Below, you'll find the 55 coaching changes in Division I men's basketball that mark changeover from 2017-18 to the 2018-19 season.
The most recent/final hire off the offseason came at Texas Southern, which landed former LSU coach Johnny Jones. The hire came about on June 25, after former TSU coach Mike Davis was lured away by Detroit Mercy.
Fifty-one programs hired full-time replacements; Chicago State, Delaware State, Alabama A&M and Maryland-Eastern Shore have interim coaches in place for 2018-19. Having so many interim coaches in college basketball at the start of a season is an aberration.
Among the Major 7 conferences in college hoops (The American, the ACC, the Big 12, the Big East, the Big Ten, the Pac-12 and the SEC) there were eight programs who hired new coaches: Louisville, Xavier, UConn, Pitt, Memphis, Georgia, Ole Miss and East Carolina. That's a lower number than usual.
As we look ahead to the 2018-19 campaign, here are the new faces in new places.
Team | Out | In | News |
---|---|---|---|
Rick Pitino | Chris Mack | At 22-14, interim coach David Padgett did a solid job last season, and he should get a head-coaching chance soon. But he wasn't getting this prestige job full-time after the totality of what happened. Mack, 48, is in the prime of his career and could be setting himself up for Final Four runs. Mack was 212-96 at Xavier and is coming off a 29-6 season. What's still undecided: The NCAA's still-to-come clean-up of the FBI investigation, and whether it brings sanctions. (The timeline on that is unknown.) | |
Chris Mack | Travis Steele | Mack joins Pete Gillen, Skip Prosser, Thad Matta and Sean Miller as Xavier coaches to eventually leave for better jobs. AD Greg Christopher made the decision to promote from within after interviewing a lot of candidates. Now the question becomes whether Xavier can keep its pace in a top-three league. This is Steele's first go as a head coach. | |
Kevin Ollie | Dan Hurley | Ollie was pink slip'd four years after a national championship, with a swirl of NCAA questions on his name. UConn tried to fire him for just cause -- with north of $9 million and a possible court case in the balance. But regardless of that quagmire, the Huskies got their new guy. Hurley will be tasked with a tall order: return UConn to national prominence and get it competing for Final Fours often. It will not be easy. Hurley is built for the grind, though, and he's got a shot at putting the Huskies back in a good spot. | |
Kevin Stallings | Jeff Capel | Pitt went out and landed the most high-profile assistant coach in the game, Capel from Duke. Now he has the chance to prove he should be the one to replace Mike Krzyzewski at Duke -- or to build something all his own at Pitt. It's still to be determined whether Pitt will have to pay Stallings $9.4 million, but that hiring decision (and the decision to give Jamie Dixon an easy out) goes down with the worst in college basketball history. | |
Tubby Smith | Penny Hardaway | Hardaway, 46, brings with him a revival of hope for the school. He spent recent seasons coaching high school and grassroots basketball. James Wiseman, the best player in the class of 2019, played for Hardaway. It remains to be seen if Hardaway will thrive as a college coach, but what's for certain is he will be given much more slack than Smith was afforded. The former Kentucky coach was fired after two seasons because of poor performance and even worse fan attendance at home games. | |
Mark Fox | Tom Crean | The Bulldogs made the NCAA Tournament twice in Fox's nine seasons. Crean has a more proven background: He went to the Big Dance nine times at Marquette and Indiana, reaching the 2003 Final Four with Dwyane Wade. The hire puts Georgia in a position where it will try to get to the top of the SEC with a veteran coach who's been in major-conference college basketball for decades. | |
Andy Kennedy | Kermit Davis | Kennedy lasted 12 seasons in Oxford, with a 245-156 record and two NCAA Tournament appearances. A source told CBS Sports that Kennedy will take at least a year off from coaching and go into TV. Davis spent the past 16 seasons at Middle Tennessee, making the NCAA Tournament three times in the past six years. I think this is going to work out for both the school and the Leakesville, Miss., native. | |
Dan Hurley | David Cox | In speaking with Hurley in the days before he decided on UConn, it was clear this was a tough decision for him. Rams AD Thorr Bjorn offered him a big raise and the promise of improved facilities. With Hurley gone, Cox has been given a five-year, $700,000 annually contract with the goal of keeping URI near the top of the Atlantic 10. The Rams are set up to make the NCAAs again next season. | |
Larry Eustachy | Niko Medved | Eustachy resigned from Colorado State on Feb. 26, following being placed on administrative leave for an investigation into how he treated his players. Medved takes the job after just one year at Drake. He spent four years at Furman as the head coach prior to that. Medved got the Furman job after leaving Colorado State as an assistant under Eustachy, and prior to that, working for Tim Miles when Miles was at CSU. | |
