College Basketball Hot Seat Report

Welcome to the Coaches Database Hot Seat Report, an updating list of college basketball head coaches with low job security. With each update, coaches will be added, removed and shuffled around based on their performance (note: coaches are listed alphabetically). To see the list of coaching changes that have already happened, head over to the Coaching Carousel page.

** UPDATED DECEMBER 3, 2024 **

 

YOUR CHAIR IS ON FIRE, SIR

Coaches at the end of the line at their current school. You should be seeing them here soon enough.

• Johnny Dawkins (UCF)
  • Dawkins’ tenure at UCF has gone a lot like his time at Stanford – consistently winning games but never really getting over the hump. He’s been to the postseason four times in eight years (1 NCAA, 3 NIT) but hasn’t made much impact. The Knights are heading into the second year of Big 12 play, going 17-16 (7-11) last year, and while the win in January over #3 Kansas was super cool it was definitely the high point of the season. Dawkins pulled in a number of transfers in the offseason but still ended up outside the 247 Top 50 for both his transfer and high school recruiting classes. Most intriguing are former four-star prospects Benny Williams (Syracuse), JJ Taylor and Mikey Williams (both from Memphis). UPDATE: The Knights are 6-2 with one good win (over #13 Texas A&M) but lost their other two power conference opportunities. They don’t play their first true road game until their Big 12 opener at Texas Tech on 12/31. 
• Ben Johnson (Minnesota)
  • The 2021 hiring of Johnson, a Minnesota-native and former Gopher player, was received favorably despite his lack of head coaching experience. AD Mark Coyle fired Richard Pitino after a mediocre eight-year tenure, which did include two NCAA Tournaments and a NIT title. Pitino had gone 29-31 (14-26) in his last two seasons, but Johnson went just 22-39 (6-33) through his first two before finally showing some improvement last year (19-15 and a NIT bid). But the vibes going into 2024-25 are particularly bad, with the Gophers picked last (18th) in an expanded Big Ten after Cam Christie left for the NBA and six other scholarship players transferred out. Dawson Garcia returns for his senior year, but he will play alongside a ton of new faces – mostly mid-major transfers and local high school recruits. This will be a real make-or-break season for Johnson at his alma mater, as he is in year four of a five-year contract. UPDATE: The Gophers are 6-3, with a loss to North Texas and narrow wins over Omaha, Yale and Central Michigan. Next up are Michigan State and @ Indiana. 
• Kyle Neptune (Villanova)
  • Nova fans were way of Neptune’s hiring from the get-go, and after two short years the pressure has ramped up to a critical level. Neptune was never going to be Jay Wright, the man he worked under for ten seasons and helped win two National Championships, and it was his lack of head coaching experience that was the major concern for most. Neptune left Villanova in 2021 and spent one year at Fordham, going 16-16 (8-10 A-10), before making the massive leap to Big East head coach. The Wildcats are 35-33 in two years under his leadership, with two 6th-place league finishes and NIT First Round exits to show for. This will be the second year that former assistant and Quinnipiac head coach Baker Dunleavy has been serving as the program’s GM, helping Neptune land a solid recruiting class and a number of impact transfers. UPDATE: The seat is hotter than ever, as 4-4 Villanova has lost to Columbia and Saint Joseph’s already and missed opportunities against Virginia and Maryland. Neptune’s attitude of “it is what it is” after the Columbia game has rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way and the schedule is only getting harder once Big East play starts.

