Busting Brackets
Fansided

NCAA Basketball: 5 Schools looking to replace the face of their program

By Jason Burgess

LOS ANGELES, CA - APRIL 10: UCLA Director of Athletics Dan Guerrero introduces Mick Cronin as the new UCLA Mens Head Basketball Coach at Pauley Pavilion on April 10, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES, CA - APRIL 10: UCLA Director of Athletics Dan Guerrero introduces Mick Cronin as the new UCLA Mens Head Basketball Coach at Pauley Pavilion on April 10, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Getty Images) /
facebooktwitterreddit
Prev
1 of 6
Next
DES MOINES, IOWA – MARCH 21: Head coach Eric Musselman of the Nevada Wolf Pack instructs his team against the Florida Gators in the first half during the first round of the 2019 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament at Wells Fargo Arena on March 21, 2019 in Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
DES MOINES, IOWA – MARCH 21: Head coach Eric Musselman of the Nevada Wolf Pack instructs his team against the Florida Gators in the first half during the first round of the 2019 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament at Wells Fargo Arena on March 21, 2019 in Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images) /

Replacing a coach that put a program on the map can be difficult. These five NCAA Basketball schools are hoping that their choice can make an easy transition.

Often in sports, we hear that you don’t want to be the guy who replaces the guy. Mostly heard in terms of coaches but it can also be meant for players as well. What it means is that you don’t want to be the guy who replaces a legend or someone who put a particular NCAA Basketball school or franchise on the map, because expectations following the exit of such a guy are often so unrealistically high that the successor rarely succeeds.

The player transfer game has grown bigger and bigger every year, to the point where some think it has become an epidemic that needs to be brought under control, but the yearly coaching carousel has become just as unwieldy with the NCAA Basketball coaching fraternity playing a giant game of musical chairs. This offseason has presented us with a few of these situations in college basketball where a name that is synonymous with a program has either retired, was relieved of his duties, or in one case left for another job.

Here I will take a look at five programs that have made a coaching change with the person responsible for some of their team’s greatest successes moving on, and as luck would have it, one of these five teams is now in the rare position of trying to replace the guy who replaced the guy, and now have just their third coach in the last 38 seasons. Let’s begin there and see if any of the guys replacing the guy can live up to the expectations that await them.

Home/NCAA Basketball News