What Is Winning The Horizon League Worth To A Coach?

Jerrod Calhoun is a coach on the rise. Calhoun took over Youngstown St. when it was floundering at the end of Jerry Slocum's tenure and he has built the team up into a formidable Horizon League squad. 

Last season the Penguins went 24-10 and took home the league's regular season title. While they ultimately fell to Northern Kentucky in the Horizon League tournament (and thus failed to make the school's first ever NCAA Tournament), they did get to host a first round NIT game against Oklahoma State. YSU finished the season 131st in KenPom, which is the school's highest ranking on the site since KenPom started posting results.

Calhoun will now need to rebuild a roster that ranked 14th in Division I experience last season, but he'll do it in a bit more comfortable of a coaching situation. Calhoun signed a new extension on Wednesday. His new contract runs through 2028 and includes a few new perks after YSU's recent success.

You can see the contract Calhoun signed before this past season and his new one on this site's Document page.

Compensation: Calhoun will now make a base salary of $300,000. That's a 40% ($86,000) raise over the $213,848 he was making prior to the season.

Marketing: Calhoun also received a significant increase in his marketing "bonus" from $5,000 to $50,000.

New Incentive: Calhoun now has a clause in his contract for if he wins Horizon League Coach of the Year. He of course won that award this season. That award would net him $10,000 moving forward.

What does YSU get in return? To keep one of the hottest names in college basketball coaching circles. Calhoun's contract now includes a buyout of 200% of his base salary through Feb. 29, 2024. That means he'll definitely be sitting the rest of this coaching cycle out. (After that it goes back to his previous clause which required a buyout only to lead another Horizon League institution.)

Not bad for a year's worth of work.

How could South Florida make sense for Ryan Odom? A contract review.

Update 3-28-2023: It is being reported by Hoops Weiss that Ryan Odom is going to be the next head coach at VCU. If that's the case then most of this post still applies. Mike Rhoades, who is apparently taking the head coaching job at Penn State, had a contract that was actually quite similar (if slightly more lucrative) to Gregory's when he signed it in 2019 (and it was extended in 2021). I've filed a FOIA for the contract post extension, but the pre-extension version is available here.

The head men's basketball coach opening at the University of South Florida has been one of the most interesting subjects of conversation this offseason. USF fired Brian Gregory after the Bulls went 14-18 (7-11 in the AAC) this past season. A number of different names have popped up since, like former Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey, and the most interesting to me: current Utah State head coach Ryan Odom.

Odom seems to have a good gig at Utah State. The architect of UMBC's upset over Virginia has led the Aggies for two seasons now. They were 18-16 (8-10 in the Mountain West) in his initial campaign and this season they broke through with a 26-9 record (13-4 in the MWC) and a No. 10 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Why then has Odom's name popped up at USF? One potential reason is that he's much more familiar with the southern part of the United States than out west. Odom was a graduate assistant at South Florida in 1996-97 and spent his entire career in and around the DC/Virginia/Carolinas area before taking the head gig at Utah State.

The other potential reason is what an American Athletic Conference program like USF can offer in compensation versus a Mountain West program like USU. To delve deeper into that issue I requested Odom's current contract with USU and Gregory's former contract with USF. USU responded quickly (you can see it here). USF is still working on my request but The Tampa Bay Times posted a copy of Gregory's contract when he signed a three-year extension in October of 2021. (Update: USF did provide me with my own copy of the same contract on March 27.) With the caveat that I'm neither an agent nor a lawyer, here are some of the differences I see between the two.

Base Compensation:

Odom makes a base salary of $500,000 at Utah State. Gregory's contract called for $400,000 annually. But base compensation never tells the story when it comes to coaching contracts.

Media Compensation:

The school also pays coaches for fundraising, promotional, and media appearances. This is often where the bigger chunk of annual compensation is found in head coach contracts. That's definitely the case for Gregory, who was set to make $1,281,250 for the period from April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022. While that number was to have come down to $730,000 for the year starting April 1, 2022, it was still more than double what Odom is making at $300,000 per year.

Gregory:

Odom:

Bonuses:

The structure of the bonuses for both Odom and Gregory are pretty similar. There are some minor differences. The most fun one is that Gregory only received $1,000 for a regular season victory over the University of Central Florida (UCF) whereas Odom receives $5,000 if he beats BYU or Utah (of course he's got to get the opportunity to play them first).

