Rose took over a team expected to finish near the bottom of the league that was coming off a 9-win season. No one expected anything good, but they won 20+ games and made the NIT. The following year they won the league and started a long string of NCAA appearances.

Steve Cleveland had less of an immediate splash taking over from Roger Reid and Tony Ingle, but going from 1 win to 8 wins felt like a huge improvement, especially considering it was mostly a brand new roster thrown together at the last minute relying heavily on Ricks College transfers. He improved the next year and then had a 20 win/NIT team in his third year and an NCAA team in his 4th.

Roger Reid took over after Ladell Andersen's last team had a losing record, had lost its best player (Michael Smith) to the NBA lottery, and was picked for dead last in the WAC. They were a seemingly bad team that just lost one of the school's best ever players. Also, since Reid was just an assistant promoted from within without a national search, there was a lot of grumbling about it. But he surprised everyone by winning the conference in his first year. That was the team that got a 12 seed at the NCAA tournament, didn't have anyone taller than 6-7 and had to play ACC regular season co-champs Clemson in the first round which featured two 6-11 future NBA players Dale Davis and Elden Campbell. We came one missed Marty Haws layup with 2 seconds remaining from winning that game. Crazy. In reality, the team Reid had to work with did have some talent that was not performing up to its level the previous year, which to me seems similar to today's team.

And when Frank Arnold took over from Glenn Potter there was a slight improvement right way in the W-L record, but it took about 3 years like it did with Steve Cleveland for the record to show major improvement. However, the recruiting improved almost immediately, as he signed Danny Ainge in his second year and Roberts, Durrant, Trumbo, Kite right after that.