I might be pushing it, but your argument is invalid. My point was that these coaches were mediocre in their beginning tenure at these schools, they developed into better coaches through experience. Duke I wouldn't say was a powerhouse; until Coach K arrived Duke had only been an NCAA runner-up twice, no national championship teams, and were sporadically doing well in the NCAA tournament. It wasn't until Coach K arrived that he put Duke on the powerhouse map.
If Coach K was fixing to lose his job, he obviously turned the program around to a tip-top tournament team within 5 years of being there.
Good call on NE and not NW, misread that. It took Jim Calhoun eight years to reach his first NCAA tournament appearance at Northeastern and never made it past the second round. At Connecticut, it took him 3 years to make his first tournament appearance. I guess you can argue to argue, but it's hard to deny that it took time to develop into these powerhouse coaches.
Calhoun coached his first team that went 9-19 and the second year they went 20-14. Kind of like how Martin coached up his guys his first year here?