Louisville Basketball: 10 candidates to replace Chris Mack as head coach

Bruce Pearl

When you’re a program like Louisville, you want to hire the best coach you can possibly bring in. The Cardinals have only had two coaching searches in the last 50 years and the hope is that that’s a trend that continues in the future. Louisville will no doubt be willing to throw money at some of the best head coaches in the nation, which makes Bruce Pearl a very intriguing candidate.

Let’s briefly run through Pearl’s accomplishments: he won a D2 national title at Southern Indiana, he led Milwaukee to the Sweet Sixteen as a 12-seed, and he made Tennessee a top team in the SEC. Then, scandal struck Pearl and he was forced to regroup at Auburn. Pearl has done nothing less than build the best run of success in program history, leading the Tigers to their first Final Four in 2019 and their first #1 ranking this week.

Pearl would be the biggest splash hire at Louisville and would immediately elevate the program. The problem is that Pearl has had his fair share of scandal, and the Cardinals certainly don’t want to risk walking into something like that, as Pitino’s controversy has thrown the program into disarray. Regardless, Pearl has won big at all four of his head coaching stops, and you can only imagine how great things could be at Louisville with Pearl on board for the next decade. Would Pearl want to leave Auburn where he is beloved?