Paul Lusk | Dana Ford | Many who do work or have worked in the Valley consider Missouri State a top-two job in the conference now, but Lusk averaged only 15 wins a year in his seven-season stint. Ford did well for himself at Tennessee State and now is on his second Division I job at 33 years old. | |
Jeff Lebo | Joe Dooley | Dooley was head coach at ECU from 1995 to 1999, going 57-52 for the CAA. (He was last at Florida Gulf Coast.) Now, this is a bottom-tier AAC job. Take a scan of every program in the seven major conferences, and the only schools that might compete with ECU right now in terms of desperate need of a complete overhaul in identity and personnel are Washington State and Pitt. | |
John Giannini | Ashley Howard | The doctor took La Salle to an unexpected Sweet 16 run in 2013, but it was a rough stretch since. La Salle won just 69 games in the five ensuing years. In comes former Villanova assistant Ashley Howard, who obviously has Philadelphia ties and is well-prepped for a gig like this. The Explorers nailed their replacement for Giannini. | |
Kermit Davis | Nick McDevitt | Replacing Davis won't be easy after 16 seasons at the helm and so much recent success. Middle Tennessee tapped a couple of other candidates who passed on the job, but McDevitt is a really good hire. He did a lot with a little at UNC Asheville, winning 66 games the past three seasons despite losing transfers to high-major programs. The 39-year-old has the acumen to keep the Blue Raiders competing at the top of C-USA. | |
Tim Duryea | Craig Smith | A 16-win average at Utah State over the past three seasons led to an unexpected firing of Duryea, who was coaching in the shadow of the retired Stew Morrill. Smith spent the past three seasons at South Dakota, and he knows the area, having also worked at Nebraska and Colorado State as an assistant. A lot of promise here. | |
Tim Floyd | Rodney Terry | Floyd abruptly retired at UTEP after a 1-5 start, having never taken the program to the NCAA Tournament in seven seasons. Terry leaves Fresno State for the job and has familiarity with Texas recruiting. Still, this job is one of the toughest in Conference USA. | |
Lamont Smith | Sam Scholl | On March 7, Smith resigned from his San Diego, his alma mater, after three seasons because he was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence. He was never charged, and legally, the matter is closed. However, his exit opened up a spot for Scholl to take over at his alma mater. He's been coaching in the West Coast Conference for 18 years and was Smith's assistant. Smith went to UTEP as the top assistant for Rodney Terry. | |
Mark Price | Ron Sanchez | Price was fired from Charlotte in December. Sanchez is a long-time Tony Bennett assistant getting his shot to run his own program. No one's quite certain how successful Bennett's coaches will wind up being, but they deserve a chance. Sanchez is well-equipped for the job, and he comes from a staff with a sterling reputation for doing things above board. Charlotte at one point was a top-50 program, but that was two decades ago now. | |
Reggie Theus | Mark Gottfried | From one big name to another for Cal State Northridge. Theus could not find success in the Big West, bottoming out after five seasons with a 6-24 record. The former NBA player and coach went 53-105 at Northridge. Though he had some success at Alabama and NC Sate, Gottfried left behind a situation at NC State that wound up having the Department of Justice poking around the men's basketball program. The school has commented that it's comfortable with the knowledge it has of Gottfried's time at NCSU. | |
Marty Wilson | Lorenzo Romar | The Pepperdine Waves went 6-26 this season and haven't reached the NCAA Tournament since 2002 under Paul Westphal. Romar, the former longtime Washington coach, will move from his one-year gig as associated head coach at Arizona and stay on the West Coast. Romar, with a top-level mid-major staff, might put Pepperdine in position to compete for the league title within three years. | |
Joe Dooley | Michael Fly | Florida Gulf Coast: It is all too perfect that a school nicknamed Dunk City now has a coach named Fly. Like many guys on this list, he's being promoted up after serving as associate head coach. He helped Dooley make the postseason in each of his five seasons at the helm. | |
Niko Medved | Darren DeVries | A year after hiring Medved, Drake had to find a new coach. But they get a ton of Missouri Valley Conference knowledge with DeVries, a 17-year assistant at Creighton who also played at Northern Iowa. | |
Marty Simmons | Walter McCarty | Simmons spent 11 seasons at Evansville, a Missouri Valley Conference school, without making the NCAA Tournament even once. McCarty, the Boston Celtics assistant and former longtime NBA player, who is from Evansville, makes for an interesting non-traditional hire. The 44-year-old former NBA player and Kentucky alumnus spent time as an assistant under Rick Pitino from 2007-2010. | |
