Friar Coaching Candidates: Could Providence Look to Herb Sendek to Bring Stability?

Santa Clara returns to the NCAA Tournament on Friday for the first time since 1996 — back when Steve Nash was leading the Broncos.

They’ll do so behind veteran head coach Herb Sendek whose head coaching career has spanned four decades between stints at Miami of Ohio, North Carolina State, Arizona State, and his current run at Santa Clara, which started in 2016.

Sendek has been around long enough that he was part of a similar coaching search series I had done prior to the Friars hiring Ed Cooley in 2011.

He’s in the midst of a terrific season at Santa Clara, leading a team anchored by talented underclassmen.

The Case for Herb Sendek: With Providence searching for a Division 1 head coach who has had success navigating the NIL/revenue share landscape, Sendek could bring stability back to a Friar program looking to find its footing.

This March, Sendek joined Rick Pitino and Dana Altman as the only coaches in college basketball history to win their league’s Coach of the Year award in four different leagues. Sendek was named MAC Coach of the Year in 1995 at Miami Ohio, then won those honors at NC State in 2004, Arizona State in 2010, and the WCC this year.

A high school valedictorian, Sendek graduated with a 3.95 grade point average from Carnegie Mellon before making his way to Providence from 1985-1989, working for Rick Pitino and Rick Barnes during that time.

After a stint as an assistant at Kentucky under Pitino Sendek took over at Miami in 1993, and went 63-26 in three years — upsetting five-seed Arizona in the first round in 1995 before falling to Virginia in overtime a round later. He recruited star forward Wally Szczerbiak to Oxford during that time.

Sendek’s NC State tenure started slowly. The Wolfpack didn’t reach the NCAA Tournament in his first five seasons there, and their best conference mark during that time was 6-10.

But Sendek got it going in 2002, kicking off a five-year stretch in which they made the NCAA Tournament five consecutive years. Sendek won an NCAA Tournament game in four of those five appearances.

The program’s turnaround coincided with the signing of star guard Julius Hodge, a McDonald’s All American out of Harlem who led the Wolfpack to an upset of UConn and a Sweet 16 berth in 2005.

Sendek left for ASU in 2006 following a 22-10 campaign in his final year at NC State.

His ASU tenure was a mixed bag, with an 8-22 season in year one followed by campaigns with 21, 25, and 22 wins. Sendek reached the NCAA Tournament twice in nine years there.

He took a year off in 2015-16 before taking over at Santa Clara, where he holds a 187-128 record.

Sendek has coached his share of NBA players, a list highlighted by James Harden at ASU.

More recently, Sendek helped develop Jalen Williams and Brandin Podziemski into top-20 draft picks out of Santa Clara. Williams is an All-NBA player and NBA champion for the Oklahoma City Thunder, while Podziemski was drafted 19th overall in 2023.

Santa Clara was one of five teams to have players drafted in the top-20 of the NBA Draft in the 2022 and 2023 seasons. The others? Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, and Baylor.

His current group is 26-8 and finished 15-3 in the WCC. They fell in the WCC title game to Gonzaga.

Sendek has a good, young core headlined by redshirt sophomore point guard Christian Hammond and redshirt freshman big man Allen Graves. Both were First Team All-WCC selections this year.

Their young core also includes a knockdown shooter in Villanova transfer and sophomore Aleksandar Gavalyugov and 7’1 sophomore center Bukky Oboye. Sendek also has a pair of sophomores who transferred in from the Big 10 in 6’7 Chris Tadjo (Iowa) and former Michigan State wing Gehrig Normand.

He has six international players on his roster and was the first coach to take a former G League player when Thierry Darian joined Santa Clara this year.

His coaching tree includes the likes of Sean and Archie Miller, Eric Musselman, Thad Matta, Ron Hunter, and John Groce.

The Biggest Question Marks: Since leaving North Carolina State, Sendek reached the NCAA Tournament just three times in 19 seasons. In fairness, Santa Clara hadn’t reached the NCAAs since God Shammgod and Co. were in Providence, but he went 72-90 in conference games at Arizona State.

He also finished 72-88 in ACC play at NC State (but they were 12 games over .500 in his final five years there).

Santa Clara has been outstanding offensively this year — 23rd nationally in Offensive Rating, 19th in Offensive Rebounding Percentage, 9th in Second Chance Points, and top-30 in 3-pointers made and attempted. They are also 18th in steals, an area the Friars have been near the bottom of D1 hoops of late.

Their record has been inflated a bit by weak competition, however. Santa Clara is 2-6 in Quad 1 games (both wins were over St. Mary’s, to go along with three losses to Gonzaga, a 98-71 loss to New Mexico, and a 71-70 loss to St. Louis).

They are 2-1 in Q2 games, 15-0 versus Q3, and went 6-1 against Quad 4 (their loss came to Loyola Chicago).

It’s not unfair to question if Sendek will be up for the challenge of taking over at Providence at this stage of his life and career. He has a great thing going in California, but with his East Coast ties, and his past at Providence, perhaps he wants one final shot with a well-funded Big East program.

The Final Word: If Providence is looking for stability and experience, Sendek could be their guy. There’s not much he hasn’t seen, he’s gotten All-League players like Graves and Hammond to buy into redshirting and developing under him during a transfer-crazy era, and his success at landing players in the NBA from Santa Clara should appeal to high school and transfer portal targets alike.