Rank the five coaches that left us
Posted: March 28th, 2024, 11:34 am
How would you rate the five coaches across both sports that left us?
I would go
1. Gary 1.0
2. Sprinkle
3. Wells
4. Odom
5. Smith
Obviously, all five have their pros and cons in comparison to the others. And of course, some people are going to be more into football caring more that we finally started winning in football, and others are going to care more about basketball.
1. Gary 1.0.
If you completely disregard the debacle of his second stint and only look at the body of work of his first stint, he arguably did the best job as a whole. Of the five, he took the job when it was most viewed as an uphill battle, taking it when USU was known as a graveyard for football coaches careers. Even though Wells, Sprinkle, and Odom took over the jobs after we were winning and just trying to keep it going, while Smith took over when the program was down, there was still a somewhat strong history of USU basketball and the Spectrum and the job when Smith took over wasn't quite the uphill battle when Gary took over. And we were all pretty excited to even just have a winning season in Gary's 3rd year, being all the more excited in his fourth year when we got a conference championship and previously unimaginable appearance in the AP polls, along with a win over Utah. Even just getting the win over BYU in year 2 made us barely care about losing some of the other games we did that year.
He also did leave a foundation for Wells the following year, something that is now a thing of the past, and we can't give him any credit for not gutting our team cause he didn't have the ability to back then. In today's era, he would have cherry picked our best players to go to Wisconsin, out of necessity cause of Bielema cherry picking the best Wisconsin players to take to Arkansas.
But of the five, He is the only one that went as far as to issue a press release saying he is staying. He didn't know that Wisconsin would open up, but he could have just said he was withdrawing from the search at each school he would not be interested in if there were jobs he would be interested in but didn't anticipate opening up.
2. Sprinkle.
The big one that puts him head and shoulders above Odom and Smith is the tourney win. There also is of course the beaten to death narrative of having 0 returning points, and maybe that narrative is what costed us getting him for at least 1 or 2 more years. But that will be the new reality for new coaches moving forward, maybe not as few as 0 returning points, but at least a good chunk of the roster gone. Especially cause schools losing their coach are also still going to lose players to no more eligibility along with the portal. Gone are the days of coaches having the foundation Wells had when he took over or at least taking over with Sam Merrill to build around like the case with Craig Smith.
Even though we lost him after 1 year, I'm not going to look at that as any differently that getting, say, 3 years out of him with an NIT one and done the first year, an NCAA one and done the second year followed by a third year with an NCAA second round appearance. The leak of him going to Washington probably shouldn't have happened, but you can say he did stay more invested than Matt was his last two games where he was in negotiations with Texas Tech.
We also can't pretend to think that him cherry picking our best players is any different than what he did to Montana State, or what any other coach we have leave us(in both sports) will do to us, nor what any coach who leaves does in today's era, or what coaches we hire will do to their old school.
3. Wells.
For what we were happy about getting out of Gary, arguably the one thing we got out of Wells that we never got out of Gary was wins over BYU in Provo. We also got an appearance in the polls and wins over ranked opponents, like we got out of Gary.
We never got a conference championship out of Matt, but we did get a division championship and were in a tougher league that we were under Gary. We'll never know if Gary would have been able to lead us to conference championship and a league that Boise is a part of.
The funny thing is he was probably the one coach of the five we were the least sad to see go, simply cause he was the one we did NOT go around thinking it will be fine if we can hold on to for 20 years. After 2 years of us thinking he was great, he took enough of a nosedive to be on the hotseat, improved from 2016 to 2017 arguably just enough to save his job before using the 2018 season for the bigger offer. But the 2018 season was fun.
4. Odom.
I put Odom above Smith simply because of the school he left for not being a hated rival. Even though he had to start over from scratch to an extent after Smith, there was more of a strong culture and a perception of Aggie basketball and the spectrum being "back" when Odom took over.
5. Smith.
The program was a mess, but he did inherit Sam Merrill, the type of thing that will likely become a thing of the past. I do have to give Smith an incomplete grade cause of having the 2020 NCAAs taken away, but there was still the 2019 and 2021 trips to the dance where he was unable to get a win.
