Midseason college basketball awards: UConn’s Dan Hurley for coach of the year?

Hello again, friends and fellow walking popsicles, and welcome out of the cold and into the red-hot midseason awards edition of Shot Takers.

We have men’s college basketball, in full force! We have Golden Globes and Emmys and other trophies being handed out daily, apparently! And we have a chance to awkwardly smash the two concepts together!

Dana O’Neil and I are here for the party, guys.

Outstanding directing in a drama

Dana: Do I get a limo ride and a fancy dress out of this? Perhaps that ought to be the next coach attire iteration — sideline tuxedos and ballgowns. Acceptance speeches instead of press conferences.

OK. I digress. It is a weird thing to pick a coach of the year in a season in which everyone seems to be unable to sustain success. And because of the unpredictability, I feel like anyone we choose here will probably collapse like a house of cards by, say, Tuesday.

All that said, I waffle between a few choices. Both Porter Moser (Oklahoma) and Shaheen Holloway (Seton Hall) have lofted their teams to unexpected heights this year. The Sooners were picked 12th in the Big 12 and the Pirates ninth. I’m not sure how sustainable OU’s success is — the Sooners won their first road game Saturday at Cincinnati, and still have the teeth of the conference to get through. I have similar reservations about Seton Hall — the biggest wins have all come in Newark.

GO DEEPER

In triple-overtime loss, Seton Hall shows it's adopting the tenacity of its coach

So they make my nominees. But my winner? In a year where everyone is faltering, I’m going with the guy who hasn’t, and has every reason to: Dan Hurley. Maybe it seems silly to choose the defending national champion coach, and laud him for doing a good job. But for starters, it’s really hard carrying that mantle, and the Huskies have run through a gauntlet of a nonconference season and so far emerged with a 6-2 record in Quad 1 games. They also went six games without one of their rather important cogs — Donovan Clingan — and lost just one of those games.

Too easy, Brian?

Brian: It’s a solid choice and cuts against the grain of simply giving the award to the coach who surpassed expectations on a national level. I can get behind this. (I can also get behind the idea of men’s college coaches wearing ballgowns on the sideline. Maybe it will make it harder to take 10 steps on to the floor during game action.) Sometimes an established coach with a track record of success overhauls things, too, which is not always easy to do for reasons that range from personnel to stubbornness to simply an overall comfort level with how things are done. It’s why I’d have Kentucky’s John Calipari and Wisconsin’s Greg Gard on my short list, given the offensive rethink that’s charged up those programs. Iowa State’s T.J. Otzelberger, meanwhile, recruited his way into a much-improved offense while holding firm on the Cyclones’ defensive identity.

GO DEEPER

This Wisconsin team is different — and feels built to last

But I’m going with Tommy Lloyd at Arizona, even if the first half of that UCLA game had me teetering. There was probably more of a cultural reckoning in Tucson than people realize, and again, that’s not always going to happen after winning 61 games across two seasons. The offense has remained very fast and very good. But the Wildcats have jumped from 39th nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency to fifth as of Sunday morning, too, a good five points stingier per 100 possessions than they were a year ago. They’ve vaulted from 107th to eighth in offensive rebound percentage. And the coaching staff has put Caleb Love in the right positions to get the most out of Caleb Love, when that dynamic very easily could’ve gone the other way. From the outside, it looks generally like a good Arizona team stayed good. Really, Lloyd apprised two seasons of success and made smart moves to upgrade in areas that shaped the Wildcats more like a true Final Four contender.

Best performance in a leading role in a series not set in West Lafayette

Brian: We can get this out of the way: Zach Edey is probably going to repeat as national player of the year. As of Sunday morning, the Big Maple was No. 1 in the player rankings on every major metric site. He led the nation in Win Shares, per College Basketball Reference. So let’s stipulate how important and good Edey is and highlight the person who’d be the best of the best in a year without a 285-pound roadblock in his way.

