Michigan has a couple of assistant coaches. One of them, Phil Martelli, has a track record so long that he's literally the entire history of a school on Kenpom. The other one not so much. The guy with the copy and paste first.

PHIL MARTELLI: SQUINT AND IT'S BEILEIN-ISH

Martelli took over St Joe's after an extended low point. The Hawks hadn't been to an NCAA tournament since 1986 when he was hired a decade later; in Martelli's second year he snagged a four seed and reached the Sweet 16. Three losing conference seasons followed, and then Martelli began what's probably the greatest five-year span in St Joe's history. The Hawks went 68-12 in conference, won the A10 five straight times, got three NCAA bids, and reached the Elite 8 as a one seed after an undefeated regular season featuring a Jameer Nelson/Delonte West backcourt.

After this belle epoque St Joe's settled into a 14-year period of meh. From 2005-06 to this year St Joe's never finished higher than third in the A10 and acquired three bids, advancing to the second round once. It was rare for St Joe's to have a legitimately bad team during this period, but Martelli would never approach those heights again.

Two things ultimately sunk Martelli's tenure: a new athletic director and a spate of injuries. This year's Three Man Weave A10 preview:

Outlook: Will it ever stop? St. Joe’s has been crushed by injuries for two consecutive seasons, derailing potential A-10 contenders before they could ever really get going. Shavar Newkirk went down early in 2016-17, eventually followed by his point guard counterpart, Lamarr “Fresh” Kimble, and Pierfrancesco Oliva missed the entire season due to a knee injury. Then, Kimble managed only one game in 2017-18 before succumbing to the very same injury, a broken fifth metatarsal in his left foot. Of course, that was one more game than promising sophomore Charlie Brown got to play after fracturing his wrist in mid-October, and just like that, the Hawks were down two key pieces one game into the season. Despite that, they still clawed to a 10-8 league record, and with those two back healthy this year, there’s reason for optimism in northwest Philly.

It did not stop. Oliva played in just 13 games before going out for the year in mid-January. Kimble missed 10 games in the heart of the conference schedule. St Joe's went 6-12 in A10 play and that was that.

Martelli's tenure was so long that it's impossible to judge what a normal level for St Joe's is. It's probably something approximating the meh portion of Martelli's career. The school is a small (under 5k undergrads) Jesuit institution that had been to one Sweet 16 since 1966 when he was hired. The arena is a tiny band-box with a capacity of 4,200. Until 2009 its capacity was 3,200. Membership in Philly's Big 5 counts for something; it's unlikely Martelli's successor is going to improve on even the desultory late period.

[After THE JUMP: Martelli's style of play and recruiting, plus everything I could find about Howard Eisley, which was not much.]

STYLE OF PLAY

While Martelli hasn't been as consistent at turnover avoidance as John Beilein—who is?—his tenure looks like a version of Beilein who doesn't have access to the same level of recruits and didn't import Donlon/Yaklich. St Joe's:

• has been top 5 in turnover rate three of the last four years and was similarly excellent during the belle époque.
• abandons the offensive boards to get back in transition.
• plays a conservative keep 'em in front style of defense that more or less allows the opposition to shoot in exchange for low foul rates and excellent defensive rebounding.

Martelli's teams have bounced up and down in their ability to shoot; that looks like a talent issue because things are all over the board. When they're good it's usually because there's a guy like DeAndre Bembry, who developed into a first round pick as a junior, or Langston Galloway, a shooting guard who hit 43% of his 806(!!!) career 3s.

Three Man Weave has a useful overview:

Martelli is widely known for his conservative, paint-clogging mix of man and zone defenses, sacrificing turnovers and guarding the three-point line to take away drives, the offensive glass, and chances at the free throw line. The offense also rarely turns the ball over and eschews the offensive glass, so transition chances are few and far between, as well. To beat them, you need to hit jumpers… The scheme helps compensate for the team’s lack of shot-blocking, as big men Taylor Funk, Oliva, and Anthony Longpre aren’t vertically explosive. …

That offense will look to score in two steps: first, they’ll get the ball to Kimble and play in transition …If that fails, they’ll run an inverted offense in the halfcourt featuring the shooting of Funk, Oliva, and Longpre, often playing through Oliva up top or at the high post. That allows them to utilize his passing and making the opposing big men uncomfortable out on the perimeter.

Martelli should be kept away from the defense. He's spent 24 years trying to mitigate for the fact that he can't get Jon Teske to save his life, and Howard probably has that down just fine. His role will be as an all-purpose How Do I Do This reference.

RECRUITING

On the one hand, it's hard to imagine someone with more connections across a broad swath of the East Coast. Martelli has been recruiting Philly, New Jersey, New York, and environs for nearly a quarter-century. And it sounds like he's got a legion of dudes who will go to bat for him and a Sizeable Personality:

PHILADELPHIA — Phil Martelli heckled a CBS broadcaster, rose from a coffin on his own TV show, predicted the Eagles to win the Super Bowl at a chicken wing eating contest and turned a tiny school in Philadelphia into the talk of college basketball.

On the other hand Martelli never snagged a top 100 guy and was usually in the back half of the A10. Again, Martelli's endless tenure makes it hard to tell whether his inability to pop up and grab the occasional four star is a Martelli thing or a St Joe's thing.

At Michigan, Martelli will open a lot of doors. It'll be up to the other guys to walk through them.

MEANWHILE, EISLEY

Eisley's was a star at BC, an early second round pick, and the definition of a journeyman across a 12-year NBA career. He's been an assistant in the NBA for about a decade now.

I was going to give Eisley his own post but there is almost nothing about him on the internet. Except this, which is amazing.

Jerry Sloan on Howard Eisley. (I'm dying.) #JazzReunited pic.twitter.com/lmGyV5wIFH

— Angie Treasure (@snark_tank) March 22, 2017

This makes me feel a better about Howard, because there was a ton of stuff about what a dude he is. Turns out that's not a usual thing for NBA assistants. In fact, in my search for Eisley stuff I ran across an Undefeated article in which Eisley made an honorable mention list of black NBA assistants who should get head jobs. Howard was on the list proper:

Fizdale comment: “You’re talking about a first-class professional as a leader, the way he will represent himself in the organization and the way he treats people. He is built to be a head coach that way. You add the absolute DNA of winning and success on and off the court and the Heat culture and his ability to communicate, he is definitely a guy who should be looked at and considered.”

Eisley got a mention in the Etc. section.

I've scoured all the blogs for takes—again fairly common for Howard—and didn't turn up much. It's a good sign that he was the one survivor when the Knicks cast aside Doomed Coach A for Doomed Coach B. So: shruggie.

Eisley was Jalen Rose's high school teammate at Southwestern and should be useful recruiting Detroit. Probably? Eisely's never recruited.