NCAA Basketball: Villanova’s fall, holiday breakdown among biggest takeaways

10. Some even hotter seats?

We’ve been looking at some hot seats on a weekly basis here, and that trend continues this week. There’s a laundry list of teams that seem to be underachieving this season, with some doing it quite spectacularly. While it’s unlikely that Louisville will fire Kenny Payne after three weeks or Florida State or Cal make sudden moves, there are still a few teams mired in struggle that could pull the trigger in the coming months.

Our first focus is on Northwestern because Chris Collins is really struggling. He made history, leading this program to its first (and only) NCAA Tournament and victory back in 2017, but very little has come since then. They got their season off to a 5-0 start this year, including wins over Georgetown and Liberty, but things were really rough this past week. They gave Auburn a battle in the Cancun Challenge but their offense did not show up in a 43-42 loss. Five days later they were massacred by Pittsburgh in a game they should have won at home. This is year ten for Collins and you have to wonder how long he’ll get.

If we’re going to rag on the Wildcats, we have to mention that team they beat a few weeks ago. Georgetown is still bad and doesn’t show signs of getting better. The only team they’ve  beaten by double-digits is a terrible Green Bay team, barely winning games over Coppin State and UMBC and losing at home to American this past week. It’s not looking great for the Hoyas, and it’s come against a pretty poor schedule to this point. Imagine what happens when their day-to-day schedule is all Big East teams. Patrick Ewing may be a legend of the program but his days should be numbered.

These aren’t the only coaches on the hot seat (hello Mark Fox), but those seats have really heated up this past week. We’ll keep an eye on the comings and goings in the head coaching world, but it may be another few weeks before anyone makes a change.