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It's an Insider's article. Other coaches highlighted in the article include Larry Krystkowiak at Utah, Lon Kruger at Oklahoma, Dan Hurley at URI, Bob McKillop at Davidson, and Gregg Marshall at Wichita St.
http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bas...e-college-basketball-underappreciated-coaches
Kevin Ollie, Connecticut Huskies
If it's possible for a coach who won a national title to be underappreciated, Ollie is that coach.
The track record of coaches who are next in line in a given job after a bona fide legend has departed is not uniformly stellar. North Carolina did better than most programs in this regard, but whether your example of choice is Indiana under Bob Knight's successor, Georgetown in the immediate aftermath of John Thompson or the series of coaches who cycled through UCLA in the decade after John Wooden's departure, filling large coaching shoes is a daunting task.
This is the facet of Ollie's tenure in Storrs that's most impressive. Jim Calhoun was both a legend and indeed Ollie's own coach, and the temptation for a new hire to promise everything will stay exactly the same must have been overwhelming. Yet the new guy has been able to forge his own path, whether in terms of X's and O's (I know you young people see Connecticut shooting 3s, but there was a time when that didn't happen), tempo (Ollie plays a bit slower than Calhoun typically did, though perhaps it's the game itself that's decelerating) or even something as basic as interacting with the media. (I can never imagine Ollie saying to a reporter: "My best advice to you? Shut up." I just can't.)
Mind you, Ollie has kept a lot of Calhoun's good stuff. It's still next to impossible to make 2s against the Huskies, and UConn's still too cool to try to force turnovers. But give UConn's head coach full credit for blazing his own trail in the shadow of a predecessor who more or less built a national power from scratch. That can't be easy to do, but Ollie has made it look that way.
http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bas...e-college-basketball-underappreciated-coaches
Kevin Ollie, Connecticut Huskies
If it's possible for a coach who won a national title to be underappreciated, Ollie is that coach.
The track record of coaches who are next in line in a given job after a bona fide legend has departed is not uniformly stellar. North Carolina did better than most programs in this regard, but whether your example of choice is Indiana under Bob Knight's successor, Georgetown in the immediate aftermath of John Thompson or the series of coaches who cycled through UCLA in the decade after John Wooden's departure, filling large coaching shoes is a daunting task.
This is the facet of Ollie's tenure in Storrs that's most impressive. Jim Calhoun was both a legend and indeed Ollie's own coach, and the temptation for a new hire to promise everything will stay exactly the same must have been overwhelming. Yet the new guy has been able to forge his own path, whether in terms of X's and O's (I know you young people see Connecticut shooting 3s, but there was a time when that didn't happen), tempo (Ollie plays a bit slower than Calhoun typically did, though perhaps it's the game itself that's decelerating) or even something as basic as interacting with the media. (I can never imagine Ollie saying to a reporter: "My best advice to you? Shut up." I just can't.)
Mind you, Ollie has kept a lot of Calhoun's good stuff. It's still next to impossible to make 2s against the Huskies, and UConn's still too cool to try to force turnovers. But give UConn's head coach full credit for blazing his own trail in the shadow of a predecessor who more or less built a national power from scratch. That can't be easy to do, but Ollie has made it look that way.
