NCAA Basketball: Best head coaching hire from each of last 25 seasons

2006: Mick Cronin (Cincinnati)

Simply put, 2006 was full of a lot of interesting moves, though many of those moves didn’t pan out as expected. Kelvin Sampson landed at Indiana and Bob Huggins arrived at Kansas State, but they were both gone less than two years later for different reasons. It’s the year when Jeff Capel arrived at Oklahoma and Tony Bennett began his own head coaching career on the west coast, but it’s certainly been Cronin at Cincinnati who’s stood out in the group.

A native of Cincinnati and graduate of the school, Cronin’s first collegiate coaching experience had actually come on the Bearcats staff before joining Rick Pitino’s first staff at Louisville in 2001. Cronin’s first head coaching experience came at Murray State, taking the Racers to a pair of NCAA Tournaments before Cincinnati called him back home.

While the program struggled initially, Cronin built them into contenders, leading the Bearcats to nine straight trips to the NCAA Tournament across his final nine years before leaving for UCLA in 2019. Cronin won a pair of AAC titles and had this program competitive in the old Big East before that point. While a lone Sweet Sixteen was the only decent postseason run of that time, his impact was clearly great. Cincinnati was the AAC’s first great program, and the four years since his exit has seen this program in far worse shape.