Kansas State Basketball: 8 candidates to replace Bruce Weber as head coach

Grant McCasland

With each of these coaching cycles, there always seems to be a couple of mid-major coaches who stand out as the home-run hires, like Shaka Smart and Brad Stevens were for every power conference fan base on the hunt back around 2011. There aren’t as many home runs out there these days, but McCasland is about as close as you can come for a Big 12 team looking for a spark.

McCasland played at Baylor and spent five years on Scott Drew’s coaching staff as well. He’s been a successful head coach at different levels, leading Midwestern State to D2 glory and turning around things at Arkansas State. His recent and greatest success has come at North Texas, where he’s been head coach since 2017. Under his guidance, the Mean Green won the CBI in his first season, have a pair of C-USA regular-season titles, and upset 4-seed Purdue in last season’s NCAA Tournament.

McCasland is a winner who knows the Big 12 and knows how to win these big games. The jump from Conference USA to the Big 12 is obvious, but he was working with Scott Drew less than a decade ago. McCasland is certainly ready to take over one of these bigger programs; the question is if he’d jump at Kansas State or bide his time for another opportunity, perhaps in his native Texas.