There are already 11 NCAA Basketball programs with active head coaching searches in progress; who should these programs hire as their next coaches?
Without a doubt, the events of recent days are unprecedented in the history of this sport. The cancellation of a majority of the conference tournaments and the eventual cancellation of the NCAA Tournament due to the COVID-19 outbreak has caused major ramifications throughout NCAA basketball. There will not be an NCAA Tournament champion, no exciting upsets, buzzer-beaters, nor the excitement of the Final Four in Atlanta.
Despite the lack of on-court postseason games, this college basketball season still has ended. As the season wraps up, this is usually the time of year for many changes to these teams, especially the ones whose seasons have ended. With everyone suddenly finished, it’s the time of the year for the transfer portal to fill up while the coaching carousel itself also ramps up.
Each season there are numerous notable head coaching changes, with last season pretty notable itself. It’s too early to tell if we’ll have jobs like Arkansas, Cincinnati, UCLA, or Virginia Tech open up, but there will still be some intrigue as all of these jobs are filled. One thing that’s different this season is that some of these head coaches didn’t get their deserved shot to show off their coaching prowess in coaching play. There are clearly some young mid-major coaches already on the radar, but how many of them will get their shot?
One final thing to consider is how the sudden cancellation of the end of the season will affect the thinking of some of these programs. I’m not sure if it’ll have any effect on job security, but it certainly opens things up several weeks earlier than expected. In the coming days, we could see major programs firing their coaches two or three weeks earlier than anyone would have expected. The effect that this cancellation has on the sport cannot be understated, but for now we’re just going to focus on filling those coaching openings.
Without further ado, let’s starting running through the openings and the suggestions for their next head coaches.