Even when the NCAA Tournament is over and the offseason begins in full swing, the coaching carousel still has a way of throwing surprises at us. In something of an unexpected move, Alan Huss is vacating his head coaching position at High Point after two successful seasons, opting to return to Creighton to become the program’s head coach-in-waiting.
Huss was born in Decatur, Illinois, played high school ball outside Kansas City, and would spend his entire collegiate playing career at Creighton. He was with the Bluejays from 1997 to 2001 and made multiple trips to the Big Dance. Huss was never a star or major factor on those Creighton squads under Dana Altman and instead of a pro playing career got right into coaching after graduation.
BREAKING: High Point head coach Alan Huss, a Creighton alum, is finalizing a deal to re-join Greg McDermott’s staff immediately as the coach-in-waiting, sources told @thefieldof68.
— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanHoops) April 10, 2025
McDermott, 60, hasn’t put an exact timeline on his retirement, but sources said that it’ll likely…
His coaching journey began at the high school level, working for a decade at a number of high schools both in Illinois and Indiana. He moved his way through those ranks, with great success at his latter stops in northwest Indiana before attaining his first collegiate job as an assistant at New Mexico. Huss would spend three years with the Lobos before a head coaching change, but certainly found a great landing spot.
Sixteen years after graduation, Huss was finally back at Creighton but this time as an assistant coach under Greg McDermott. Over the next six years he aided what’s been a prosperous era for the Bluejays, including their run to the Elite Eight in 2023. His fine work back in Omaha gave him plenty of attention, with his head coaching career starting just a few weeks after that Tournament run.
Huss accepted the job at High Point, inheriting a program with limited basketball success in their history. Regardless, he quickly turned the Panthers into the Big South’s best program, winning 56 games across the next two seasons including a trip to the 2025 NCAA Tournament, the first in the program’s D1 history.
After a pair of regular season titles in the Big South and a plethora of wins it’s fair to say that Huss’s profile is at an all-time high. In fact, High Point was looking like the potential favorite once again next season, as Huss and his staff had already landed three very solid pieces in the Transfer Portal in Cam’Ron Fletcher (Xavier), Scotty Washington (Cal State Northridge), and Jaydon Young (Virginia Tech).
Instead, Huss is taking his talents back to Omaha as McDermott’s apparent successor. Rumors have indicated that McDermott is likely to retire in the near future, probably within the next two seasons, but it’s still something of a strange move. It’s by no means the first time something like this has happened, as Purdue did the same thing in 2004, plucking Matt Painter away from his job at Southern Illinois to inevitably succeed Gene Keady; and we all know how that turned out.
While Huss secures his long-term future, this move sucks for a High Point team that is now left scrambling. Even if they just promote one of his assistants, there’s no telling what next year or the future brings for that program. Huss’s leadership was otherworldly for this North Carolina school, especially after this program just had zero progress under the great Tubby Smith earlier this decade. Can High Point bounce back from this? Is Huss making the right choice to bolt now and secure his own future as Creighton’s next long-term leader?