Not Happening

Creighton's Greg McDermott leads this list. He signed a contract extension a week ago and said he wants to retire at Creighton. Nate Oats also just signed a contract with Alabama that will give him a top five salary in college basketball. Retired guys John Beilein and Jay Wright are also in this group, as I bet one dollar neither wants to come back and deal with the portal and NIL and whatnot. Michigan is deeply unlikely to poke around the NBA, in any capacity, after Howard went so wrong.

Tony Bennett… cumong man. Get real.

Probably Not Happening

Two up-and-coming P5 coaches have difficult buyouts. South Carolina's Lamont Paris looks like a natural fit: he was born in Ohio and spent eight years as a Wisconsin assistant. Unfortunately he just signed a six-year extension with a $12.5 million buyout. Iowa State's TJ Otzelberger has a buyout described as "hefty" that Jeff Goodman thinks will dissuade OSU from pursuing him so I'd imagine Michigan is in the same boat. The number out there is 17 million, but I can't find anything that confirms that.

Shaka Smart has done a great job at Marquette after some up-and-down years at Texas, but I think Brendan Quinn is probably right that Smart isn't going to leave a good Big East program that's probably a two seed to run it back as the second banana at a football power.

The opposite applies for Porter Moser. His three years at Oklahoma have been underwhelming.

SDSU's Brian Dutcher has had a ton of success with the Aztecs but he's 64 and may not want to spend a few years rebuilding the crater that is Michigan's roster when he could be having fun with a good program. Also the connection to Steve Fisher may still be a problem 25 years later.

Fred Hoiberg has Nebraska in the tourney after a long build but bringing the king of the portal to Michigan seems like a bad fit for both parties. Chris Collins: no.

Realistic Candidates

[Colorado State]

NIKO MEDVED, Colorado State. Medved took over a Larry Eustachy crater and immediately improved CSU from 224th in Eustachy's last year to 180th, 99th, 76th, and then 46th in 2022, the year when Michigan faced them in the first round of the tourney. CSU had an off year in 2023 but is back in the tourney this year with room to spare. Torvik has them as a 7 seed. An 10-8 conference record doesn't seem great but this year's Mountain West is more or less a power conference—it's the #7 conference in Kenpom, but their average efficiency rating is closer to the Big East (#2) than the A10 (#8).

Medved is an offensive guy first and foremost. His teams have been top 50 in two-point percentage every year he's been at CSU and they tend to have very high assist rates. That combination usually means a guy is scheming up excellent looks for his team. TO avoidance has been good, but not Beilein good. Speaking of:

Colorado State’s motion offense has become a must-watch for basketball junkies. The ball moves; there’s constant cutting and reads. It has elements of Johnny Orr’s spread, John Beilein’s 2-guard attack and Lennie Acuff’s version of the Princeton.

“Maybe one day it’ll be the Medved system,” Medved says.

He’s proud that this system is uniquely his.

That's from an Athletic article in which Medved offered a two-week deep dive on his program; it mentions that Isaiah Stevens, the point guard Michigan played in that game, stuck it out at CSU when he could have hit the portal:

“The main thing that has always kept me here was it’s hard to find people that genuinely care about you,” Stevens says. “My dad always told me there’s certain things money can’t buy, and that’s loyalty and relationships and faith and love. And I just feel like a lot of that has been built up here over my time.”

Medved, like everyone else in college basketball, has hit the portal for players but he's gone an unusual route: he's got two DII transfers and a DIII transfer in his rotation. The two DII transfers are starters with 121 and 118 ORTGs on ~21% usage in what is more or less a high major conference. Guy has an eye for talent.

[After THE JUMP: more mid-major guys]

DARIAN DEVRIES, Drake. DeVries took over for Medved after Medved's single season at Drake and after a couple of okay-to-good years he's taken off. Drake has been at or near the top of the Missouri Valley for four straight years, grabbing bids in 2021 and 2023, the former an at-large. This year Drake is 28-6 and headed for another 11-seed.

Devries's teams are Beileinesque in their turnover avoidance (top 40 the last four years) and have been fierce defensive rebounders while also being awful offensive rebounders. This is a positive since Drake has been around 300th in effective height over this period: the offensive rebounding is about a talent deficiency; the defensive rebounding is good coaching.

Before taking over Drake, Devries was a Creighton assistant for 17 years, so if you want McDermott Devries is McDermott At Home.

FWIW DeVries's best player is his son, who has a year left. You'd imagine he'd come along. Given the state of the Michigan roster anyone who comes with a top portal option attached looks a bit more attractive.

