We’re at that marvelous time of year where the college basketball season is on the horizon. With analytics sites and top 25 polls being released, the season feels so close that you can almost taste it. There’s high intrigue around most of the programs around the NCAA basketball landscape, with renewed optimism and hope running high all around the country. In the end, optimism and good feelings last only a brief time as the harsh reality of the season begins.
That harsh reality is extra cruel for those programs that may have struggled in recent seasons. No matter the situation, there always seems to be several programs drastically underperforming, failing to live up to the expectations. When this happens, the blame initially falls onto the head coaches, especially for a program consistently struggling. In a perfect world, every college basketball program is thriving and committed to its head coach for decades to come, but we know this is far from reality.
The coaching carousel spins around each season, with a number of coaches relieved of their duties for simply not doing enough. Each year, there are also a number of coaches spared, sometimes even those everyone expects to be replaced. Winning becomes especially important to these coaches, with the pressure at its very highest. It can be interesting to follow the coaching carousel and see which coaches end up where, but it can be even more intriguing to see how these coaches respond to pressure.
We’re going to take a closer look at five particular coaches who find themselves with hotter seats in recent years. These are coaches who need to stack wins in the very near future, specifically to save their jobs and to better their programs. There are certainly more than just these five on the hot seat; we’ve simply chosen these five to focus on, believe that they are in the direst situations.
Without further ado, we’ll start the list.