Note: This post was originally published at College Basketball Reference, S-R's brand-new College Hoops site. All of the data used here can be found at S-R/CBB, so when you're done reading, go over and check it out!

On Tuesday, I kicked off our CBB/BBR cross-posting series by looking at coaches who "changed the culture" of a program, guys whose winning percentages at a school far exceeded its mark before they arrived. The usual suspects were at the top of the list (John Wooden, Jim Calhoun, etc.), and so was John Calipari for his performance at UMass during the 90s. Trouble is, did Coach Cal really change the Minutemen forever? Or, as BBR reader "Downpuppy" put it:

"UMass is on the list twice, but both times the culture snapped back to mediocrity pretty quick."

OK, so maybe a "culture change" has to extend beyond the coach's actual tenure with the school, and also into the tenures of later coaches, who build on their successor's changes to take the school to new heights. After all, it's not really a true culture change if the program only loses the stench of mediocrity for 5 years while a coach uses the school as a stepping stone to his next gig.

To filter out such flash-in-the-pan performances from true culture-changers, I looked at the school's W-L record in all seasons before a coach arrived and compared it to the school's entire record after the year he arrived (including his tenure as HC and beyond). Again, teams had to have played at least 120 games before and after the coach arrived, and the coach had to coach at least 120 games at the school in question as well. This will capture coaches whose tenure at the helm represents the turning point for the entire history of the program, which I suppose is a better indicator of "changing the culture" than merely focusing on his actual time at the school (even though we're in essence giving Adolph Rupp credit for the coaching performances of Joe B. Hall and Rick Pitino as well).

Here's the list:

Before Rick Pitino and Denny Crum, there was Bernard "Peck" Hickman. When Hickman arrived at Louisville in 1944, he inherited an historically-mediocre program that lay in ruin following the disastrous 6-year run of Lawrence Apitz and John Heldman. He proceeded to change the culture immediately, taking what had been a 10-10 squad under Walter Casey & Harold Church the previous year and posting a stunning 16-3 record in 1945, to be followed by a 22-6 mark in '46 and 29-6 in '48. With Hickman guiding them over the next 23 years, the Cardinals never had a losing record, going 443-183 for a .708 winning % that was a far cry from the .432 WPct they had prior to Hickman's arrival. After Hickman, John Dromo was a part of 3 20-win seasons in 4 years, and his successor Denny Crum was one of the most successful coaches in NCAA history, leading UL to 2 National Championships and 675 wins in 30 years on the bench. Following Crum, Rick Pitino carries the torch today and has led the school to 8 consecutive 20-win seasons (including 2010). All of this can be traced directly back to Peck Hickman, which makes him #1 on our list.

And if you want high winning percentages after a coach's arrival, look no further than Mark Few, current head coach at Gonzaga University. The Zags were a solid WCC team under coach Dan Fitzgerald during the 1980s, but when he retired in 1997 they were still best known as the tiny Washington school that produced future Hall of Fame PG John Stockton. During Fitzgerald's tenure they made their first NCAA tournament (in 1995), though Dan Monson got the ball really rolling for the Bulldogs in 1999, when his upstart team marched to the Elite 8 and came within a few decisive plays down the stretch of upsetting eventual #1 UConn and going to the Final Four. Monson leveraged that success into a gig at Minnesota, but not many pundits thought Gonzaga would be able to sustain the momentum from their magical run, especially with a 38-year-old 1st-time head coach on the sidelines. However, instead of fading back into obscurity, Few has taken the Zags to new heights -- they're a staggering 290-72 under his watch since he took over in 2000, and they haven't missed the NCAA Tournament in any of his seasons as coach, a once-unthinkable accomplishment for a team that had made the tourney just 1 time in 46 years prior to their '99 run. Fitzgerald and Monson certainly planted some seeds for Gonzaga, but it has been Few who oversaw the school's growth from obscure mid-major into one of the most unlikely national powers in college basketball.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at 5:41 pm and is filed under NCAA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.