Bob Walsh | Richard Barron | What's happening at Maine is a rarity on a couple of fronts. For one, Barron is the former women's coach at Maine. He is taking over the men's program after a medical leave of absence caused him to step away from the women's team previously. Also, it's rare to see a program have its head coach step down -- and then announce that coach's replacement, who was not on the staff, within a matter of hours. Maine is on a slim-pickings, tight budget and is one of the toughest jobs in college basketball, which contributed to Walsh deciding not to pursue an extension. | |
Rodney Terry | Justin Hutson | Terry kept Fresno State competitive in its move to the Mountain West but only made the NCAA Tournament once in seven seasons. Hutson heads north from San Diego State, where he was instrumental in Kawhi Leonard's recruitment to the Aztecs. | |
Bacari Alexander | Mike Davis | Detroit lands Mike Davis from Texas Southern. It's a good hire. Davis has taken quite the journey in his coaching career. He replaces Alexander, who was fired by Detroit after just two seasons. He did have a disciplinary issue last season that led to him be suspended for seven games due to a reported verbal altercation with one of his players. Alexander won 16 games in two seasons at his alma mater. | |
Dan McHale | A.W. Hamilton | The Eastern Kentucky job gets filled by Hamilton, a Kentucky native who ran the highly respected Hargrave Military Academy program from 2011 until taking an assistant spot under NC State's Kevin Keatts last season. McHale went 38-55 over three seasons, and his dismissal surprised some in the industry. | |
Matthew Graves | Richie Riley | Graves is a Brad Stevens disciple, but he went 65-96 at South Alabama. Riley heads east after success at Nicholls State with the goal of getting USA to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2008. | |
G.G. Smith | Tavaras Hardy | Loyola of Maryland's program was never above .500 overall or in league play under Smith. Hardy has been building up toward a head-coaching job for years, a former Northwestern player who made his name as an assistant at Georgetown and Georgia Tech. | |
Scott Cross | Chris Ogden | On its surface, the most surprising firing in college basketball this season came at UT-Arlington. Cross won 72 games the past three seasons. If the firing was purely out of a motivation to spark the program to an NCAA Tournament appearance, and nothing untoward went down, then Cross won't have to wait long to get another head coaching job. Ogden is Texas through and through. He was a longtime assistant at Texas under Rick Barnes; he was a Mr. Basketball of Texas in 1999 and went on to play at UT. He was on staff the past two seasons at Texas Tech with Chris Beard. | |
Craig Smith | Todd Lee | Lee is a South Dakota alumnus who was at Grand Canyon for five years. He now inherits a program at South Dakota that has risen from joining Division I in 2009 to being near the top of the Summit League. Can he continue to compete with South Dakota State? | |
Michael Curry | Dusty May | May, a Mike White assistant at Florida and Louisiana Tech, gets hired by new FAU AD Brian White, Mike's brother. He joins Lane Kiffin in the FAU ranks and is well-equipped to handle this job after Curry totaled 39 wins in four seasons. | |
Jimmy Patsos | Jamion Christian | Patsos resigned April 13 after reports -- with allegations he denied -- that he verbally abused a team manager, in addition to other issues. Patsos was at Siena for five years. He's replaced by Jamion Christian, who will try to bring Siena back to a place of prominence in the league, which was last seen at the program when Fran McCaffrey was coaching there. | |
Mike Maker | John Dunne | Marist was operating on a thin budget, but Maker's four-year run didn't meet its standards. Dunne gets a fresh start after leaving Saint Peter's in a fairly surprising move. Dunne also moves to a program that can pay all three of his assistants, which wasn't the case at Saint Peter's. | |
Tim O'Shea | Jared Grasso | O'Shea helped Bryant transition to Division I in his decade at the helm, but a 3-28 season put an end to that run. Grasso is a very good recruiter within his interesting offensive system and could be a rising star if he pulls it off at Bryant. | |
Larry Hunter | Mark Prosser | The son of the late Skip Prosser heads from a successful six-year run as a Winthrop assistant to this program in Cullowhee, N.C. Hunter, widely respected for his distinct coaching style, spent 13 seasons at Western Carolina but leaves behind a depleted roster. | |
Scott Cherry | Tubby Smith | Smith, 66, takes on his seventh Division I head-coaching job, which appears to be an all-time record. This is also his alma mater. High Point will be a bit different for him, though, as a significant step down in level of play from his previous stops: High Point is the lowest in the rankings of all his former gigs: Tulsa, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Texas Tech, Memphis. | |
Wes Flanigan | Darrell Walker | Two years after Chris Beard won an NCAA Tournament game (and went to Texas Tech), the Little Rock was in search of a new coach again. Flanigan went 22-42, and clearly the leash was short. He is replaced by Walker, a former 10-year NBA veteran who played with Michael Jordan, Moses Malone, Patrick Ewing, Isiah Thomas and Bernard King. | |
