Could Indiana Pursue A Retired Coach? It’s Not A Well-Blazed Trail

Examples of coaches coming out of retirement are rare. Even if they weren’t, the job has changed so much that historical comparisons are somewhat moot.

Todd Golden | Feb 19, 2025

Virginia Cavaliers head coach Tony Bennett looks on from the sidelines during the first half against the North Carolina State Wolfpack at Capital One Arena. / Amber Searls-Imagn Images

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BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Since the transfer portal and name, image, likeness have become a reality in college basketball, there’s been a fair share of coaches who have decided that they don’t want to be a part of it.

Whether it’s because of the strain it adds to the job or whether it jives with their philosophy of building a culture with roster retention, some big names have exited the scene in the 2020s.

Two-time national championship coach Jay Wright was one of the first to exit the coaching ranks as he retired after the 2022 season. Since then, Tony Bennett, who won a national championship at Virginia in 2019, has stepped aside. During the season, long-time coach Jim Larranaga did the same at Miami.

There’s a larger pool of qualified retired coaches than there typically is. As speculation continues over who Indiana will hire as its next men’s basketball coach, some have advocated that one of these retired coaches could be the right person to lead Indiana in the future.

Bennett and Wright, in particular, are oft-named candidates for the Indiana job.

Whether either of those men would be interested in making a return to coaching is just one obstacle to clear. There’s also the question of whether pursuing a retired coach has the desired effect of reviving a program.

A rare circumstance

Valparaiso coach Homer Drew shouts instructions to his team during the first half of Valparaiso's game against Duke Dec. 4, 2004 at the United Center in Chicago, Ill. / Matt Cashore-Imagn Images

“Retired coach” might not be the best way to make a historical comparison for coaches who had an absence or a gap in their college basketball coaching careers. That’s because there are very few successful coaches who truly retired and returned to the profession.

It stands to reason. If you’re successful, you get to leave on your own terms.

Among coaches who rank in the top 125 in all-time victories, Lou Henson retired from Illinois in 1996, but was back in coaching less than a year later at New Mexico State. He was an interim coach at first, but decided to take over full-time for the 1997-98 season.

Homer Drew retired at Valparaiso in 2002. His son, Scott Drew, coached Valparaiso during the 2002-03 season, and when Scott Drew left for Baylor, Homer Drew returned as the head coach.

Hugh Durham retired at Georgia in 1995. He returned to coach Jacksonville two years later.

Fran Dunphy became athletic director at Temple in 2019 and left coaching. He returned in 2022 at La Salle and remains the Explorers coach.

One could make a weak case that Cliff Ellis “retired.” He was fired by Auburn in 2004. Ellis stayed out of coaching until 2007, when he took over Coastal Carolina.

Henson, Drew and Ellis would take their teams to at least one NCAA Tournament appearance in their return to coaching. However, none of those coaches had a higher winning percentage at their post-retirement spot than they had in their previous stint or interruption in service.

Gaps in coaching record

Texas Tech Red Raiders coach Bob Knight instructs his players against the Marquette Golden Eagles in the first half in the College Basketball Experience Classic Tournament at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, MO. Marquette won the game 87-72. / John Rieger-Imagn Images

A more accurate historical comparison is to look at coaches who had gaps in their college careers regardless of whether they willingly retired or not. Some left to coach in the NBA, some went into decline in their best-known job and were fired, others got into NCAA trouble and were forced out of their jobs.

Best known to Indiana fans is Bob Knight. After being fired by Indiana in 2001, Knight coached Texas Tech from 2001-08.

Bob Huggins, Rollie Massimino, John Calipari, Eddie Sutton, Lefty Driesell, Kelvin Sampson, Rick Pitino, Jerry Tarkanian, Mike Montgomery, Lon Kruger, Bruce Pearl, Tom Penders, Gene Bartow, and Leonard Hamilton are among the top 125 winningest coaches who fit the same bill for various reasons.

Cases can be made for coaches who do it just as well or better the second time around.

Sampson, Indiana’s coach from 2006-08 before he resigned under fire, has increased his winning percentage at every stop. Houston has a .775 winning percentage since Sampson was hired in 2015 after his NCAA show-cause penalty expired.

When Calipari returned from the NBA to coach Memphis in 2000, he won at a higher clip (.785) than he had at Massachusetts (.731) prior to his NBA adventure.

Pitino has Saint John’s at 22-4 in his second season at the New York school. Pearl has Auburn ranked No. 1 in the country.

Several coaches – Huggins, Sutton, Tarkanian, Montgomery, Hamilton, Kruger – did almost as well at their second schools as they did their previous ones.

Not everyone repeated their success elsewhere. After Massimino left Villanova, he was unsuccessful at both UNLV and Cleveland State.

Knight is somewhere in the middle. He did fine at Texas Tech – he had a .627 winning percentage and four NCAA Tournament appearances – but the Red Raiders only made one Sweet 16 in his time in Lubbock.

All of these coaches save Huggins – who resigned in 2023 from West Virginia after a DUI arrest – had their careers end before the transfer portal and NIL were part of the reality of coaching.

You can go outside the all-time top 125 to find a familiar name who didn’t do well in his return to college coaching with modern rules in place.

Tom Crean coached Indiana to a 166-135 record from 2008-17. Crean’s Indiana win-loss record is misleading. His first three years were spent rebuilding an Indiana program that had been waylaid by NCAA violations under Sampson. Crean was never below a .529 winning percentage from 2011-17.

Georgia Bulldogs head coach Tom Crean reacts as he leaves the court after being defeated by the Tennessee Volunteers at Stegeman Coliseum. / Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

When Crean was hired at Georgia in 2018, it didn’t work out. Crean was 47-75 in four years with the Bulldogs. By his final season in 2021-22, the vagaries of the portal were becoming a reality, and Georgia finished 6-26 with Crean losing many of his starters from the previous season.

None of these examples are perfect fits when it comes to the scenario of Indiana hiring Bennett or Wright out of retirement. College athletics has changed so much that the sport is in uncharted territory as far as historical norms are concerned.

Because there are so many different factors at work that never had relevance in the past – recruiting your own players to stay, working the transfer portal, and the soon-to-be added element of players getting paid directly by schools – it’s hard to make any historical comparisons.

Even the simple notion of “good coaches don’t forget how to coach” doesn’t really apply given how much the job has changed.

So even if Bennett or Wright were interested in a return to coaching – and that’s a very questionable prospect – Indiana has no tried and true historical examples that truly apply to calculate whether they can be successful. If hired, it would be on the trust that their X’s and O’s acumen could be melded to an adaptation to modern realities.

A rare circumstance

Gaps in coaching record

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