Gregory:

Odom:

In addition to compensation, a head coach also has the ability to negotiate for better resources for the program from the school, including how much his assistant coaches are paid. This also reveals a disparity between what is available at USU vs. USF.

Assistant Coach Pool:

Odom's contract sets a salary pool of $530,000 for assistant coaches along with an additional $150,000 for other operations and administrative positions. That's $680,000 total, though the clause does also note that the pool will be reviewed on an annual basis.

Gregory's contract called for a consistently growing pool that started at his hiring at more than USU's pool. The past year Gregory had an assistant coaching pool of $850,000 (or ~$170,000 more than Odom).

Termination by School:

Here it appears Odom had a better deal. Gregory's deal includes 20 weeks of his base salary as a buyout whereas USU would owe Odom 75% of his combined base salary and media compensation remaining on the agreement. It's worth noting though that this particular clause definitely represents some of the differences in leverage when Gregory and Odom signed their particular agreements.

Odom:

Gregory:

Termination by Coach:

Odom's buyout is not insignificant. If his contract is terminated in Year 3 or thereafter, which it looks like would be the case, Odom would have to pay 35% of the Cumulative Remaining Salary, which by my math is approximately $840,000. If Gregory were still employed by USF on April 1, 2023 and had wanted to terminate his agreement he would owe the school $750,000. It's worth noting that coaches often include clauses in their contracts that have their new employers pay their buyout.

Odom:

Gregory:

So there are a few potential reasons it seems why the USF job could be attractive to Odom. It would mean returning to an area of the country he's familiar recruiting and living in. It would probably mean an increase in compensation from $800,000 to at least in the neighborhood of around $1.1 million plus. And it would likely give him a larger pool for his assistant coaches. All of these are good incentives.

Of course, taking the South Florida job would also come with downsides. Where Odom took the Utah State job he took over a perennial NCAA Tournament program from Craig Smith. The Bulls haven't made the NCAA Tournament since the 2011-12 season under Stan Heath. The school was still playing in Big East back then. The American Athletic Conference is a competitive league that is losing Cincinnati, Houston, and UCF but also bringing in a number of strong programs from Conference USA. Building a competitive basketball program at USF won't be easy.

But it's a challenge someone is going to be willing to take on.

The Ghosts of St. Francis Brooklyn

I was devastated to hear the news this afternoon that St. Francis Brooklyn is shutting down its athletic programs at the end of the 2023 spring semester.

They have been playing collegiate basketball at St. Francis Brooklyn for more than 100 seasons. Famously, during all of those seasons the Terriers never made the NCAA Tournament. It appears now that they never will.

But to let that stat define the legacy of St. Francis Brooklyn would be a travesty. The school was home to a number of near misses and built the legacy of some amazing players. Players like Jalen Cannon, who was everywhere on the court during his four seasons on Remsen Street from 2011-12 to 2014-15. Cannon is the St. Francis Brooklyn career leader in games played, field goal percentage, defensive rebounds, offensive rebounds, and points. A 6-foot-6 forward from Allentown, PA, he turned the opportunity Glen Braica gave him to play Division I basketball into a globe-trotting professional career.

There were also players like Ben Mockford, who transferred from Iona and became the school's leading three-point percentage shooting leader.

And Brent Jones who was the heart and engine of some of the best teams in Terriers history despite being generously listed at 5-foot-10. He will also forever be the school's career assist leader.

Jones's final season was 2014-15. I took the 2 or 3 train down to Brooklyn Heights to cover the team a lot during that season for my old site NYC Buckets. I would walk into the Pope Physical Education Center and pick up my credential from will call ticket table in the cafeteria next door. The gym was tiny. The Pope Center had a listed capacity of 1,200 fans. KenPom had it as the seventh smallest in Division I. The fans though had a ton of heart. And so did Glenn Braica.

A New Yorker through and through, Braica came to St. Francis to try and bring glory back to a program whose biggest successes came in the 1940 and 50's before the NCAA Tournament became what it is today. Braica though wanted to be the one to break through. He built a winner thanks to some luck, some under-recruited gems like Cannon and Jones, and a tough defensive mindset. That 2014-15 season was the one where he was supposed to break through. The Terriers started 0-5 as they played the difficult non-conference schedule typical of Northeast Conference schools that need to raise funds. But when they beat Columbia right before New Years, I was there. I remember talking to Braica next to the locker room above the swimming pool as he talked about his team that was just about to reach .500. There was hope there. Hope that he had the pieces to finally bring home a title.

