Youth: The key to success?
By Chris Furnari
While watching the men's NCAA national championship basketball game on Monday night, I couldn't help but think of Dick Davey and Santa Clara's coaching vacancy.
Sure, the story has been told and re-told, rumors have surfaced and subsided and numerous names of possible candidates have been proposed by everybody except athletic department officials.
I could list all of the names, but I would have no room left in this column to write anything insightful, so instead I will do some math. Let's begin with Head Coach Dick Davey, who announced his "retirement" midway through one of his most successful seasons as head coach of the Broncos.
Davey is 64 years old. Only five of the 64 NCAA tournament teams had coaches older than Davey. Only two of those coaches came from "mid-major" programs. For our purposes, let's forget about Arizona's Lute Olson and Bobby Knight, at ages 72 and 66 respectively, who are perhaps two of the most well renowned coaches in the history of college basketball.
Of the remaining three, only Miami of Ohio's Charlie Coles, 65, comes close to Davey in total number of years as head coach, owning the position since 1996. I know you are thinking that I am going to be like every other columnist and say Davey's exit was suspicious, and that Santa Clara made a poor decision in asking him to leave.
Well I'm not.
Ohio State's Thad Matta is only 39, and Florida's Billy Donovan will turn 42 at the end of May. With that information in mind, the average age of a coach in this year's tournament was 48 years and 7 months, roughly 16 years younger than Davey.
The average age of the No. 15 seeds in this year's tournament was 50 years of age. The average age of No. 12 seeds was 48 years 6 months. The No. 10 seeds, excluding Bobby Knight, was 45.
Seeds 10, 12 and 15 are the seeds Santa Clara received in its three tournament appearances under Davey. In 1993, a 50-year-old Davey, whose team starred an unkown freshman named Steve Nash, upset No. 2 Arizona coached by an older Lute Olson.
If the Broncos want to be one of the 64 teams that make the big dance, the Athletic Department must hire a young coach. Chris Lowery, the head coach at Southern Illinois, is only 34 and took the Salukis to the sweet 16. If the Athletic Department needs another example, they should look no further than the WCC's San Diego, who recently hired former Gonzaga assistant Bill Grier, 43.
On the path to success it seems all signs are pointing to youth, and Santa Clara should take note.