I would go
1. Gary 1.0
2. Sprinkle
3. Wells
4. Odom
5. Smith
Obviously, all five have their pros and cons in comparison to the others. And of course, some people are going to be more into football caring more that we finally started winning in football, and others are going to care more about basketball.
1. Gary 1.0.
If you completely disregard the debacle of his second stint and only look at the body of work of his first stint, he arguably did the best job as a whole. Of the five, he took the job when it was most viewed as an uphill battle, taking it when USU was known as a graveyard for football coaches careers. Even though Wells, Sprinkle, and Odom took over the jobs after we were winning and just trying to keep it going, while Smith took over when the program was down, there was still a somewhat strong history of USU basketball and the Spectrum and the job when Smith took over wasn't quite the uphill battle when Gary took over. And we were all pretty excited to even just have a winning season in Gary's 3rd year, being all the more excited in his fourth year when we got a conference championship and previously unimaginable appearance in the AP polls, along with a win over Utah. Even just getting the win over BYU in year 2 made us barely care about losing some of the other games we did that year.
He also did leave a foundation for Wells the following year, something that is now a thing of the past, and we can't give him any credit for not gutting our team cause he didn't have the ability to back then. In today's era, he would have cherry picked our best players to go to Wisconsin, out of necessity cause of Bielema cherry picking the best Wisconsin players to take to Arkansas.
But of the five, He is the only one that went as far as to issue a press release saying he is staying. He didn't know that Wisconsin would open up, but he could have just said he was withdrawing from the search at each school he would not be interested in if there were jobs he would be interested in but didn't anticipate opening up.
2. Sprinkle.
The big one that puts him head and shoulders above Odom and Smith is the tourney win. There also is of course the beaten to death narrative of having 0 returning points, and maybe that narrative is what costed us getting him for at least 1 or 2 more years. But that will be the new reality for new coaches moving forward, maybe not as few as 0 returning points, but at least a good chunk of the roster gone. Especially cause schools losing their coach are also still going to lose players to no more eligibility along with the portal. Gone are the days of coaches having the foundation Wells had when he took over or at least taking over with Sam Merrill to build around like the case with Craig Smith.
Even though we lost him after 1 year, I'm not going to look at that as any differently that getting, say, 3 years out of him with an NIT one and done the first year, an NCAA one and done the second year followed by a third year with an NCAA second round appearance. The leak of him going to Washington probably shouldn't have happened, but you can say he did stay more invested than Matt was his last two games where he was in negotiations with Texas Tech.
We also can't pretend to think that him cherry picking our best players is any different than what he did to Montana State, or what any other coach we have leave us(in both sports) will do to us, nor what any coach who leaves does in today's era, or what coaches we hire will do to their old school.
3. Wells.
For what we were happy about getting out of Gary, arguably the one thing we got out of Wells that we never got out of Gary was wins over BYU in Provo. We also got an appearance in the polls and wins over ranked opponents, like we got out of Gary.
We never got a conference championship out of Matt, but we did get a division championship and were in a tougher league that we were under Gary. We'll never know if Gary would have been able to lead us to conference championship and a league that Boise is a part of.
The funny thing is he was probably the one coach of the five we were the least sad to see go, simply cause he was the one we did NOT go around thinking it will be fine if we can hold on to for 20 years. After 2 years of us thinking he was great, he took enough of a nosedive to be on the hotseat, improved from 2016 to 2017 arguably just enough to save his job before using the 2018 season for the bigger offer. But the 2018 season was fun.
4. Odom.
I put Odom above Smith simply because of the school he left for not being a hated rival. Even though he had to start over from scratch to an extent after Smith, there was more of a strong culture and a perception of Aggie basketball and the spectrum being "back" when Odom took over.
5. Smith.
The program was a mess, but he did inherit Sam Merrill, the type of thing that will likely become a thing of the past. I do have to give Smith an incomplete grade cause of having the 2020 NCAAs taken away, but there was still the 2019 and 2021 trips to the dance where he was unable to get a win.