Hunter Dickinson is that guy. Really, he’s an emblem of college basketball as we know it in January 2024. He seized upon the freedom of player movement and the bounty of Name, Image and Likeness funds and looks incredibly smart for it, bailing on the listing ship that is Michigan to become a player of the year candidate for a national championship contender. Dickinson is producing at career-best levels for Kansas — 19.3 points and 11.3 rebounds per game, 60.1 percent shooting overall, 42.1 percent shooting from 3-point range, .248 Win Shares per 40 minutes – and is a top-10 player nationally according to Evan Miyakawa’s ratings. The Jayhawks would be fine without Dickinson. I don’t think they have a shot at making it to Arizona in April if he’s not in the fold. He alters the dynamic that much.

Dana: This feels like being among the nominees when like Meryl Streep is also on the ballot. As in, you have no chance to win.

But let’s play along. I’m going to head down to Tobacco Road, where there are two choices — Kyle Filipowski and R.J. Davis. Statistically both are fine choices — Filipowski averages 18.2 and 8.6, while Davis checks in at 20.2, 3.7 and 3.5 But I’m old enough to remember when lots of skeptics (me) wondered what exactly the Tar Heels would be. The implosion of a year ago coupled with the departure of Love made for legit unease about Hubert Davis would fare in Year 3 (I am now making a case for Hubert as Coach of the Year, by the way).

RJ Davis would be in contention for national player of the year in most seasons. But Zach Edey exists. (Eric Canha / USA Today)

Enter RJ Davis. He has been sensational all year, failing to score 20 points only six times all season. He’s also shooting 41.2 percent from the arc and has helped the once questionable Heels win seven in a row, and climb up the rankings. UNC currently looks like a legit March threat — not the come-from-nowhere team of two years ago. Remove Davis from the team, and it is not unlike what Purdue might resemble sans Edey.

Lifetime achievement award: Zach Edey

Dana + Brian: We can’t leave the big fella without some hardware. He first picked up a basketball as a teenager, was the No. 436 prospect in the Class of 2020 and now the 7-foot-4 Canadian will be a two-time All-American with a chance to write one of the great postseason stories of all time with Purdue this March. He is singular. He is one of one.

But mostly we want to give Edey a trophy and see how it looks like a No. 2 pencil in his hands.

Outstanding guest actor

Dana: Dalton Knecht’s story is like a made-for-TV movie. Didn’t have the grades out of high school and went to junior college, which led to little interest from the big schools, so he pivoted to Northern Colorado and then took advantage of the portal to wind up at Tennessee, where he could lead Rick Barnes to the Final Four for the first time in two decades, and perhaps hand the man his first national championship trophy.

Cue “One Shining Moment.”

GO DEEPER

Tennessee's scoring sensation is the All-American no one saw coming

The Volunteers have been good for a while now. Their success has largely been predicated on tenacious defense. Which is great. Except their failure is often due to an inability to score the basketball. Do remember: Tennessee scored 55 in its Sweet 16 loss to Florida Atlantic last year. Meanwhile, Knecht went for 39 all by his lonesome against Florida.

He is exactly what the portal is built for: an opportunity for a player who would otherwise be flying under the radar in the Big Sky Conference to come in and fill the one critical missing piece for a very good team.

There are, of course, a very large number of transfers to choose from. Curious who’s name is on the card when you open your envelope, Hamilton.

Brian: So the non-Knecht answer is probably Dickinson, who moves from Michigan to Kansas and has the career-best numbers across the board under Bill Self’s watch. But I’m going to perform some classic college basketball writer overthink and try to act like the smartest guy in the room: How about LJ Cryer at Houston?

He’s maybe not been the best transfer, but there’s an argument that he’s as important as any of them. Houston loses its primary backcourt partners for Jamal Shead. Houston moves to the Big 12. Houston brings Cryer aboard after he spent three seasons at Baylor. The 6-1 guard’s counting stats aren’t Dickinson-like improvements, but he’s averaging a career-best .249 Win Shares per 40 minutes and sits at 14th in Evan Miyakawa’s player rankings. And Houston is still Houston, when it absolutely could have stumbled on the move into new territory. Cryer’s presence and performance alongside Shead has been the backstop against that.

