NSIC could be in focus with SDSU head coaching search
The South Dakota State men's basketball team is without a head coach. Scott Nagy, who had led the Jackrabbits for 21 years, from their days in the North Central Conference to a Summit League tournament title not even month ago, has taken the head coaching job at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. The news broke on Sunday and became official with a release from SDSU on Monday.
Now, with SDSU looking for candidates to replace for Nagy, the spotlight could fall on the NSIC and its group of coaches.
It's worth mentioning that a jump from Division II to Division I is relatively rare, in terms of head coaching hires. Schools more often look at Division I assistants or other Division I head coaches. However, there's something of a recent precedent forming. Central Missouri won the Division II national championship in 2014, and Mules head coach Kim Anderson became the head coach at Missouri shortly after. Florida Southern won the championship the next year, and Moccasins head coach Linc Darner took the job at Wisconsin-Green Bay less than a month later.
The most recent Division II national champion is Augustana, and their head coach is Tom Billeter. Billeter has effectively built a Division I program with the Vikings, in terms of talent and facilities, and he is interested in the SDSU position, according to our Matt Zimmer.
Billeter was also a candidate for the most recent head coaching search at USD, which ended in the hiring of Craig Smith. He has Division I experience as an assistant at Rice, Texas A&M and St. John's, but the most impressive part of his resume is building Augustana's program up from six wins in 2003-04 to a national championship team this past season.
Potential obstacles to the hire could be that Billeter is the oldest of the five candidates that Zimmer mentioned and that he hasn't coached in Division I for more than a decade. Whether those would be seen as obstacles, however, is all in the eye of the beholder, because Billeter appears to have the experience, skills and track record to make him more than fit for a Division I job.
Minnesota State head coach Matt Margenthaler was another name mentioned in connection to the job, at least until he said today that he wasn't interested. Add Minnesota State Moorhead head coach Chad Walthall, a former Iowa assistant, to the mix -- his Dragons have reeled off consecutive 30-win seasons and won the Central Region title two years ago -- and the NSIC seems to be fertile ground for SDSU and any other mid-major program looking for a head coach.
The conference does have its fingerprints on the Division I coaching scene, even in high-major ball. Greg McDermott, who has served as head coach of Northern Iowa, Iowa State and currently Creighton, coached at Wayne State for six seasons, and in 1999-00, the Wildcats' first year in the NSIC, McDermott led them to a 26-6 record and a conference championship.
Three-and-a-half hours up the road, Tim Miles was coaching Southwest Minnesota State, and in his four seasons with the Mustangs, the current Nebraska head coach compiled a 78-39 record and an Elite Eight berth in 2000-01, his last season in Marshall. Both McDermott and Miles served as head coach at North Dakota State after their NSIC gigs, with McDermott coaching one season in the NCC and Miles coaching three in the NCC and three with the Bison transitioning to Division I.
Since the NCC disbanded in 2008 and the NSIC began to take its current form, no head coach in the conference has jumped straight to an equivalent position at Division I. Only one head coach has gone straight to a Division I position at all, which happened when Mary head coach Randall Herbst joined Nebraska-Omaha after the 2010-11 season. This past season, Herbst was on Wisconsin-Green Bay's staff as an assistant to Darner.
The NSIC as we know it now is a relatively new conference, but it has gained notoriety on the regional and national scenes. An NSIC team has made it to the Elite Eight seven of the last eight seasons, and Augustana just gave the conference a national title, its first since Winona State won in 2008.
And soon enough, it might gain a reputation of feeding the Division I ranks.