Against All Odds: Penny For Thoughts On Winning More as Coach Than Player
Patrick Ewing, who won more than 84% of his games with Georgetown the first half of the 1980s (121-23 record) assumed control of coaching position at his alma mater last year with an impressive player pedigree as four-time All-American. But the odds are overwhelmingly against Ewing compiling a higher winning percentage as a bench boss than he did as premium player. He would need to supplant UCLA's John Wooden (.808) atop the coaching list in this category. Coincidentally, Wooden assembled the same winning percentage as an A-A player with Purdue as Ewing did for the Hoyas.
The odds of succeeding on Memphis' sideline are even more remote for Penny Hardaway, who has zero experience as head coach at the collegiate or NBA level. Hardaway has more experience coping with robbery during which he was shot in the foot and avoiding charges of threatening and intimidating his girlfriend. But commercial comrade Lil' Penny could lounge in a Memphis Mafia sideline chair and assemble a better differential at Big Penny's alma mater than St. John's luminary Chris Mullin regarding winning percentage as a A-A player compared to coaching acumen. Mullin's winning percentage in his first three seasons as a coach is 37.8% lower than as a player. Other All-Americans who posted even worst winning percentages as a DI coach than as a player include Sidney Moncrief (69.3% lower), Bo Ellis (67.1%), Juan Dixon (62.4%), Corliss Williamson (52.2%), Tony Yates (50.9%), Mark Macon (48.2%), Clyde Drexler (46.6%), Butch Beard (45.7%), Isiah Thomas (44.8%), Monte Towe (44.6%), Henry Bibby (44.1%), Damon Stoudamire (41.5%) and Jason Gardner (40.3%).
Hardaway faces an uphill battle as a bench boss resembling his 31-point defeat with Tigers against Cincinnati in 1992 regional final. Indiana's Branch McCracken, who directed the Hoosiers to NCAA tourney titles in 1940 and 1953, is the only one of the first 58 All-Americans who became major-college mentors to compile a higher winning percentage as coach. Fewer than half of the following alphabetical list of All-American players including UALR newcomer Darrell Walker posted winning career records as a DI mentor:
*Active coaches.