THIS SEAT IS RATHER WARM

These coaches need to start winning right now, but that may not even be enough…

• Shane Burcar (Northern Arizona)
  • After five years at NAU, Burcar is 57-95 overall with one winning record and zero postseason bids. The long-time high school coach was hired in 2018 as an assistant and a little over a year later was named interim head coach following Jack Murphy‘s resignation. The interim tag was removed following a 16-14 first year, but the Lumberjacks went just 27-62 over the next three seasons, finishing 9th or 10th in the Big Sky each year. The team improved a bit last year, finishing 14-19 and t-7th in the league, but this is a contract year for Burcar. It will cost NAU nothing to make a change at the end of the season, so Burcar will really need to show on-court improvement and inspire some optimism if he’s going to land a new deal.
• Jeff Capel III (Pittsburgh)
  • Capel’s tenure at Pitt started with a rebuild: four-straight sub-.500 seasons, all finishing 11th or worse in the ACC. It seemed like he was finally turning a corner in 2022-23, though the Panthers ultimately blew their chance at a share of the 2023 ACC title and finished tied for third (Capel was ACC COY) and limped into the NCAA Tournament as an 11-seed. Pitt won 22 games last year and declined an NIT bid after being left out of the Big Dance. Capel’s deal runs through the 2026-27 season and he really needs to show consistent improvement to stay at Pittsburgh, because one NCAA Tournament in six years is not cutting it. UPDATE: The 7-1 Panthers are so far one of the best teams in the ACC, coming off an impressive true road win at Ohio State this past weekend. Next up are trips to Mississippi State and Virginia Tech and winning one or both of those might move Capel even further down our list.
• Jim Engles (Columbia)
  • Columbia finished last in the Ivy League for three-straight seasons, winning just four combined league games against 38 losses from 2019-2023. The team improved a bit last year, finishing 13-14 (4-10) and 6th in the League and Engles will helm the team for the eighth season in 2024-25. He’s been there since 2016, hired after an impressive rebuild at NJIT, something he hasn’t yet been able to do with the Lions. Columbia hasn’t been in the NCAA Tournament since 1968 (also their last Ivy title), so the bar for success is definitely lower than at other Ivy League programs. UPDATE: The Lions have navigated their non-conference flawlessly so far, including a massive win at Villanova last month. But we are waiting for Ivy League play to start before we increase Engles’ standing on the list.
• Dennis Gates (Missouri)
  • Gates is here because last season, his second at Mizzou, was a complete disaster. After winning 25 games and going to the NCAAT in 2023, last year’s squad won just 8 games total and finished dead last in the SEC with an embarrassing 0-18 record. If that happened in his third or fourth year, Gates might already be gone. But he has the chance to turn it around in 2024-25 and will be doing so with an almost entirely new roster. Five junior and senior transfers, headlined by Duke’s Mark Mitchell, will join a five-man recruiting class that includes Top-30 prospect Annor Boateng and three other four-star dudes. Gates and company can turn 2023-24 into an outlier if they can get things cooking this year and get back to the Big Dance, and they would do so as underdogs picked 13th in the preseason SEC poll. UPDATE: The Tigers started the year with a loss to Memphis but have beaten six-straight mid-major opponents since then. How they do against California, Kansas and Illinois before the end of the year will determine Gates’ standing heading into SEC play.
• Dwayne Killings (Albany)
