NCAA Basketball: 10 coaches who will face the most pressure entering 2024-25 season

It may be June, but it is never too early to consider which NCAA Basketball coaches will start facing the heat come November. Whether it is first-year coaches at a win-now-or-never gig, coaches needing an NCAA Tournament berth to stay alive or coaches looking to win over their respective fan bases, all situations may be inherently different. Still, they yield the same result: innumerable amounts of pressure.

Last season, we saw many coaches work their way off the pressure index thanks to success in the NCAA Tournament or the regular season. Clemson’s Brad Brownell, who took the Tigers to the Elite Eight and NC State’s Kevin Keatts, who infamously took the Wolfpack from nowhere near the NCAA Tournament conversation to the Final Four in just three weeks, were the most notable winners from facing the pressure.

In addition, UCF’s Johnny Dawkins, whose team was surprisingly competitive in their first year in the Big 12 alongside Nebraska’s Fred Hoiberg, who took the Huskers to the Big Dance for the first time since 2014, are other coaches who meticulously worked their way off the pressure index, too.

However, many coaches were not so fortunate, such as Stanford’s Jerrod Haase, Louisville’s Kenny Payne, Michigan’s Juwan Howard and Oklahoma State’s Mike Boynton, to name a few. With that being said, take a look at 10 coaches who will face the most pressure to win entering the 2024-25 season.