This Isn't Horseshoes or Hand Grenades

Update your resume. And your wardrobe--big boys wear ties.

If success in college basketball were determined by things like trying hard intermittently, occasionally playing well enough to blow a game late, getting embarrassed on a regular basis, being well-intentioned, and dressing like you had always come from Sunday brunch in 1992, Tommy Amaker would be running the best college basketball program in the country. He or his team excelled at all of those things.

Unfortunately for Amaker, we don't measure success like that. We use this metric called "winning." It accounts for how many times you score more points than your opponent, the ultimate goal in basketball, and it is a macro-scale way of discerning if your team can execute the basics of the game. You know, like if it boxes out, or rotates on defense. If it moves the ball on offense with any real purpose. Sometimes, we also look at other factors that are common correlates of executing and, subsequently, winning: Does Player A demonstrate progress in his abilities over the time that he plays for a given coach? Does a team know what to do in special situations? Amaker failed to meet even basic levels of sufficiency in too many of these critical categories, and he's now gone from Michigan.

Despite these shortcomings, the Amaker legacy is a curious one. For all of the contempt alumni like myself may harbor for a coach who was clearly, from an on-court perspective, unqualified for his job, Amaker is owed a debt of gratitude by all who have invested anything in Michigan basketball. In the wake of the Fab Five scandal and the only regime that could ever make Amaker's look good--Brian Ellerbe's, during which he recruited too many duds, burned too many bridges, lost too many games, and enforced too few rules--Tommy was an uncompromising avatar of moral rectitude, one who comported himself in a fashion that allowed Michigan to successfully navigate the choppy waters of sanctions and scrutiny. Merely avoiding trouble, graduating players, and recruiting upstanding citizens was a partial success, and in that light, Amaker shone brightly.

But over the course of six seasons, there was little else that demonstrated Michigan was making steps toward regaining the basketball production and status that its reputation, resources, and heritage all suggest are attainable, if not to be expected. Mortgaging decency and responsibility will always be too high a cost for winning, but the scandal-free programs built at schools such as Michigan State or maintained at places such as Duke have shown that one need not pay so dearly. And let's not even talk about state schools such as Kentucky, Kansas, and North Carolina, as they are so far ahead of Michigan that any analogies would be driven by the most optimistic hypotheticals. Needless to say, Michigan has advanced beyond the point during which reputation management is the top priority, and it's clear that basketball competency must now be demanded alongside clean living, so to speak. Amaker could never provide that.

In ten seasons as a head coach leading basketball programs that have enjoyed enough success to become name brands to some degree, Tommy Amaker made the NCAA Tournament one time. During those same ten years, he squandered the best recruiting class he ever assembled (see: Eddie Griffen and "friends" at Seton Hall) and all six years at Michigan were middling at best, maddening at worst. Though some of his Wolverine teams were hamstrung by injuries and probation, entire classes came through Michigan unimpeded by either for significant amounts of time, and the best Amaker could offer were melancholy celebrations in Madison Square Garden. The characteristics of his teams, year in and year out, were too many mental errors, too many turnovers, too many scoring droughts, too many breakdowns on defense, and too many talented players who stagnated. It was not easy to part with such a nice man, but it also wasn't anything but warranted. It's a disservice to the players, the fans, and the alumni to ask them all to support a coach who has yet to grasp the fundamentals of coaching and basketball.

And so Michigan must now move on by finding a replacement who can enforce the same discipline and live the same values of the Amaker era while also excelling in the major sport that is most about coaching. And really, as one surveys the this year's NCAA Tournament, it's nearly impossible to escape the timeless adage that college basketball is a coach's game. Which teams have survived? Those led by men who have regularly proven that they can teach, prepare, and adapt. Coaches like Roy Williams and John Calipari and Ben Howland. Which teams were felled? Those led by the usual suspects whose teams don't ever seem truly organized, disciplined, or ready. Rick Barnes and Lute Olson, come on down!

Winning can't happen without talent, of course, and having the wrong roster can submarine even the best of coaches. Just ask Bobby Knight or Coach K. Plus, as was succinctly and powerfully demonstrated on Costas Now, recruiting star players and keeping them successful on and off the court is increasingly difficult. But you don't need god-body talent to win. If you did, an NCAA Tournament without those 12-5 upsets and devoid of true Cinderellas would be the norm and not the exception.

My hope is that Michigan finds a coach who will follow the rules, be a passionate evangelists for the program when recruiting and engaging all other constituencies, love the University of Michigan, and most importantly, know how to coach basketball. Teach drop steps, get guys hitting their free throws, install a reliable defense--that's what Michigan needs. And demanding all of that is not unrealistic or unfair; demanding all of that is the only way that Michigan can compete.

So thanks, again, to Tommy Amaker. Now let's do better.