  • Killings has only been at Albany since 2021, hired after three seasons at Marquette, but on- and off-the-court issues have made him a mainstay on this list. He was put on leave for several weeks in March 2022 after allegedly making contact with a player, but the story blew up more in November when he was sued by a former player who alleged that Killings threw him against a locker and drew blood after striking him in the face (the coach was ordered into anger management from a 4th degree assault charge). Killings was suspended for the first five games of the 2022-23 season and the Great Danes went on to finish in last place at 8-23 (3-13). The school has stood by their coach and last year’s team improved slightly, but still won just 13 games and were non-factors in the America East.
• Porter Moser (Oklahoma)
  • Through three seasons, Moser has just one NIT appearance and has yet to finish higher than 7th in conference. The Sooners are in the SEC now, so there’s an opportunity to reset and try and make some noise in their new league. But so far this is not the Porter Moser-coached team that OU fans were hoping to see. Decent recruiting and transfer classes have come in, but there aren’t any standout names on paper to change the opinion on the program – OU is picked 15th of 16 in the preseason SEC poll. Just as there is a chance to start over, there’s also a very real possibility of regressing and that will almost certainly spell the end of Moser’s time in Norman. UPDATE: OU was the surprise winner of the Battle 4 Atlantis and is now ranked #21 as a result. The 7-0 Sooners have several more non-conference opportunities against the likes of Michigan, Georgia Tech and Oklahoma State before tipping off their first-ever SEC slate.
• Wayne Tinkle (Oregon State)
  • Oregon State is a tough job, made even more so with the break-up of the Pac-12 essentially pushing them down to mid-major status for the time-being. When Tinkle led the Beavers on their improbable Elite Eight run in 2021, capping a 5th winning season through his first seven years at OSU, he bought himself a ton of goodwill in Corvallis. He also earned himself a new contract that runs through the 2026-27 season. But the reality of the situation is that Tinkle has never finished better than 4th in the Pac-12 and in 2021-22 helmed one of the worst seasons in recent history for any power conference team at 3-28 (1-19 Pac-12). The Beavs have been less bad the last two years, going 11-21 and 13-19, respectively, and it will be interesting to see how things go in 2024-25 against a WCC schedule, but Tinkle is still very much on the hot seat.
• Andrew Toole (Robert Morris)
  • Toole was a popular name on the coaching carousel once upon a time after leading the Colonials to two NCAA Tournaments, two NITs and two CITs in his first ten seasons at RMU. However, after the program moved to the Horizon League for the 2020-21 season, things have really fallen off. The team won just 12 games combined through their first two seasons in the Horizon and after a slight improvement in 2022-23 (16-17), the team regressed last season to 10-22 and were picked 9th out of 11 in this year’s pre-season poll.
• Mike Young (Virginia Tech)
  • Young has done a decent job at Virginia Tech so far, with two NCAA Tournaments and two NITs through five seasons, but has yet to make any real noise in the ACC and has won just a single postseason game (NIT first round in 2024). Young was consistent and successful at Wofford and again has not done a particularly bad job since arriving in Blacksburg in 2019, but the bar for the program was elevated by Buzz Williams and so far Young is not maintaining that standard. His contract runs through 2026-27 and his salary will soon move into the $3 million range, so on-court results need to improve soon. UPDATE: The Hokies are struggling on a four-game losing streak that included a 10-point home loss to Jacksonville (!!). VT would be lucky to have 6-7 wins by the time they travel to Durham to face #9 Duke on 12/31.