Outstanding emerging program

Brian: As my Shot Taking partner noted above, this most mercurial of seasons makes this choice very tenuous. Pick a team that looks vastly improved or has made a statement, and it wll inevitably lose three of the next four. Or something. So it is with my choice of Oklahoma, which is favored in 10 of its final 13 games per KenPom — certainly a good place to be, but also not the sort of run that will reset the college basketball landscape.

Still, we wondered if Moser could do it at the high-major level. Porter Moser probably wondered if Porter Moser could do it at the high-major level, somewhere in the recesses of his hummingbird-like brain. He has done it. The Sooners are a top 20-ish team in the most onerous league in the country, and not too soon: The move to the SEC awaits. Creating positive momentum and institutional belief before that shift was crucial. Going from a 15-17 season to a likely NCAA Tournament bid does that.

Dana: I’m going with a similarly plucky coach, whom plenty wondered if he could succeed at the high-major level: Rick Pitino, and tabbing St. John’s for this one.

I’m fairly certain Pitino could take me, my two kids and my two golden retrievers and fashion us into a competitive team. (Janey, the dog, has some serious moves.) So this is not exactly going out on a limb to suggest that the Red Storm will be a team to be reckoned with down the road. Sometimes obvious works.

Pitino essentially ran the old St. John’s team out of Queens and reloaded with an entirely different roster. Said reconstituted Storm is not perfect. St. John’s just had its doors blown off by Seton Hall, but Steve Masiello coached that one, so I’m guessing Pitino will have that stricken from his record. On Saturday, it fell by one point to Marquette for its third straight loss. But there is zero arguing that St. John’s is better than it’s been in a really long time, and unlike in the past, when the Johnnies enjoyed a blip or success here or there, this does not feel like a flash in the pan.

Pitino will now go out and pluck players out of the Northeast that suit him — do not get consumed or fooled by stars. He does not care about recruiting rankings; he makes players better. And he will work the alumni base, the city, the mayor, whoever he has to in order to make St. John’s not only relevant; but excellent.

Outstanding unstructured reality program

Dana: I assume we are discounting Kenny Payne here much like we did Edey? Like, c’mon, he’s the obvious answer. So who else? I mean, it’s reached the point that no one even talks about Louisville because it’s a foregone conclusion.

So if not Payne, who? I’m not sure this is fair or reasonable, but I am curious about Chris Holtmann. Ohio State is not bad — 44th in KenPom, 46th in the NET. It’s just that the Buckeyes haven’t been noticeably good for a while. Holtmann has yet to make it out of the first weekend. They’ve had a few pesky injuries this season, but nothing that should dramatically change the tenor of the season. The loss to Michigan was bad — largely because Michigan is bad (so bad, in fact, that if anyone not named Juwan Howard was the head coach he might be the answer here).

And Ohio State now has a new athletic director. Ross Bjork has bigger fish to fry — namely ensuring that Ryan Day is happy and successful — but I do wonder if he will look at the men’s basketball program and wonder. Or if Holtmann even makes a Shaka Smart decision and finds a place that perhaps suits him better.

Brian: In a chat with the Chicago Sun-Times published on Jan. 16, this is what Tony Stubblefield said about his third year on the job at DePaul: “I want it to be here. I want to see this thing through. I knew the challenges of the job when I took it. This is where I want to be, and I’m going to continue to fight every day to do that.”

The next night, the Blue Demons lost at home by 38 to Providence.

