Cuonzo Martin’s first two three-year stints as a head coach can be pretty easily summarized: Reset in year 1, surge in year 2, further improvement in year 3. Missouri State was 196th in Martin’s first year and 68th in his last; Tennessee was 63rd in his first and 10th in his last. Sure, the Vols regressed slightly in his second year, but a key injury had a role to play in that. The pattern seemed pretty stable.
It appeared for a while that his Cal tenure would play out the same way, but this past February scrambled things a bit.