WE’VE GOT OUR EYE ON YOU, COACH

Here are those guys that are having a rough year (or two… or three…) but aren’t in total danger. Yet. 

• Steve Forbes (Wake Forest)
  • Four years, zero NCAA bids, and Wake Forest fans are beyond frustrated with the lack of progress in the program. Forbes has not been particularly successful on the recruiting or transfer portal fronts, either, though some formerly-lauded transfers will suit up for the Deacons this season (including former Top-15 prospect Omaha Biliew, and four-stars like Ty-Laur Johnson and Davin Cosby). The school announced a “long-term extension” for Forbes in 2022, though the details don’t appear to be publicly available. A slow start will move Forbes up the list rather quickly. UPDATE: The 7-2 Deacs beat Michigan, lost to Xavier and Florida, and all that’s left before ACC play starts are games against Texas A&M and James Madison.
• Earl Grant (Boston College)
  • Grant is in his fourth year at Boston College and is actually coming off his best season so far, a 20-win campaign that included a trip to the NIT. But the Eagles have not been to the NCAA Tournament since 2009 and Grant is currently the third-straight head coach to fail to get that done. Hired in 2021 without any real connections to the city, fans questioned how well he could do at BC despite his success at Charleston. This will be a telling year for Grant, because he really needs to keep momentum rolling if doubts about his tenure are going to dissipate. His predecessor Jim Christian was given seven years and only finished above .500 once, which is why we have Grant down here and not in a hotter category. UPDATE: The Eagles won the Cayman Islands Classic but they played against all mid-major competition there and have yet to beat anyone of note. They lost their last game at home to Dartmouth to drop to 6-2 and up next they host South Carolina, their first power conference opponent. 
• Bobby Hurley (Arizona State)
  • A splashy hire in 2015, Hurley was lured away from the East Coast after two successful seasons at Buffalo. The talent level has been strong (Remy Martin, Lu Dort, Josh Christopher, Marcus Bagley, etc) but the Sun Devils have consistently underachieved under Hurley. Despite the overall disappointment, Hurley was given a two-year extension in 2023 that runs through 2025-26. He then promptly went 14-18 last year in their final Pac-12 season. The Big 12 may provide a fresh start for Hurley and the Sun Devils, and he once again scored big on the recruiting trail with five-star prospect and former Kentucky commit Jayden Quaintance coming to town alongside a couple high-major transfers in Brandon Gardner and Austin Nunez. UPDATE: The Devils’ only loss is to Gonzaga and they have another great opportunity when they face Florida in Atlanta on 12/14. They have some quality wins so far over Saint Mary’s, Santa Clara and New Mexico, but the Gators will be their first major opponent since the Zags.
• Ben Jacobson (Northern Iowa)
  • Jacobson has been a staple in the Missouri Valley for nearly two decades, joining the staff at UNI in 2001 and becoming the Panthers’ head coach in 2006. He has led the team to some incredible highs, with eight postseason appearances including four NCAA Tournaments and a trip to the 2010 Sweet Sixteen. But the last 7-8 years have been super inconsistent, with the Panthers oscillating between 19+ wins and losing records from year-to-year. After going 19-14 last season and missing the postseason, the Panthers have high expectations in 2024-25 with the team picked 2nd in the pre-season MVC poll. UPDATE: The 3-4 Panthers have had some disheartening losses, including getting smoked at home by both UC Irvine and North Texas.
• Kevin Kruger (UNLV)
  • The UNLV program has been spinning its wheels for the last decade-plus, last reaching the NCAA Tournament in 2013 and the Sweet Sixteen in 2007. The school hired Kevin Kruger, who played on that 2006-07 team coached by his father, Lon Kruger, who was the last guy to have consistent success with the Rebels. He didn’t have any head coaching experience but otherwise had a solid resume for this job in particular. After a few middle-of-the-road seasons, the Rebs are picked to finish 5th in the MWC this year and have some optimism for the first time since Kruger was hired. We will wait to see how the first half of the season goes before making any changes to his standing on this list. UPDATE: The 4-3 Rebels have beaten the teams they should but lost all their opportunities against major programs. They still have non-conference games at Creighton and Dayton to bolster the resume before MWC play starts.
• Wes Miller (Cincinnati)
  • This is year four for Miller, who took over the Bearcats’ program in 2021 after a successful ten-year run at UNC Greensboro that included two NCAA bids (2018, 2021). He has yet to get Cincy to the Big Dance, with just two NIT Quarterfinal appearances to show thus far, and his team has been picked to finish middle-of-the-pack in the expanded Big 12 this year. We will be keeping a close eye on this one, as the fourth year of a five-year deal is always a make-or-break for HM head coaches. UPDATE: The 6-0 Bearcats are ranked #14 and have Villanova (away) and Xavier (home) coming up in the next couple weeks.
• Kevin Willard (Maryland)
  • At a lot of schools, the head men’s basketball coach wouldn’t be on the hot seat after two years with one NCAA Tournament bid, but at places like Maryland the expectations are far too high for this to fly. Willard’s squad regressed last year to just 16-17 (7-13) and will head into this first year of the expanded Big Ten with pretty mediocre expectations. Five-star prospect Derik Queen brings some optimism, and a number of potentially high impact transfers could help turn the tide in College Park, but Terp fans expect their team to be competing for league titles and regularly reaching the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Willard definitely has his work cut out for him. UPDATE: The Terps played Marquette well in their only loss this season, but we will really see what they are made of this week as they host Ohio State and then travel to #8 Purdue.

MAYBE IT’S TIME TO RETIRE?

Here are some head coaches who could (or maybe should) be looking at retirement at the end of the season.

