NCAA Basketball: Top 10 best coaching hires from 2024 offseason

7. Chris Mack (Charleston)

When Louisville let Mack go back in 2022 he didn’t panic. The Cleveland native had been a fantastic head coach and basketball mind and was certainly going to bounce back, especially after all that success at Xavier. After two years out of coaching, he’s bouncing back at Charleston, hoping to live up to the phenomenal job that Pat Kelsey did with that program. Mack now succeeds one of his former Xavier aides, finding the perfect job to get back into the game.

A former player at both Evansville and Xavier, Mack was a high school coach before rejoining his alma mater on the coaching staff. He’d later start his head coaching career with the Musketeers in 2009 and was fantastic for nearly a decade, taking Xavier to an Elite Eight and three other Sweet Sixteen’s while also leading the program from A-10 to Big East. He made the Big Dance in his first season after leaving for Louisville, but the Cardinals took a few steps back and he was out after less than four full years.

Mack jumps back into coaching at a Charleston program that has been a dynamic mid-major in recent years. He’ll hope to build on the groundwork that Kelsey built with the Cougars, inheriting a program that’s been in the last two NCAA Tournaments. Few new mid-major hires have the kind of pedigree as Mack, who was previously successful at the power conference level. At the same time, he waited for an opportunity and an opening like this and Charleston really secured their future with his hire.