Stubblefield is an energetic and likable guy, but the only reason he’s still the head coach at DePaul is because no one would notice if he wasn’t. The Providence loss dropped the team to 3-14. The wins have come against South Dakota, Louisville and Chicago State. Going 0-20 in Big East play is unlikely — someone is going to sleepwalk into Wintrust Arena and get upended — but a possibility nevertheless. KenPom gives the Blue Demons a 40 percent chance to beat Georgetown on Feb. 24, and that’s the best the odds get. Which is incredible.

What athletic director DeWayne Peevy does after inevitably parting ways with Stubblefield will be interesting. I’d advise him to establish a program floor. Forget about the hot-shot recruiter or big personality for the Chicago market. (It’s a pro sports city that won’t pay attention until February or March anyway.) Find a guy who can flat-out coach. Who does more with less. Who wins wherever he is. Because if you can’t coach in the Big East, you get … this.

Best picture

Brian: So what four teams have the best outlook for the next two and a half months? What quartet is ideally positioned to appear in Glendale and battle for a national championship in the desert, at least as of this writing?

Oh, the fun we’ll have regretting these choices. We will be laughing. But my envelope says UConn, Arizona, Auburn and North Carolina. I know, I know, Purdue fans. The guard play is better. The guard play, though, is not infallible, and the defense is strong and tested but not stifling. This still feels like a roster that’s one poor matchup from an exit, as opposed to fully bolstered against bad things happening. In fact, I’d be more confident in Purdue if this were a 16-team event and the competition level was elite throughout. I actually like the Boilermakers against top competition more than I like them against scrappy, unhinged underdogs who try to muck the game up.

And the dice-roll on Kentucky’s increasingly unstoppable offense is tempting. But the trend lines for the four teams I picked are intriguing. Auburn beating everyone by a ton. North Carolina learning how to play defense. UConn getting healthy but being really good even without Clingan. Arizona fixing its problem areas and kinda, sorta resembling last year’s UConn team with a bit of midseason malaise perhaps sparking a run in spring. It’s all auspicious. Which means I’ve cursed these programs to an agonizing doom, and I apologize in advance.

Dana: I’m curious what the line of demarcation is for Purdue. Feels like people are all in (the Boilermakers win the title) or all out (they don’t make the Final Four). Like, would anyone have them losing in the national semifinal?

I, for one, do not. I am all in. I understand and recognize the concerns you’ve mentioned, and worry/wonder how said guards will handle the enormous pressure when March rolls around. It is one thing to say you are ready for it; it is another to actually do it. But I honestly feel like in this very odd year, the obvious choice is the right choice.

Which is why I also have UConn back in the Final Four. Prisoner of the moment, perhaps, but the defensive masterpiece against Creighton was eye-opening. The Huskies have so many ways to win, are ridiculously deep, and in a weird way, Clingan’s absence helped them. The emergence of Alex Karaban is not going to hurt anyone.

These are the two I am sure of. Or as sure as a person can be about predictions that are sure to go wrong. The next two are not darts at the dartboard, but close. Kentucky. Why because Reed Sheppard can overcome any mistakes, bad decisions, indecisions or inactions that Calipari might otherwise make. He is, in my estimation, the exact thing that the Wildcats have been missing — an elite decision-maker who does nearly everything right. The only question is if Calipari will put him on the floor long enough to make a decision. The other night against Mississippi State, the Bulldogs closed a 22-point halftime deficit to six. Sheppard went in after Cal called a timeout, the Cats went back up by 12. This is not a coincidence.

Lastly, I’m going with Houston. KenPom loves the Cougars, and that’s good enough for me. Also the fact that Houston has upped the competition by joining the Big 12 might mean the record is not nearly as gaudy compared to other years, but the team will be better suited for what’s coming. Kelvin Sampson knows his identity maybe as well as any coach in the country, which means the Cougars will know who they are, what they need to do (defend like someone stole all of their toys, their lunch money, their significant other, their house, the WhoHash) ad they will do it.

Seems like no one ever talks about Houston. Probably we should.

(Top photo of Dan Hurley and Cam Spencer: Tim Nwachukwu / Getty Images)