In a move that’s surprised a lot of the college basketball world, Utah has announced that they have immediately cut ties with head coach Craig Smith. The Utes hired him back in 2021 and won’t allow him to finish his fourth full season in Salt Lake City. While his teams definitely underachieved during recent years, the decision to relieve him with two weeks left in the regular season remains a headscratcher.
Smith was born in Minnesota, attended North Dakota, and gained coaching experience all over that part of the country. He was a longtime assistant under Tim Miles at multiple schools, including a brief stint in the Big Ten at Nebraska. His head coaching journey began with success at Mayville State, an NAIA school in North Dakota, before getting his own D1 success.
He’d spend four years gaining momentum as head coach at South Dakota, with decent success in the Summit League. Smith was then hired away by Utah State in 2018 and really turned that program around, averaging nearly 25 wins per year and taking the Aggies to the NCAA Tournament in each season.
That same level of success didn’t quite continue at Utah, who brought him aboard with high expectations. This team absolutely showed improvement, with their win total increasing in his first few seasons before a 22-win campaign last year. This season in particular was difficult as the Utes transitioned from the Pac-12 to the Big 12. Picked to finish last in the league, this team was actually holding its own with a 7-9 league record when the decision was made to make a change.
Regardless of the reasons for the move, Utah now has a vacancy and extra time to fill it. There’s no question that athletic director Mark Harlan and the rest of the Utah brass will begin an extensive search, doing their due diligence to bring the next great leader to Salt Lake City. Does this program need someone with extensive coaching experience? Do they want a former Ute or someone directly connected to basketball in Utah? We’ll consider ten different potential options, though there are certainly dozens of names who could be connected to this job in the coming weeks.
Chris Burgess
While Smith’s firing remains a surprise, it’s possible that Utah doesn’t want a total rebuild on their hands. There are some valuable members of the current coaching staff that could deserve a look, but Burgess is a name with recent Utah experience that actually helped shape the active roster. He doesn’t have head coaching experience, but could his familiarity come in handy?
Burgess was born in Provo and played collegiately at Duke before ending his career with a pair of years at Utah under Rick Majerus. After spending a decade playing professionally overseas, Burgess was back on the mainland as an assistant to Mark Pope at Utah Valley. He’d follow Pope to BYU before returning to Utah three years ago on Smith’s staff. After two seasons with the Utes, Burgess bounced back to BYU under new head coach Kevin Young.
While he’s been a valuable recruiter and has connections to current and future Utah recruits, do the Utes really want to hand control of their program to someone without any head coaching experience? Burgess has likely learned a ton in his decade as a D1 assistant and that overseas experience helps out, but throwing him into the deep end in a tough Big 12 would be quite the move.
Jerrod Calhoun
When this job was last open in 2021, the Utes conducted an extensive search and ended up hiring the success head coach from Utah State. Fast forward four seasons and their job is open again and Utah State once more has a young coach on the rise who could fit in well in Salt Lake City.
Calhoun played briefly at Cleveland State and is an Ohio native who later gained valuable experience under Bob Huggins. After being his student assistant at Cincinnati, he spent five years on his West Virginia staff before beginning his own head coaching career. Calhoun had five solid D2 seasons at Fairmont State, with current Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla serving as one of his assistants. He then accepted the Youngstown State job and did decent work with the Penguins. He’s only just begun at Utah State, but his Aggies are 24-4 and looking like a sure thing for another trip to the Big Dance.
That time under Huggins was valuable and Calhoun does have more than a decade of head coaching experience, but is he ready for a jump to the Big 12? There’s every possibility that he too could make the jump from Utah State to Utah but you have to wonder if he’d be more interested in a job back on the East Coast closer to his roots. There’s also the fact that this will be his first trip to the NCAA Tournament and he doesn’t have the same elongated success as some of these other names.
Bryce Drew
We’re going to keep talking experience because that word is very meaningful, especially when considering a Big 12 opening like this. We’re looking towards Drew because of his extensive experience and not just as a head coach. He’s a former star athlete, has NBA experience, connections in the game, and recent success not too far from Salt Lake City.
