Meet Frank Haith
The "His Record At Miami" Issue
What To Expect: Offense
What To Expect: Defense and Close Losses

So I'd say we've done all the immediate analysis we can on the Frank Haith hire.  Now it's time to see how this all plays out. The next few months will provide quite a few opportunities for Haith to build some goodwill and optimism; I won't start actually worrying about his tenure until well into his first season, but he can help himself out by doing well with some upcoming deadlines.

Let's roll through some questions...

Who Ends Up on Haith's Coaching Staff?

This is still the first order of business.  We've heard plenty of rumors about Jeff Capel and random folks from the Missouri area, but nothing is official yet (though it does appear that Capel was nothing but a rumor and almost certainly won't come here).  Who does Haith bring along from his Miami staff?  How much does he try to cater to locals by either bringing in a local coach or taking a chance on a former Mizzou player like Anthony Peeler?  Are the Chris Carrawell rumors legitimate (and if so, as Gabe Dearmond mentioned yesterday, how does Carrawell deal with the "So you were too good to play for Missouri, but you think it's alright for my son?" issue)?  Clearly this is the first area in which we should soon have news.

When We'll Know Something: soon ... I'm thinking early next week at the latest.

Who Does Haith Sign for the 2011 Recruiting Class?

College basketball's spring period for signing letters of intent begins next Wednesday and extends to May 18.  Technically you can continue to bring in players after the period ends (Linas Kleiza never signed an LOI -- he just signed a scholarship agreement well after mid-May, and he was set), but it's pretty safe to say we'll know by mid-May just how many 2011 scholarships Haith plans to use and how many he will bank.  He will have up to three available to him.

I'm curious how Haith will choose to use this spring signing period.  Clearly Otto Porter is the No. 1 target, but even if he lands Porter, I'm not sure what he does with the other two scholarships.  As I've mentioned before, Haith did not target JUCOs much at Miami -- a quick perusal of Miami's offer lists on Rivals suggests that less than five of the 69 players receiving offers in the last three classes were JUCO players.  The last time Mizzou encountered a coaching change, Mike Anderson quickly attempted to shore up the roster with a couple of JUCOs, Stefhon Hannah and Darryl Butterfield.  Does Haith attempt to find a stopgap or two, or is he confident enough in the returning roster to swallow one or two scholarships for an even larger class of 2012?

Really, though, in terms of opportunities for good will, landing Otto Porter is Major Opportunity No. 1.  Haith is fighting a somewhat uphill battle -- Kansas and Georgetown have both been after him for quite a while, and Haith just walked in the door -- but Mizzou still has a pretty good chance to land the alleged homebody.  I think Porter will give Haith every chance in the world to impress him because I think Mizzou has always been his No. 1 choice ... but whether we want to admit it or not, playing for Bill Self (or John Thompson III) is still a draw, and Mizzou fans should at least prepare themselves for the thought that Porter could become a Jayhawk or a Hoya.

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Yesterday, we looked at both the ballsiness of the Frank Haith hire and what we can expect from a Haith offense.  Today, we first move to the defensive side of the ball ... but first, we address a topic that's been nagging me a bit.

Close Losses

In general, we think of tight wins and losses as relatively lucky.  If, in a given season, a team goes 3-9 in games decided by five points or less, then my natural inclination is to assume they were unlucky and will improve the next season.  But over time, it can certainly mean something.  The fact that Butler is 17-8 over the last two seasons in games decided by five points or less or in overtime?  That probably isn't a coincidence.  Meanwhile, to flash back to Mizzou football, Warren Powers' terrible overall record in games decided by a possession or less (8-16-3) probably wasn't a coincidence either.

So ... what to make of Frank Haith's relatively shoddy record in super-close games?

In seven seasons, Miami was 29-41 in games decided by five points or less or in overtime.  Overall, that isn't good, but it isn't necessarily telling -- that's basically like going 4-6 in such games each year.  But what's interesting is, Miami got much worse in this regard in recent seasons.  In Haith's first four seasons, Miami was 19-22 in such games, oscillating between 4-7 and 6-4 each year.  That suggests that their general level of luck and execution were perfectly average.

But in 2008-09, they went 1-6 in such games.  After rebounding to 4-5 last year, they were 5-8 again this year.  That's a 10-19 record in a time period where, overall, Miami was becoming more consistently "talented" according to recruiting rankings.

Three observations:

1. Is it possible that opposing coaches figured out Miami's tendencies over time?  The ACC has, to say the least, some pretty renowned game coaches (Coach K, Roy Williams, Gary Williams, etc.), and it's certainly a possibility that other coaches figured out Haith more than Haith figured out other coaches.  Then again...

