After a less than stellar eight year stint, Stanford has announced that Jerod Haase will not return as head coach of the Cardinal. This was Haase’s second head coaching gig and his first coaching experience in his home state of California and it now ends without noticeable success.
Haase was born and raised in the state and began his playing career three decades at California. He’d spent just his freshman season with the Golden Bears, opting to transfer to Kansas for his final three years of his playing career, beginning a long-standing relationship with Roy Williams.
Soon after graduating, Haase began his own coaching career on Williams’ staff with his alma mater for the next four seasons. When Williams left the Jayhawks for the North Carolina job in 2003, Haase came along and was on his staff for the next nine years. All of his assistant coaching experience came with Williams.
Haase got his first shot to run a program when UAB hired him in 2012. Things went relatively well with the Blazers, who developed into a top-level CUSA team across the next four years. In his third season, Haase took UAB to the Big Dance and won an upset over Iowa State in the first round of the Tournament.
Stanford hired Haase to replace Johnny Dawkins back in 2016. There was nothing remarkable about Haase’s time in Palo Alto, neither good nor bad. He didn’t win a ton of games, with a 20-win campaign in 2020 his best effort. The Cardinal also tied for third place early in his tenure, but rarely competing for Pac-12 titles.
His time with Stanford ends under .500, with a total record of 126-127. He never led the Cardinal to the NCAA Tournament, with just a single NIT appearance during this stretch. While Stanford is a difficult school to coach at, due mostly to rigid academic requirements, it was certainly time for a change after no progress in eight years.
Stanford might be one of the most difficult power conference schools at which to win a winning basketball program. A great number of potential players would not satisfy those academic requirements, with this job sometimes feeling more like an Ivy League post than one in a power conference league. With the Cardinal heading into the ACC next season, it’s an even tougher job as the school adjusts to new surroundings.
Stanford looks for their new leader and could be searching in any number of places. There’s no shortage of names that could be discussed there in northern California, though the new league, recent struggles, and strict academics will scare off some potential candidates. With all of these things in mind, let’s take a look at a few candidates for the job, knowing full well that this is not a complete list.