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Xavier Basketball: 7 candidates to replace Travis Steele as head coach

By Joey Loose

CINCINNATI, OHIO - FEBRUARY 16: Head coach Travis Steele of the Xavier Musketeers looks on in the second half against the St. John's Red Storm at the Cintas Center on February 16, 2022 in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Photo by Dylan Buell/Getty Images)
CINCINNATI, OHIO - FEBRUARY 16: Head coach Travis Steele of the Xavier Musketeers looks on in the second half against the St. John's Red Storm at the Cintas Center on February 16, 2022 in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Photo by Dylan Buell/Getty Images) /
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Travis Steele Xavier Basketball (Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images)
Travis Steele Xavier Basketball (Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images) /

After four years in charge of the Musketeers program, Travis Steele has been fired by Xavier. A native of Indiana and former Butler alum, Steele has spent much of his coaching career with the Musketeers, and it was Xavier Basketball who gave him his first head coaching position back in 2018.

After graduating from college, Steele was a high school assistant before joining Thad Matta’s staff at Ohio State as a graduate assistant. He later worked on Kelvin Sampson’s Indiana staff, briefly becoming a full-time assistant after Sampson’s firing in 2008. It was a few weeks later that he was hired to join the Xavier staff, and he’d stay with the Musketeers for the next fourteen seasons.

Steele served as director of basketball operations for one season under Sean Miller, and when Miller departed for Arizona he was promoted to a full-time assistant position. Steele served on Chris Mack’s staff for the next nine seasons, helping Xavier to a whole host of success in the process, including while the conference transitioned from the A-10 to the Big East. When Mack accepted the Louisville job in 2018, Steele was promoted to head coach.

The last four years didn’t exactly go to plan with Steele as head coach. Xavier remains one of the contending programs in a very tough Big East, but they didn’t quite contend as much as expected. In his four seasons, Steele never led the program to the NCAA Tournament and was never above .500 in Big East play. A third-place conference finish in his first season was met with an NIT bid, and this year’s team could only return to the NIT again. Settling for less than the NCAA Tournament is not acceptable at a program like Xavier.

These aren’t the Musketeers who were one of the best programs in the A-10, this is a program that has shown that they can compete in the Big East, even if the last few years haven’t exactly shown it. For the first time in decades, the Musketeers are choosing a new head coach on their own terms, not watching one of theirs take a higher profile job.

This Big East job is very attractive and we’ve narrowed it down to a number of potential candidates. We’ll now run through these suitors alphabetically, looking closely at some very interesting names.