He was right. The Terriers went 15-3 in the NEC. They were the class of the league thanks to Jones, Cannon, Amdy Fall's length on the defensive end, Tyreek Jewell's enigmatic offense, and minutes from a promising freshman named Glenn Sanabria. SFNY went legitimately 11 players deep and Braica (sometimes frustratingly) messed with his rotations looking for the perfect group.

As the No. 1 seed, the Terriers played at home throughout the 2015 NEC Tournament. They defeated Brooklyn rival LIU in the quarterfinals and it was clear people were starting to notice. Braica and I weren't talking above the pool anymore. There was an entire room set up for the press conference. The same scene played itself out again after SFNY took out St. Francis PA in the semifinals.

The Terriers welcomed Robert Morris and Andy Toole into the Pope Center for the final Northeast Conference showdown. The Colonials had consistently played second fiddle to another Brooklyn team (LIU) during the early part of Toole's tenure and this was also their chance to make a statement.

And in one of the most heartbreaking and intense games ever played in front of probably more than the official 1,013 listed fans the Colonials defeated the Terriers 66-63. The Colonials led for the entire final agonizing 11 minutes, with the Terriers falling down by as many as 10 points before battling back to make it interesting at the end.

That was as close as St. Francis Brooklyn will ever come to making the NCAA Tournament. There will be no more men's collegiate basketball on Remsen Street (though this was already true as the school moved campuses in the middle of this season). The ghosts of games like that loss to RMU will live at 180 Remsen Street forever.

Braica hasn't had a team nearly that good in his eight seasons since at the helm of the Terriers. Injuries and uncertainty made this season even more difficult, but he was still hopeful at the end. “If we get some of our guys back,” Braica said in the press conference after his team lost in the quarterfinals to future national media darling Fairleigh Dickinson, “we can really be good next year.” Now he'll never get the chance.

NIT Bracketology: Final Thoughts On The Bubble and the Black Box

The NIT bracket was released (after it was corrected) last night around 10 pm ET. The biggest surprise (to me) was the inclusion of UCF.

The biggest takeaway for me from the teams that were selected (and the teams I assume were close) was that the NIT Selection Committee relied heavily on the NCAA's own NET ranking. As you can see below the only outlier in terms of the NET for which teams were selected around the bubble was Santa Clara. The Broncos were clearly the third best team in the West Coast Conference this season. I think they ultimately got in because of that and because of their strong resume metrics. Santa Clara was 64th in ESPN's Strength of Record. It's also possible based on the seeding that either Villanova, Seton Hall, or Santa Clara was the final team into the field after North Carolina declined a bid. (And I would guess it was Santa Clara.)

Team	Selected	Seed	NET	KenPom	Strength of Record	Q1/Q2 Wins
UAB	Yes	4	57	62	75	3
Florida	Yes	4	62	63	77	3
Colorado	Yes	3	69	59	94	7
Cincinnati	Yes	4	70	54	73	3
UCF	Yes	5	71	65	107	5
Washington St.	Yes	4	73	57	92	7
Villanova	Yes	6	75	60	78	5
Virginia Tech	Yes	5	76	81	86	6
Seton Hall	Yes	6	77	70	72	6
Dayton	No		78	78	106	2
Utah	No		79	72	100	5
Marshall	No		83	84	96	2
Santa Clara	Yes	6	84	82	64	4
Wake Forest	No		90	88	83	5
Nebraska	No		92	95	65	7
San Jose St.	No		95	93	81	6

Considering the NET was originally introduced as a sorting tool that is supposed to place teams into quadrants, it's odd that the selection committee leaned so hard into it as a selection tool. (Though it is worth noting that Wisconsin and Vanderbilt, which were 80th and 81st in NET received high seeds. On the other hand, both those teams had a plethora of strong wins and were considered potential NCAA Tournament bubble teams for a long time.)

In addition, it could've been that the committee leaned heavily on KenPom and not NET and they're just so closely aligned that it's hard to see the difference, but that would actually make Santa Clara and Virginia Tech outliers.

I've tended to use 100 in NET as my cutoff heuristic for delineating potential at-large teams for the NIT. That still seems like a reasonable line to draw, but it does seem like a team needs something rather extraordinary to make it even with a NET above 80 or so.