Dennis Cutts | David Patrick | Patrick was associate head coach at TCU last season and brought Ben Simmons to LSU before. He played pro in Australia, England and Spain and has spent time around four programs. He now takes on a UC Riverside program that has never reached the NCAA Tournament. | |
David Simmons | Heath Schroyer | McNeese State. Simmons lasted 12 seasons at one of the toughest jobs in the Southland Conference. Schoyer, hired off BYU's staff, has been a head coach at Portland State, Wyoming and Tennessee-Martin. | |
Anthony Evans | Jeremy Ballard | Remember that Norfolk State team that upset Missouri as a 15 seed in the 2013 NCAA Tournament? That team was coached by Evans. He parlayed that big win into the FIU job, but Evans went 65-94 overall and 33-56 in C-USA in five years. He's replaced by Ballard, who is the latest in a long line of former VCU assistants to earn head-coaching jobs. | |
Nick McDevitt | Mike Morell | UNC Asheville. A quality gig in the Big South, and from a quality of life standpoint, among the cushiest mid-major jobs in the Eastern time zone. Texas assistant Mike Morell takes over. He's young, hungry and capable. Morell will burn the candle at both ends. | |
John Dunne | Shaheen Holloway | The Saint Peter's Peacocks' gig is not an easy one within the MAAC. Dunne got out after 12 seasons and one NCAA Tournament (2011). After a 14-18 year, it was a savvy move to head to Marist. Holloway is taking over after 11 years working with Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard. The hire has received praise within the industry. | |
Kyle Perry | Dave Dickerson | USC Upstate is moving into the Big South and simultaneously dismissed Perry and AD Julio Freire. Dickerson was a Thad Matta assistant who spent last season out of the game, but he coached Tulane and is a South Carolina native. | |
Jamion Christian | Dan Engelstad | Mount St. Mary's had a solid run under Christian, who had an unexpected opportunity to bump up in league and pay, so he's off to Siena. Christian spent the past six seasons and went 101-95 and made the NCAA Tournament twice. Engelstad comes from Southern Vermont College, where he went 104-34 in five seasons. | |
Dana Ford | Penny Collins | Collins, 34, is taking on his first head coaching gig at the D-I level. He will try to do what Ford did at Tennessee State. He previously ran Columbia State's junior college program from 2012-15. The Nashville native, who played for Belmont, returns to his home city to coach the Tigers after Ford left to go to Missouri State. | |
Richie Riley | Austin Claunch | Claunch, 28, was on Riley's staff and promoted after they helped raise the profile of the team and Riley went to South Alabama. Nicholls State now has the youngest coach in Division I basketball. | |
Jayson Gee | Griff Aldrich | Aldrich took the Longwood job after helping UMBC beat Virginia in the tournament. But before that, he spent 16 years outside basketball, working at an international law firm and spent time living in London. He also ran an AAU team that featured DeAndre Jordan. Intriguing hire to replace Gee, who spent five years at the helm and never won more than 11 games. | |
Ken Burmeister | Carson Cunningham | Incarnate Word is still adjusting to Division I. Burmeister guided the program through transition but had his worst season. Cunningham played at Purdue and most recently coached at the NAIA level, going 107-52 in five seasons. Cunningham, who has a doctorate, has also written five books. | |
Keith Walker | Keith Johnson | The Delaware State Hornets ranked 350th out of 351 teams at KenPom last season. Walker lasted four seasons as a head coach in the MEAC. The program last made the NCAA Tournament in 2005. Johnson is sitting in an interim role for 2018-19 because the university is in a transition with athletic directors. | |
Donnie Marsh | Dylan Howard | Marsh resigned on May 11 after spending just one season at the helm. A&M rated as the worst team in college basketball last season, per KenPom.com's rankings. Dylan Howard is serving as an interim head coach for 2018-19. | |
Bobby Collins | Clifford Reed | Can't ever remember a coach facing what Reed will at Maryland-Eastern Shore. He was promoted from within, after Collins' firing, and will be the interim coach for at least the next 10 months. UMES is hiring a new president this summer, so no long-term decisions on a men's basketball coach will be made before then. | |
Tracy Dildy | Morris Scott | It was time. Dildy won only 55 games in eight seasons. Chicago State is struggling -- to say the least -- to field a program suitable for Division I competition. Two coaches told CBS Sports earlier this year that this is school is viewed as being in the worst position in college basketball. | |
Morris Scott | Sean Woods | The Southern Jaguars swapped coaches after a year. Morris Scott is out following a 15-18 season, and Sean Woods, who lost his job as head coach at Morehead State after multiple allegations from his players of abusive behavior, gets a chance at repairing his name. | |
Mike Davis | Johnny Jones | Davis dominated the SWAC, winning at least 12 league games in all six seasons he was at Texas Southern and made the NCAA Tournament four out of the last five years. Jones was an assistant at Nevada last season, and previously was head coach at LSU and North Texas. |