JOSH SCHERTZ, Indiana State. The other MVC dude. ISU is a remarkable 28-6 this year and has cracked the top 50 on Kenpom for the first time ever. Those rankings stretch back to 1997. ISU leads the nation in eFG and was fourth last year on the strength of absurdly good two-point shooting—59% and 62%. His teams take buckets of threes and have a sky-high assist rate. As mentioned just above, this is a signal that coaching is moving the needle.

Schertz has only been at ISU for three years; prior to that he was a D-II coach at Lincoln Memorial in Tennessee, where he won his conference nine of 11 years to end his tenure, made three D-II Final Fours, and had a 32-1 team when the tournament was cancelled in 2020. It's tough to tell if a D-II team has a natural advantage over the teams it tends to play; ISU has been a middling MVC program for decades, lending credence to the idea that this guy can coach.

DUSTY MAY, Florida Atlantic. Reached the Final Four a year ago and then got to run it back with more or less the same roster this year. Hasn't been quite as good this year, but "has Florida Atlantic at #35 in Kenpom instead of #17" is not a dealbreaker. Top 25 offenses the last two years.

May's issue relative to the guys listed above him is the length of his track record. He's been FAU's coach for six years; until last year FAU was a thoroughly mediocre CUSA team. The guys above him have had longer stretches of top-end play. May could have just got lucky with his current roster.

AMIR ABDUR-RAHIM, USF. Yes, Shareef's brother. Abdur-Rahim built Kennesaw State from a 1-28 team just transitioning from D-II in to a 26-9 team that made the tourney. USF hired him; the Bulls are 23-6 and won the AAC at 16-2. His tenure as a head coach is too short to draw any conclusions from Kenpom stats—I'm not holding his first three years at KSU against him but that just leaves this year and last.

MARK POPE, BYU. Has BYU at 10-8 in the Big 12 and in line for a five seed, according to Bart Torvik's algorithim. Had top-20 Kenpom teams in his first two years at BYU before falling off to .500-ish in the WCC. Before that had a successful four-year tenure at Utah Valley. Is a Mormon so might be a tough pull. He had some complaints about NIL at BYU a year ago, so maybe Michigan can convince him they're better equipped to get guys. (You know… if they are.)

Pope has the best teams, per Kenpom, of anyone on this list. His teams are not super consistent in any department but are consistently good on both sides of the ball. With limited exceptions all of his teams have been balanced.

PAT KELSEY, Charleston. Three bids in nine years at Winthrop, whereupon he moved to Charleston and rebuilt a program that was 9-10 the year prior to his arrival into a 31-4 team in year two, then 27-7 this year. Kelsey's teams play fast—top 60 in tempo going back almost a decade—and they crash the offensive boards; defensively they are all over the place but consistently clean up their own boards.

MATT LANGEL, Colgate. This is Langel's thirteenth year at Colgate; he inherited a 7-23 team and spent three years digging out of the hole. First he got the Raiders to 500-ish over a three year span and then he hit the gas. Colgate hasn't done worse than 12-6 in the Patriot League since 2017 and they've won it five of the last six years, with a second-place finish to Navy in the COVID year the only exception.

Langel's teams haven't quite had the extreme turnover aversion that Beilein's did but the running theme through his last six years is torching the next from three. They're only 81st this year but the last three years Colgate hit 40% from deep, finishing in the top three nationally. His system is three-heavy, as you might expect, but that's dropped off a bit in recent years. His teams now pick up buckets of assists and shoot well from inside the arc.

Defensively they've been a bit all over the place but they are good on their own boards and don't give up many free throws.

The problem with Langel is his conference. The Patriot League is 30th of 33 conferences in average efficiency. The leap from the Patriot to the Big Ten is vast, far more daunting than the Mountain West, MVC, or the AAC.

One Man's Ranking

The top three guys are in the "probably not happening" tier, but:

1. Shaka Smart
2. TJ Otzelberger
3. Lamont Paris
4. Niko Medved
5. Josh Schertz
6. Darian Devries

Of the guys who would definitely come, Medved is my guy. He performed well enough to get CSU an obvious at-large bid in a (more or less) high major conference this year with a couple of D-II transfers in the starting lineup. A couple years ago his star was David Roddy, a 6'4" power forward who was a first round pick in the NBA draft. He held onto Isaiah Stevens despite the fact that he was a grad transfer and could have made bank in the portal. In six years at CSU the worst he's ever finished in 2PT% is 43rd; every other year he's been top 25.

All of this adds up to a guy who finds weird talent, coaches it such that they take and hit a lot of twos—very repeatable—and has done it at a level that is as close to the level Michigan plays at as anyone on the "obviously realistic" list.