Drew garnered national attention for hitting that memorable buzzer beater while at Valparaiso back in the 1998 NCAA Tournament. A 1st round NBA Draft pick, he spent six years in the NBA before getting his coaching career started back at his alma mater. He won 124 games and made a pair of Tourney trips leading Valparaiso before fizzling out in a brief stint down at Vanderbilt. However, Drew has recovered nicely since he was hired at Grand Canyon in 2020, taking the Antelopes to their first three trips to the NCAA Tournament, including last year’s upset win over Saint Mary’s.
There’s a lot to consider with Drew on both sides of the coin. Things really didn’t go well for him in his first shot at the power conference level, but he’s shown to be a valiant recruiter and could do wonders for a Utah program lacking in that department recently. On the other hand, you have to wonder if he’d join a Big 12 school when his brother Scott remains entrenched at Baylor. His work in the Horizon League and WAC in his career has been outstanding but can he translate that into the Big 12?
Cody Fueger
With Smith out of the picture, the long-term plans for the Utes seem very unclear and we’re covering all of our bases with the names on this list. We’ve already discussed one former Utah grad with solid coaching experience, but Fueger becomes another interesting name based on his experience in recent years.
While never a head coach either, Fueger was a student assistant for Rick Majerus here at Utah and spent half a decade working on this staff. He then bounced around as a director of basketball operations at several schools before joining Mark Pope’s first coaching staff at Utah Valley. Fueger has since spent the last decade under Pope, following him to BYU and Kentucky and helped shape this year’s Wildcats into a prominent team once again.
Whatever concerns we had about Burgess are repeated for Fueger’s lack of experience, but what does that matter in the long run? If the Utes want an alum with considerable coaching history, then Fueger is a great hire. He definitely had a hand in assembling Kentucky’s patchwork squad this season and could potentially rebuild Utah’s roster pretty quickly by this time next season. On the other hand, there’s also the possibility that the Utes want someone who’s actually sat in the head coaching chair before.
Ross Hodge
This next name is somewhat outside the box, but it’s important for Utah to leave no stones unturned in finding the program’s next leader. After all, they’ll need a new head coach who knows how to build programs, win games, and bring talent to Salt Lake City. He may not have an extensive head coaching career but Hodge checks most of Utah’s boxes despite his brief experience at the D1 level.
A former player at Texas A&M-Commerce, most of Hodge’s early experience came below D1, including head coaching stints at Paris JC and Midland where he won a ton of games. Hodge then spent several years coaching under Larry Eustachy at Southern Miss and Colorado State before joining Grant McCasland’s staffs at Arkansas State and North Texas. When McCasland took the Texas Tech job in 2023, Hodge was promoted to the top job and is in the midst of a brilliant second season, with the Mean Green sitting 20-6 and in second place in the AAC.
In all likelihood, this great season won’t result in a trip to the Big Dance unless North Texas goes on a run at the AAC Tournament in a few weeks. He doesn’t have direct connections to Utah, has never been a power conference coach, and has just these last few seasons even leading a D1 program. Still, Hodge is a head coach on the rise who you’ll start to see named for some of these openings. It might not quite be his time yet but the 44-year old is on the rise.
Alex Jensen
Sometimes a lot can change over the course of four years. When Larry Krystkowiak was fired back in 2021, several names were considered before Smith was hired and Jensen was someone worth keeping an eye on back then. We’ll dive into the intricate details shortly, but he remains an interesting candidate even four years later despite little experience with college basketball.
Jensen played forward at Utah back in the 1990’s under Rick Majerus and actually began his coaching career on Majerus’s staff at Saint Louis. In between that time, he spent seven years playing professionally overseas and has built his coaching career on professional ball. He led the Canton Charge, Cleveland’s G-League team, for a pair of seasons before spending a decade on the staff of the Utah Jazz. Jensen current sits on the bench for the Dallas Mavericks, now boasting 12 years of NBA experience.
We’ve seen in recent memory how hires directly from the NBA don’t work out, but could Jensen be a different story. He knows this program and he knows professional talent, with the hopes that increased investment into the Utes could result in some talented rosters in the years ahead. Then again, he only has those two years of G-League experience and it might be quite a transition for him leading this program.
Niko Medved
Utah’s opening position will attract a number of names but let’s be pretty clear here: it’s not the most attractive of the Big 12 jobs. The Utes are only just getting started as a Big 12 program and perhaps the reason for this coaching change is to bring in a new face to charge the program for the future. He’s been mentioned for many openings in recent years but we’re again bringing up Medved for one of these types of jobs.