2. The poor record really is powered by a single poor season.  Take out the 2008-09 outlier, and you're looking at six seasons, four of which were perfectly average (between 4-7 and 6-4) and two of which were close (4-7 and 5-8).  That's still not great, but it's not "29-41" bad.

3. Miami's home-court advantage was just awful.  Some numbers for you:

Scoring Margin in Conference Road Games, Last Five Years
Mike Anderson at Missouri: -4.2 points/game
Frank Haith at Miami: -7.5 points/game

Scoring Margin in Conference Home Games, Last Five Years
Mike Anderson at Missouri: +8.7 points/game
Frank Haith at Miami: +0.9 points/game

Home-Road Difference
Mike Anderson at Missouri: 12.9 points/game
Frank Haith at Miami: 8.4 points/game

At Rock M, we did a lot of work exploring Mike Anderson's road issues.  We know that there were quite a few factors at play there.  But just for a somewhat extreme example, let's pretend for a moment that the 4.5-point difference between Anderson's and Haith's home-road margins was due simply to home-court advantage and a rowdy, intense environment.  How would Haith's record at Miami look if they were five points better at home?

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The announcement has been made, the objections have been put on record, and it's official: Frank Haith is Missouri's new basketball coach.  We can praise or pan this pick all we want, but it's done.  And at this point, after 24 hours of reading and researching, it's really not hard to see Mike Alden's thought process on this one; one can disagree with the thought process, but it's all out there in the open.  And really, it all ties back to what Alden said he was looking for all along:

• A Focus on Academic Success.  As mentioned yesterday, in Haith's tenure, all but one Miami player who was around long enough to graduate, did just that.  He had players on the ACC's all-academic team (last I checked, there are some very good schools in the ACC), and he seems to pass all of the relevant tests here.
  
• Ability to recruit on a national level.  Haith is basically Cuonzo Martin plus time.  It's hard for me to grasp how someone who wanted Martin would object to Haith, honestly.  Haith had more experience as an assistant and more of a record of recruiting success.  Martin helped ink Purdue's successful 2007 recruiting class; Haith helped Wake Forest land Rodney Rodgers in the 1990s, helped Texas A&M land a rare McDonald's All-American a few years later, and kept landing big recruits all the way to Texas' LaMarcus Aldridge and Daniel Gibson.  His recruiting at Miami was at least solid (I go back and forth on just how solid, but again, Martin landed nobody spectacular in Springfield either).  His resume has everything Martin's has, only he took a really tough major-conference job as his first head coaching gig instead of Missouri State.  But we'll come back to that.
  
• A mentor of good behavior on and off the court.  As far as I can tell (and if somebody has links saying otherwise, pass them along), Haith has done everything above-board in his career, and his kids had minimal legal issues in Miami (again, pass along any evidence to the contrary).  In every testimonial I've read, people talk about the class with which Haith has carried himself in his career.  He should be a wonderful representative of this university.
  
• A dedicated work ethic.  It should be pretty obvious that if Haith has proved nothing else in his long and diverse career, it is dedication to his craft.  He's coached at Elon and UNC-Wilmington, Texas and Texas A&M, Wake Forest and Miami.  He has worked his way up the ladder, and he has won a lot of advocates along the way.
  

From the qualifications laid out at the beginning of the search, Haith has met most of them.  It was all there in yesterday's official MUtigers.com release:

"We're very pleased to have such a well-rounded and respected man lead our basketball program into the future," said MU Director of Athletics Mike Alden. "Frank has demonstrated throughout his career that he fits the criteria we were looking for. He's graduated 21-of-22 of his players while at Miami. He is recognized as one of the top recruiters in the nation and his Midwest ties fit very well with what we're needing right now. His entire reputation is based on building young men of character, and his work ethic is above reproach. Frank has the character and integrity we are looking for, and he's someone who is very excited to be a Missouri Tiger. And of course, we feel that all of these qualities combined, when given the opportunity at a program with a proud tradition and resources such as ours at Mizzou, that he's going to win at a very high level," he said.

The only possible objection to Haith's hiring is simple: he hasn't won enough.  Which, last I checked, was somewhat relevant to the job of coaching.

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I'm still working on the big "What to Expect" post, but in the meantime, I wanted to briefly address Frank Haith's tenure at Miami.