Some of these questions and concerns could've also been alleviated if the NIT Selection Show on ESPNU had given literally any insight into how the bracket was selected and seeded. I would've loved to learn what other teams were considered and which team entered the bracket after the Tar Heels declined. The NIT could also publish their s-curve like the NCAA Tournament does, but that has never happened either.

So we are left with this black box. We'll try to figure it out again next season.

The 2023 NIT Bracket Is Out

I'll have more to say about the bracket tomorrow, but it's out.

Ultimate I got 31/32 teams. It appears that once again KenPom and predictive ratings in generally played a big part in the seeding process. It's really weird that they created rematches between Oregon and UC Irvine and Washington State and Eastern Washington instead of flipping them just for a few extra miles of travel.

Also, if you watched the bracket reveal show on ESPNU you should check out this bracket. The NCAA apparently accidentally flipped all the No. 2 and No. 3 seeds. This bracket makes way more sense!

Still, it should be a fun tournament!

Final Projected NIT Bracket

For posterity, this is my final projection of the NIT bracket:

1. Rutgers

U. YALE

4. Villanova

U. Cincinnati

3. Florida

U. SOUTHERN MISS

2. Wisconsin

U. TOLEDO

1. Oklahoma St.

U. BRADLEY

4. Sam Houston St.

U. Colorado

3. Virginia Tech

U. YOUNGSTOWN ST.

2. North Texas

U. Washington St.

1. Vanderbilt

U. UC IRVINE

4. UAB

U. Liberty

3. New Mexico

U. Nebraska

2. Oregon

U. EASTERN WASHINGTON

1. Clemson

U. ALCORN ST.

4. Santa Clara

U. UTAH VALLEY

3. Seton Hall

U. HOFSTRA

2. Michigan

U. MOREHEAD ST.

This bracket doesn't include two teams, North Carolina and Texas Tech, that declined to participate in postseason play beyond the NCAA Tournament. (We can talk about that decision for the Tar Heels, who would've been a No. 1 seed, in more detail another time.)

The last team into this bracket is Nebraska. The Cornhuskers are playing at New Mexico, a game I've given them a number of times in the past. It is completely plausible that the NIT selection committee will want to go with a different West Coast team in that slot. If that's the case then I could see San Jose St., San Francisco, or Loyola Marymount there. (Or UC Irvine bumped up and another southern team in the bracket.) Also, while I think Colorado and Washington St. should be safely into the field, there are some brackets out there that disagree. The most logical at-large candidates beyond the three mentioned above include Dayton, Marshall, and Wake Forest. I have a full run down of the NIT bubble on the site.

The weirdest game in this bracket is definitely UC Irvine, an automatic bid out of the Big West conference, heading to Vanderbilt. I just ran out of slots for West Coast games. Also, I might be too high on the Commodores generally. They have great resume metrics but bad power rankings and were not in the NCAA committee's First Four Out. (They've replaced UNC because I had Vanderbilt as an NCAA team originally.)

The NIT Selection Show is at 10 pm ET on ESPNU. Good luck to everyone involved and their fans.

March 12, 3:30 PM Bracket Notes

My final NIT bracket projection prior to the NCAA Selection Show at 6 pm on CBS is up on the site now. While seeding that bracket I tried to keep as tightly to geographic concerns as possible but I still included the teams I think will make the bracket. This means that I have the somewhat awkward first round matchup of Washington St. traveling across the country to play Villanova. My ultimate decision was that one awkward matchup is better than a bunch of slightly awkward ones. Last year's committee definitely agreed with this approach, but it could change this time around.

I know that having Vanderbilt in my bracket over Rutgers is against consensus. We'll see if that's right or wrong come the NCAA Selection Show. I feel certain that I'm going to miss on at least one team and potentially multiple along the NCAA cut line. There are just too many resumes that aren't that great and there were no bid stealers to help out.

On the other hand, there are ultimately 11 automatic bids to the NIT this season. That's exactly as many as there were last season and right in line with the historical range. The last automatic bid went to Yale, which gave me another team from the northeast to play with in the bracket.

There are lots of ways this NIT bracket could be wrong. Some teams I still think could hear their name called are: Nebraska, San Jose St., Dayton, San Francisco, and UCF. Theoretically, any team in my bubble post is fair game.