Our current coach was barely good enough to make his high school team. Tom Izzo never played college ball. Of all current Big Ten coaches, Matt Painter, who was a completely average player at Purdue, probably had the most impressive college career. In the last 20 years, Billy Donovan is the only NCAA champion coach who had a better-than-average playing career.

The roster turnover in 2009 forced Tom Crean to ask more of Taber than was fair. But recall that despite being a walk-on, in 2007-08 he worked his way into the rotation on a team that was a Final Four contender until the implosion. I thought that Taber understood his role better than anyone else on the 2007-08 team. He knew he wasn’t out there for his athleticism, so he picked his spots and shot 78 percent from the field, turned the ball over only 6 times in 247 minutes, and managed to grab a rebound every four minutes he was on the court. Clearly, he didn’t have the talent to go toe-to-toe with the Big Ten’s best as a starter. But his play in 2007-08 showed an understanding of the game that would serve him well as a coach.