I love both of these moves:

McCaffery coming home makes too much sense for the Quakers. You’re talking about a veteran coach and Penn alumnus tasked with getting that team back into Ivy League contention after two-straight losing seasons. Shades of Fran Dunphy going back to his alma mater of La Salle to stabilize things in the post-COVID era, only McCaffery is about 10 years younger and can finish his coaching career at Penn instead of passing off the torch and retiring after a couple of ship-righting seasons.

Walker Carnathan at The Daily Pennsylvanian:

McCaffery, a 1982 Wharton graduate who served as head coach at Iowa for 15 seasons with previous stops at Lehigh, North Carolina Greensboro, and Siena, will replace Steve Donahue at the helm of the program and serve as the 21st head coach in team history. His 12 career NCAA tournament appearances are the most of any Ivy League basketball coach — at the time of their hiring — in history.

Earlier this month, McCaffery was dismissed as the Hawkeyes’ head coach after the team’s second-straight season without a tournament berth. He leaves Iowa City as the winningest coach in the program’s history with 297 total victories.

RE: Martelli Jr., it feels slightly gross that a St. Joe’s guy would take the reins of another A-10 school, but VCU has been class for almost 20 years now, through the Anthony Grant and Shaka Smart eras, then Will Wade, Mike Rhoades, and Ryan Odom. You go to VCU, you end up coaching a Power 5 team.

It is, of course, a big jump for the younger Martelli, going from the America East to the A-10 after just two seasons. The previous three VCU coaches came from Utah State, Chattanooga, and Rice. But Martelli got Bryant into the tournament this year and they hung with Michigan State for a bit before the Spartans ran away with it. This AD down there, Ed McLaughlin, has been at VCU for more than a decade and has nailed every coaching hire so far, so the guy definitely has a good eye. Plus, Tom Izzo had a lot of nice things to say about Martelli Jr. last week, so that helps push a rising star over the top.


St. Joe’s, meantime, continues with Billy Lange. Looking through the responses to some of the Martelli/VCU stories, there’s some grumbling that SJU is staying the course while Phil Jr. goes elsewhere. Lange is 81-104 in six SJU seasons and 38-64 in conference play. He is, however, coming off of two-consecutive 20-win seasons… that resulted in first-round NIT exits. The Hawks have not made the NCAA Tournament since the elder Martelli went out to Spokane and asked the hipster reporter about marijuana almost 10 years ago.

Without having watched every single minute of every single SJU game, it feels like this team has been a disappointment considering how good their guards are. They had no business losing those games to Central Connecticut, Princeton, and Charleston. You’ve got Xzayvier Brown and Erik Reynolds and the ceiling appears to be 21 or 22 wins, the A-10 tournament semifinal, and immediately flaming out of the postseason. Can the Hawks do better? Or are we just setting unrealistic expectations because Villanova is down and the entire Big 5 has been down for three seasons now? Does winning the Big 5 two years in a row mean anything if the Big 5 is totally average?

We look at SJU being the best of that bunch, but what if the bunch just isn’t that great? What if this is the NFC East that the 7-9 Commanders won? What’s the difference between being the best and being the least-worst?

That’s been the difficult part, trying to frame the St. Joe’s conversation appropriately. It’s like we’re yearning for one of these teams to step up and fill the Big 5 void that Jay Wright’s departure created, but maybe St. Joe’s is what it is. Maybe this is a 22-win team, max, that isn’t ever going to threaten squads like VCU, Dayton, and Loyola Chicago in the A-10. And even then, would going out and hiring Martelli Jr. be the right move, or a nostalgia play? Is coming home even the right environment for him, or are you putting unrealistic expectations on his shoulders, thinking that you’re going to get a Jameer Nelson and Delonte West redux season? Maybe coaching elsewhere in the A-10 is the better move for Phil’s son.

footnote: I know we angered some SJU fans two weeks ago by saying that the Hawk would inevitably die, but all we were saying is that we didn’t think they were gonna win the A-10 tournament, which they did not. I was cheering for the Hawks to win, but Temple’s Kyle Pagan was not