in early games against Oklahoma State and Providence. In their fifth game they crushed SIU Edwardsville and rose to #242.
Since then it’s been nothing but losses, mostly lopsided ones, to good teams and bad. Gottlieb suspended Roy for a game after he reportedly missed a team shootaround. (I think Roy could have avoided a suspension if he had claimed to be hosting a podcast for a couple hours.) The Michigan Tech game was the low point in the sense that it was a wasted opportunity to avoid what might become a very long losing streak.
This all leads to a more general question of how quickly one can form an opinion on a head coach. First, let’s create something called the Bill Hodges award, which will go to the rookie head coach that overachieves their preseason rating the most. Here are the top three finishers for this award since 2012:
2012: Andy Enfield, Fla Gulf Coast; Steve Prohm, Murray St.; Casey Alexander, Stetson
2013: Richard Pitino, FIU; Jay Spoonhour, Eastern Illinois; Kevin Baggett, Rider
2014: Mike Brennan, American; Brad Underwood, S. F. Austin; Greg Herenda, FDU
2015: Travis DeCuire, Montana; Chris Jans, Bowling Green; Kevin Keatts, UNCW
2016: Chris Beard, Little Rock; Steve Forbes, E. Tennessee State; Eran Ganot, Hawaii
2017: Grant McCasland, Arkansas State; Ryan Odom, UMBC; Jimmy Allen, Army
2018: Matt Figger, Austin Peay, Donte Jackson, Grambling; Shantay Legans, EWU
2019: Dusty May, Florida Atlantic; Darren DeVries, Drake; Griff Aldrich, Longwood
2020: Eric Henderson, S. Dakota St.; Carm Maciariello, Siena; Todd Golden, USF
2021: Mike Magpayo, UC Riverside; Scott Davenport, Bellarmine*; Stan Johnson, LMU
2022: Steve Lutz, Texas A&M CC; Gerald Gillion, Chicago St.; Tommy Lloyd, Arizona
2023: Corey Gipson, NW St.; Tobin Anderson, FDU; Chris Markwood, Maine
2024: Alan Huss, High Point; Sundance Wicks, Green Bay; Nate Champion, Le Moyne*
2025: Mike DeGeorge, Cal Poly; Ben McCollum, Drake; Kahil Fennell, UTRGV
*non-rookie coach whose team was in its first D-I season
This is a pretty solid list of 42 coaches. Among award winners, you have unqualified successes in Enfield, Pitino, Beard, McCasland, and May. Brennan was never able to get a promotion but did last at American for ten seasons. DeCuire is still coaching Montana and has had consistent success but not the breakthrough needed to move up. The jury’s still out on the top coaches from 2020 on, but their prognosis is generally favorable.
Even the second and third place finishers in each season have mostly either earned promotions or enjoyed reasonably successful careers at their original school. There are some exceptions like Carm Maciariello and Shantay Legans. But overall, it’s a great list.
Conclusion? A surprisingly strong first season is not a foolproof predictor of future success, but it’s a very promising indicator.
While we’re here, let’s acknowledge this year’s frontrunner, Mike DeGeorge. I’m fairly sure that the Cal Poly coach would have had a HoopVision video breakdown by now if such things still existed. The former Grinnell coach has the Mustangs playing at the fastest pace in the land while improving their ranking from #346 to #236. This after a four-year run where the program went 4-65 in Big West play.
Now let’s look at the flip side. I don’t know what I would call the award for the rookie coach of the most underachieving team. I mean, Kenny Payne is the GOAT, but he’s a nice enough guy to not deserve it. Here are the top three in that category:
2012: Matt Langel, Colgate; Todd Howard, IUPUI; Pat Skerry, Towson
2013: Tony Benford, N. Texas; Joseph Price, Grambling; James Johnson, Virginia Tech
2014: Corey Williams, Stetson; G.G. Smith, Loy. MD; Joe Golding, Abilene Christian*
2015: Shawn Walker, Grambling; Billy Wright, W. Illinois; Earl Grant, Charleston
2016: Dan Earl, VMI; Lamont Smith, San Diego; Chris Mullin, St. John’s
2017: Louis Rowe, James Madison; Terry Porter, Portland; Wes Flanagan, Little Rock
2018: Wyking Jones, Cal; Kyle Perry, USC Upstate; C.B. McGrath, UNC Wilmington
2019: Mike Morrell, UNCA; Shaheen Holloway, St. Peter’s; Lance Irvin, Chicago St.
2020: Amir Abdur-Rahim, KSU; Brett Nelson, Holy Cross; Kenny Blakeney, Howard
2021: Anthony Boone, C. Arkansas; Brian Burg, Ga. So.; Mo Williams, Alabama St.
2022: Matt Crenshaw, IUPUI; Desmond Oliver, E. Tenn. St.; Mike Woodson, Indiana
2023: Kenny Payne, Louisville; Rod Strickland, LIU; Tom Devitt, Hartford
2024: George Halcovage, Buffalo; Josh Eilert, West Virginia; Kevin Kuwik, Army
2025: Ben Fletcher, S. Florida; Mike Jones, Old Dominion; Scott Spinelli, Chicago St.
*non-rookie coach whose team was in its first D-I season
This list is mostly a who’s who of “Who?” A disaster of a first season is a pessimistic indicator of the future but there are significant exceptions to this like Matt Langel, Mike Murrell, and Amir Abdur-Rahim. And Dan Earl and Shaheen Holloway were able to move onto better jobs as well. There are a few others on here who either got a promotion or righted the ship at their first job. But it’s objectively a worse group than the first-season overachievers where there are many more successes and the ceiling is much higher. A bad first season is not a good sign, but it’s also more context-driven when it comes to predicting the future.
Even so, Doug Gottlieb isn’t close to contending for this award. He only ranks 10th-worst among the 35 rookie coaches this season. Barring a complete meltdown, he’ll be firmly in the range of a normal deviation from preseason expectation.
America has put me in the awkward position of defending Doug Gottlieb. However, the reality is that he doesn’t really have a chance to succeed this year, what with getting the job late and apparently losing his leading scorer for a few games. Green Bay will probably finish in the bottom three of the Horizon but based on history, you can’t bury Gottlieb just yet. At least until he’s had a full offseason to build a roster.
If next year goes poorly for Green Bay, then piling on will be fair game. It’s rarely cool to celebrate a coach losing their job, but in this case I think it would be allowed, because Gottlieb would be the first coach to get fired and not actually be unemployed.