First, I want to highlight a comment made by The 7th Floor purveyor rayrayrayrayrayrayrayray in this morning's gigantic comments thread:

just a few things i’d like to note:

- frank likes to run his offense from the inside out, ideally. the team shoots a lot of threes (especially when we had jack mcclinton) but if you look at ken pom’s individual offensive ratings in the ACC you’ll notice that the #2 rated player in the whole conference is our center, and he was fed the ball a lot (when he was on the court, his usage rate is low cuz of foul problems). i think the team has been guard oriented because of necessity, but frank always made it a point to throw the ball inside, especially early and especially early in road games.

- defensively the team’s numbers were poor this past year but it was a pretty unlucky team. one of our big guys broke his hand a few games into conference play and was out for a while, and our fourth big guy transferred out (homesickness apparently, he was from michigan) so frank really had a frontline that was held together by scotch tape. we played a 6’ 5" power forward at times.

- frank has won a few high profile recruits, but what’s encouraging to me is that his best players have been guys that nobody wanted. jack mcclinton was a transfer from siena who became a two time first team all acc player. the aforementioned reggie johnson was a center from north carolina who had an offer from VCU and is now one of the best players in the conference. of course some recruits will wash out (it is recruiting after all), but i don’t think it’s true that he doesn’t "develop" players.

- the guy won’t be intimidated going into places like KU or K ST. he has extensive coaching experience now going into cameron indoor (including being one overtime from away from being one of like 3 coaches in the past 6 years to win there or something) and the dean dome (he won there twice i believe, though my memory might be off). likewise in the past two years, we played both UNC and duke to within a point and three points respectively in the acc tournament on a (semi) neutral floor. so i’m not sure that he can’t game coach either.

- like i noted in my post on our blog, i doubt that anyone in miami is sad about this, but miami has outright awful fans so don’t listen to them.

I don't have anything to add to that ... just wanted it highlighted a little bit.

Now, to the record.  In seven years at Miami, Frank Haith did not prove that he can win conference titles, play into the second weekend of the tournament, etc.  But when looking at the Miami job itself, some context is needed.

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Much more detail to come, but since we naturally didn't hire one of the coaches I profiles -- tell me again why I write these things? -- I figure I should start with the basics.

Frank Haith, Former Miami Head Coach

Career Record: 129-101 (all at Miami)

Accomplishments: Named Naismith Coach of the Year finalist in his first year at Miami after leading a team picked last in the ACC to a 7-9 conference record and an NIT bid.  After an extreme setback in Year Three, he led Miami to the second round of the NCAA tournament in Year Four.  Has averaged 20.3 wins per season in the last four years.

Oh, and he's apparently very good from an academics standpoint.  From his U. of Miami bio:

In addition to all of the success Haith's teams have seen on the court at Miami, what could be considered his greatest asset to the program is his emphasis for achievement in the classroom. In his first six years, 20 of 21 players who exhausted eligibility have earned a degree from UM. [Adrian] Thomas -- who enters his sixth season as a Hurricane -- makes 21 Hurricanes under Haith to earn his degree, graduating in 2009. Before wrapping up his collegiate career, Jack McClinton was a two-time ACC All-Academic Team selection, recipient of the 2008-09 Skip Prosser Award given to the ACC's top men's basketball scholar-athlete, recipient of the Weaver-James-Corrigan Honorary Award from the ACC for outstanding performance in both athletics and academics and was tapped into Iron Arrow -- the highest honor attainable at the University of Miami.

Mike Alden has very much proven that this sort of thing matters to him in his hiring process.

Before He Was a Head Coach: Say this much for him: he has a diverse background, and he's very experienced.  He was an assistant at Elon (four seasons), Wake Forest (one), UNC-Wilmington (two), Texas A&M (three), Penn State (one), Texas A&M (one more), Wake Forest (four more), and Texas (four) before taking the job at Miami.  According to the Miami bio:

In his 15 seasons as an assistant at the collegiate level, he was a part of programs that won one NIT Championship, advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16 three times, reached one Elite Eight and one Final Four.

Haith has recruited six McDonald's All-Americans including Rodney Rodgers (1990) to Wake Forest, Jerald Brown (1995) to Texas A&M and Brad Buckman (2002), LaMarcus Aldridge (2004), Daniel Gibson (2004) and Michael Williams (2004) to Texas.

We've said before that recruiting as an assistant is different than recruiting as a head coach, but that's still a more successful record of recruitment than even Cuonzo Martin had as an assistant.

Ties to the Midwest: Four seasons at Texas A&M, four more at Texas.

Ties to Missouri: None that I can tell.

Does He See Mizzou As a Destination Job?  Apparently!

