April 06, 2006
ACC Coaches - The First Ten Years
David Glenn had a post a couple of weeks ago where he took a look at Herb Sendek's ten-year career at State (this was before Herb stepped down). To show how Sendek compared to other ACC coaches, he listed the accomplishments of every coach who coached at least ten years in the ACC. It's a fascinating list.
To make it a bit easier to review, I reformatted Glenn's data into a HTML table here:
| Coach | School | Years | ACC (Reg. Season) | Overall | ACC Tournament | NCAA Tournament | ACC Titles | ACC 1st Place | NCAA Bids | Sweet Sixteens | Final Fours | NCAA Titles |
| Vic Bubas | Duke | 1960-69 | 106-32 (.768) | 213-67 (.761) | 22-6 (.786) | 11-4 (.733) | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 0 |
| Dean Smith | UNC | 1962-71 | 97-43 (.693) | 191-77 (.713) | 14-7 (.667) | 7-5 (.583) | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| Everett Case | NC State | 1954-63 | 85-49 (.634) | 183-77 (.704) | 15-6 (.714) | 2-2 (.500) | 4 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Norm Sloan | NC State | 1967-76 | 78-52 (.600) | 190-86 (.688) | 12-7 (.632) | 4-1 (.800) | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Terry Holland | UVA | 1975-84 | 73-57 (.562) | 214-95 (.693) | 10-9 (.526) | 11-5 (.688) | 1 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 0 |
| Dave Odom | WF | 1990-99 | 86-70 (.551) | 199-97 (.672) | 8-8 (.500) | 10-7 (.588) | 2 | 1 | 7 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Mike Krzyzewski | Duke | 1981-90 | 76-64 (.543) | 231-101 (.696) | 12-8 (.600) | 21-7 (.750) | 2 | 1 | 7 | 5 | 4 | 0 |
| Lefty Driesell | MD | 1970-79 | 67-57 (.540) | 189-85 (.690) | 9-10 (.474) | 3-2 (.600) | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Bud Millikan | MD | 1954-63 | 71-64 (.526) | 147-104 (.586) | 6-9 (.400) | 2-1 (.667) | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Jim Valvano | NC State | 1981-90 | 71-69 (.507) | 209-114 (.647) | 9-8 (.529) | 14-6 (.700) | 2 | 2 | 7 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
| Bobby Cremins | GT | 1982-91 | 70-70 (.500) | 198-112 (.639) | 9-8 (.529) | 11-7 (.611) | 2 | 1 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
| Gary Williams | MD | 1990-99 | 78-78 (.500) | 192-118 (.619) | 7-9 (.438) | 8-6 (.571) | 0 | 1 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| Herb Sendek | N.C. State | 1997-2006 | 72-88 (.450) | 191-132 (.591) | 13-10 (.565) | 5-5 (.500) | 0 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Carl Tacy | WF | 1973-82 | 52-74 (.413) | 164-114 (.590) | 5-10 (.333) | 3-3 (.500) | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Cliff Ellis | Clem | 1985-94 | 56-90 (.384) | 177-128 (.580) | 3-10 (.231) | 3-3 (.500) | 0 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Bill Gibson | UVA | 1964-73 | 46-90 (.338) | 109-142 (.434) | 4-10 (.286) | 0-0 (.000) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
A few observations:
- I had no idea that Vic Bubas was so good. I knew him as a good old ACC coach, but I never would have guessed that he had the best first ten years of any ACC coach ever. I think Bubas needs to come up more often in discussions of past great ACC coaches.
- I wouldn't have guessed that Terry Holland and Dave Odom had a better first ten years (ranked by ACC regular season success) than Mike Krzyzewski. In fact, Coach K is ranked only 7 by that measure. Where you can see his numbers shine though is in his NCAA tournament success. Those number only got better in the next decade.
- It's pretty clear that Herb Sendek was nothing special at State. He barely beats out Carl Tacy and I don't think there are any statues of Tacy over in Winston-Salem.
- As I expected, Jim Valvano's numbers are fairly pedestrian. In fact, he's very comparable to Bobby Cremins. The only real difference are those last two wins of the 1983 team. If that team had lost in the FF like Cremins' one FF team did (Lethal Weapon 3 losing to UNLV in 1990), they would be almost identical. But of course, they didn't lose, and that certainly counts for something.
| devilbythesea wrote: |
| Wow, Gary Williams barely squeaked past Herb, too! Without seeing this, I would have assumed his first 10 years were much better. Interesting. |
Keep in mind that Maryland was on probation and in complete shambles when Gary took over. When Sendek took over, State's post-Valvano probation was all over, although Les Robinson had run the program into the ground.
| WTNY wrote: |
| Also keep in mind that the first 10 years for Coach Case in the ACC were not his first 10 years. He was special. |
Good point. There was no ACC in his first years. Of course, I think that gives him an advantage over others in the chart. For most of the great coaches, they got better after their first few years.
| MadWolf92 wrote: |
| Interesting that only two coaches won a national title in their first 10 years (RWill will obviously be an exception), and they were both State coaches. |
Of course, K got back-to-back titles in years 11 and 12. He probably should have won in '86 as well.
enough to hire him-he had 3 good freshman his first year and one
a high school all-american from west virginia who i saw play on the
freshman team and showed great promise-he runs him off-a win percentage of 33 tells the whole story
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