Native to Minneapolis and an alum of Minnesota, Medved’s coaching career began with extensive time as an assistant coach, including long runs at Furman and Colorado State. He’d ironically return to both programs as head coach later in his career, beginning that journey at Furman in 2013. Medved spent four years building the Paladins into prominence before spending a single season doing the same at Drake. Colorado State brought him back in 2018 and has seen success, with a pair of trips to the Big Dance and a number of 20-win seasons.
Colorado State won a game at the First Four last season and Medved is another guy with more than a decade of collegiate head coaching experience and relevant success. At this point, you have to wonder if he’s in it for the long haul with the Rams or if he’s waiting for a job like Minnesota to open up in the coming years. Regardless, with his pedigree he’d be a very solid hire for the Utes with experience, even if he’s spent just a single season up close with power conference hoops.
Andre Miller
Even without a trip to the Big Dance and with varying levels of success recently, Smith wasn’t a bad coach it just wasn’t the right fit for the Utes. Regardless of how you see this program or his firing, it’s clear that Utah wants new energy in their basketball program. Whether that means a great recruiter or someone to put people back into the stands, this next name has a certain flair that could accomplish that mission.
Miller starred at Utah in the late 90’s, becoming a 1st round draft pick a few months after leading the Utes to the national championship game. Miller then spent 17 years playing in the NBA while Utah never came close to replicating that level of success. The former All-American point guard hasn’t done much since retiring, but has been head coach of the Grand Rapids Gold for the last three seasons, helming the G-League team for the Denver Nuggets.
With his jersey up in the rafters, Miller’s hiring would bring quite the buzz to campus but should this hire be about more than that? We’ve already spoken about how NBA hires rarely work out in the college game, very evident recently by names like Mike Woodson and Juwan Howard in the Big Ten. The energy Miller could bring to this program would be outstanding, but with just three years of G-League coaching does he really have the experience to work out as Utah’s next leader?
Leon Rice
Much has changed with this Utah program even in recent years, as a Big 12 opening is certainly more attractive than one in the old Pac-12. It’s not an easy job, as the Utes will always be overshadowed by programs like Kansas and Baylor, but it’s still a place that could lure considerable head coaching talent. We actually mentioned Rice for this post four seasons ago before Smith was hired and he’s still a rather intriguing fit in Salt Lake City.
An alum of Washington State, Rice began his career early on as an assistant at Oregon but really cut his teeth on Mark Few’s staff at Gonzaga. Rice would spend more than a decade with the Bulldogs before accepting the Boise State head coaching job in 2010. Though he had briefly been a junior college head coach, this was the first real experience for Rice and he’s done well, taking the Broncos to five trips to the NCAA Tournament and considerable success in recent years, making trips to each of the last three Big Dances.
Last time around, it had been six years since Boise State had sniffed March Madness but now they’ve become regular invitees under Rice’s leadership. Do the Utes consider him now based on that recent success? There’s the potential issue that Rice is already 61 years old and may not want to jump to Utah for the long haul, though they’d be getting a coach who’s shown how to bring talent to town, with Boise not exactly the hottest bed for basketball.
Will Wade
Based on what he’s accomplished in his coaching career, a lot of programs are going to throw the bank at Wade to bring him to their campuses. We’ll get into exactly why that’s a potential issue thanks to his past, but it’s clear that Utah could benefit from his leadership as well. The biggest question is if this young gun from Nashville wants to head west to try to compete in the Big 12.
A former Clemson grad, Wade was on Shaka Smart’s VCU staff that advanced to the Final Four before starting his head coaching career at Chattanooga back in 2013. He had brief stints leading both the Mocs and VCU before landing at LSU. His next half-decade with the Tigers had on-court success and off-court conflict, leading to his firing in 2022 thanks to various violations. However, Wade has bounced back with incredible work at McNeese State, instantly making the Cowboys the class of Southland.
Before going all-in, teams need to consider how that LSU stint affects their viewpoint on Wade. With the changes to this sport considering NIL, having a recruiter like Wade could do wonders for the Utes and you might think of him as a home run hire based on his potential. He’s been a winner at each of his first four D1 programs and could do the same out in Salt Lake City. Yet, you have to wonder if Wade isn’t waiting for a bigger or better job to come into focus either this year or in the near future.