Can He Recruit?  Absolutely.  Aside from what he accomplished as an assistant, he has brought a solid amount of talent to Coral Gables.  In eight recruiting seasons, he has brought in 24 players according to the Rivals database: one unrated recruit, one 2-star signee, 13 3-stars, eight 4-stars, and one 5-star.  That's certainly not bad.

This Year's Recruits (i.e. Players Who Might or Might Not Come With Him): SG Bishop Daniels (***, 6'2, 175, Raleigh, NC -- signed with Miami).  There are two players on Miami's offers list who have not committed anywhere yet: SG Kevin Ware (****, 6'4, 167, Conyers, GA -- finalist appear to be Florida, Georgetown, Georgia, Miami and Tennessee) and PF Yvan Ngirabakunzi (***, 6'10, 195, Piney Woods, MS -- Miami appears to be his only offer on record).

He already has two commits for the Class of 2012: SG Chris Bolden (****, 6'3, 195, Norcross, GA) and C Ismaila Dauda (****, 6'9, 215, Boca Raton, FL).

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Well ... if his name is floating out there and we need Sunday content, I guess I should profile this guy just to cover my bases, eh?  I really don't think this is tremendously likely, but ... he was a candidate last time around, and he has won a lot of games, so ... let's at least talk about him, eh?

Previous Relevant Profiles:
-- Scott Sutton
-- Gregg Marshall
-- Chris Mack
-- Randy Bennett
-- Shaka Smart
-- Chris Mooney
-- Ben Jacobson

Steve Alford, New Mexico Head Coach

Career Record: 406-222 (78-29 at Manchester, 78-48 at SMS, 152-106 at Iowa, 98-39 at New Mexico).

Accomplishments: In four years, he got Manchester College to the Division III finals.  In four years, he got SMS to the Sweet 16.  In three years, he got New Mexico a 3-seed in the NCAA Tournament and won his second straight Mountain West title.  Really, the only stop in his coaching career that didn't result in strong success was Iowa ... but an Alford supporter would probably point out that he had a winning record for seven straight years in Iowa City ... and the Hawkeyes have had four straight losing seasons since his departure.

Before He Was a Head Coach: After his high school and college careers made him a legend in the state of Indiana (he was Indiana's "Mr. Basketball" in 1983 and was a two-time All-American at Indiana, helping to lead the Hoosiers to the national title), he bounced around the NBA for four seasons before jumping right into the coaching profession with a head coaching job.  He quickly built Manchester College (Indiana) into a winner, jumped to Springfield, and you know the rest.

Ties to the Midwest: He's a god in Indiana, and he's coached in Indiana, Iowa and Missouri.

Ties to Missouri: That school down in Springfield certainly liked the job he did.

Does He See Mizzou As a Destination Job?  Probably.  He's still only 46 years old, but once you've been deemed a failure at a major conference job, you probably won't play too many games or look around too much if you get promoted back to the "big leagues," so to speak.

Can He Recruit?  Actually, yeah.  Let's put it this way: in his four recruiting years at New Mexico, Alford has brought in players with star ratings very similar to those Mike Anderson brought to Missouri.  Rivals has 15 New Mexico commits listed for that time -- two 2-stars, 11 3-stars and two 4-stars.  He aims high, and if the major conference draw allows him to land a couple more highly-ranked guys here, then he would quickly put together a strong base of talent.

This Year's Recruits (i.e. Players Who Might or Might Not Come With Him): SG Dominique Dunning (***, 6'3, 180, Corona, CA) and C Cheir Ajou (**, 7'1, 210, Culver, IN) are signed.  SF Dominique McKoy (***, 6'7, 205, Atlanta, GA, offers from Oregon State, New Mexico and a ton of mid-majors like UAB) is still floating out there.

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By now, you probably know how I tend to think about most things.  When it comes to Mizzou's basketball coaching search, I want Mike Alden to be looking at the long-term hire and not necessarily trying to focus on a particular style or a coach who can probably do well in the short-term, i.e. next year with a lot of seniors.  Obviously we want a coach who can win with the solid players he'll have on next year's squad, but if Alden decides that the best fit is someone like a Ben Jacobson, a strong coach who represents a complete, 180-degree stylistic shift from the Mike Anderson, and whose style might clash a bit with the strengths of the current roster, so be it.  Long-term gain > short-term pain.

(Of course, it doesn't really matter that I want him to do this -- I know he will because he's good at his job.)

Last night we saw why this is a difficult balance, why it is easier in theory than in practiice.  From Kim English's Twitter page:

The part that Hurt the most about the Mike Anderson to Ark was not him leaving. But I loved all of our asst coaches, GA's and Strength coach

I'm gonna miss those guys and the coaches wives like crazy. some of my fav practice moments were laughing with asst coaches and GA's

I'm gonna miss coach Z rebounding and passing balls back out to me after practice. Im gonna miss joking w/ coach Watkins sons.

I'm gonna miss all the parts that people don't see. The REAL reason I fell in love with staff at Missouri.

I wish those guys the best of luck down in Arkansas. You don't find this too much in Coll basketball. But they truly were stand up guys.

I haven't slept well the last couple of weeks. Thinking about that, I just wanted to get it off my chest.

It was a rather stark reminder that in thinking long-term, we could end up doing slightly wrong to people who have come to represent this university incredibly well in recent years.  Guys like Kimmie, Marcus Denmon, Laurence Bowers and Steve Moore.  (It's not like Ricardo Ratliffe and Matt Pressey have done anything wrong either -- they just haven't been here as long.)

In a perfect world, where players aren't actual people and we can make decisions based entirely on a five- or ten-year plan (i.e. in video games), feelings don't really matter.  But in real life, that is not necessarily the case. So my question for the day, as we continue to try to figure out Mike Alden's No. 2 choice for the job, is simple: how much do we (and by "we," I mean "Mike Alden" of course) owe it to next year's senior class to find a coach who helps them finish their final season with the most positive possible result?  Should style and next year's seniors play a role in Alden's coaching search?

(And yes, I realize that the current roster is probably adaptable to any number of styles -- it's not like they would all play horribly in Ben Jacobson's system or something. But we're talking about degrees here; clearly they are probably best suited to a certain up-tempo style to which they are more accustomed.  More a philosophical question than anything else...)

As Missouri fans, we are a guarded lot; I don't think I have to remind anybody that the rug could still be pulled out from under us on this one.  But this process has moved so much further than I expected when I wrote my original Matt Painter profile (in which I said "Why would he actually come here? ... I see him using Mizzou for leverage more than I see him actually considering the job, but I'd be happy if I were wrong.") last Thursday.  It would be thoroughly disappointing if this were to fall through now, but credit still goes to Alden for moving on this like an assassin.  Purdue still has time to save the day, but by the time they realized this was a real threat, it appears Alden had made some serious inroads.  He's taken something 90% of Rock M readers initially thought was a lost cause and made it Mizzou's battle to lose.  Now he needs to close the deal.  Otherwise, this would simply be Example No. 317 of Mizzou exceeding expectations in a very disappointing manner.  (On the bright side, it would give Mizzou fans solid ammo in the "Who's the miserablest?" competition we waged last night with visiting Purdue fans...)

Taking a result no Mizzou fan expected, forcing them to believe it will happen, then suddenly yanking it away at the last second?  I think we may have just witnessed the coaching search version of Tyus Edney.  I can't imagine this is nearly as scarring for fans long-term (unless Mizzou falls into a long funk), but the concept is the same.  The Crazy Old Testament Sports God didn't stop until 90% of Mizzou fans believed it would actually happen ... then stopped it from happening.  Mizzou fans really are a guarded lot, but we continue to get sucked into believing ... and then we feel rather stupid all over again.

So.  The search now begins.  Unless Mike Alden had been preparing to be turned down and was secretly pursuing another coach already, chances are we have until after the Final Four to find out who Mizzou's new favorite is.  Let's see what we know -- and what we think we know -- thus far.

Matt Painter

Just to make it official, I guess.

And just to throw it out there ... for those who think Painter was bluffing this whole time, remember what was reported about Painter's due diligence.  Why would he have called so many high school and AAU coaches and done so much research if he was just trying to get a raise out of Purdue the whole time?  I don't think there's any doubt Painter took this very seriously ... but as we still thought it could yesterday morning, loyalty, in the end, won out.

Ben Jacobson

Obviously we haven't heard anything about a new list of candidates -- other than the one presented last night by Sports By Brooks (Shaka, Doug Wojcik, and Chris Mooney), but ... I'll wait to hear from somebody who hasn't been wrong about almost everything related to the Mizzou coaching search.  So we basically start now where we left off on Monday's Where Do We Stand? post.  Taking the odds I laid out then, and removing the "50% Painter" thing, here's where we start, I guess:

• Ben Jacobson (50%)
• Shaka Smart (20%)
• Gregg Marshall (10%)
• Other (20%)

Last week, reporters close to Mizzou (Gabe Dearmond, I believe) mentioned that the athletic department had put out a feeler on Jacobson.  For all we know, Mizzou's already moved on, but that's the only concrete piece of information we have right now, and it puts Jacobson in first place heading into the weekend.

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