• Tom Izzo (Michigan State)
  • It’s an interesting time for Izzo and the Spartans, who have been to 26-straight NCAA Tournaments and were in the Sweet 16 as recently as 2023, but still feel like underacheivers in a changing game. Those changes are what ultimately drove guys like Jay Wright, Jim Boeheim, Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, and Lon Kruger to step aside in recent years after long and successful careers. Regardless of the timing, it’s hard to imagine that Izzo, who turns 70 in January, will continue coaching for much longer. There are several potential successors either on the current staff or leading other programs, and 70 seems as good an age as any for Izzo to call it career. He’s certainly earned the time off.
• Keith Richard (Louisiana-Monroe)
  • Richard has been the Louisiana-Monroe head coach since 2010 but has never gotten the Warhawks into the NCAAT or NIT. In fact, his teams have finished 6th or worse in the Sun Belt each year since 2017 and he’s had just three winning seasons during his entire tenure there. Richard (who turns 65 in January) could just as easily be on the hot seat for firing with a combined 51-97 record over the last five years.

 

COACHES THAT ARE SAFE (FOR NOW)

This section is comprised of coaches who were previously in one of the above categories this season or are just starting to feel heat but are not yet in any real danger of being fired.

• Greg Gard (Wisconsin)
  • The Badgers haven’t been to the Sweet 16 since 2017, a major shift from the consistent success they had under Gard’s mentor, Bo Ryan. The juggernaut that Ryan built, culminating in back-to-back Final Fours, is gone. What’s left is a solid program that can win a share of the Big Ten title one year and finish near the bottom the next. Gard and company missed the NCAAs in 2023 and made it last year but got upset by 12-seed JMU in the first round. He signed a five-year extension in April that keeps him under contract through the 2028-29 season, but boosters will find the money to make a change if progress isn’t made in Madison soon.
• Fred Hoiberg (Nebraska)
  • The slam dunk hire that started out as anything but, the Fightin’ Hoibergs finally made the NCAA Tournament in year five. College basketball fans expected Iowa State Fred but instead got something more like (or even worse than) Chicago Bulls Fred for the first four years. But the NCAA bid got Hoiberg a two-year extension that will keep him in Lincoln through the 2028-29 season. Keisei Tominaga, who seemed to single-handedly will the Huskers to victory several times last season, is gone but most of their offensive production is back. Despite that, the preseason media poll had Nebraska in a tie for 12th.
• Billy Lange (Saint Joseph’s)
  • Lange was hired in 2019 after six seasons with the Philadelphia 76ers and tasked with taking over for long-time Saint Joseph’s head coach Phil Martelli, who led the Hawks for 24 years. Things did not start out very well, as Lange went just 38-77 through his first four seasons. But this past year, Lange’s squad won 21 games and earned a spot in the NIT, earning the coach a “multi-year” extension (reported in April by Jon Rothstein, but details have yet to be announced).
• Rodney Terry (Texas)
  • Terry came into a strange situation in 2022 and ended up leading the Longhorns to the NCAA Elite Eight in what was one of the best coaching performances in all of college basketball. Last year he was the guy all the way through, no uncertainty whatsoever, and the team regressed – they still made the Big Dance but were middle-of-the-road and never really threatened for a Big 12 title. Now the team is in a new league (SEC) and it’s only year three of his tenure, so Rodney has a lot of leeway. Not to mention the football program is (as of Oct 18) ranked #1, so the spotlight is not on men’s basketball as much anymore.
• Mike Woodson (Indiana)
  • Woody and the Hoosiers took a step back last year after losing Trayce Jackson-Davis and Jalen Hood-Schifino to the NBA, but optimism is on high for 2024-25 as the 66-year-old coach is bringing in the nation’s second-best transfer class and a four-star high school prospect. The new-look Hoosiers include Oumar Ballo (Arizona), Kanaan Carlyle (Stanford), Myles Rice (Washington State) and Luke Goode (Illinois), who will join the likes of Malik Reneau, Mackenzie Mgbako and Trey Galloway for what is projected by Big Ten media to be one of the best teams in the league. Woodson is an IU legend and a direct link to the late Bob Knight, and with a big buyout that AD Scott Dolson is likely not interested in paying (after cutting massive checks to both Archie Miller and Tom Allen in the past few years) we are not seeing Woodson as someone in danger of getting fired. If the Hoosiers underachieve again this year? Then we can talk. UPDATE: The Hoosiers played well against South Carolina but struggled in the Battle 4 Atlantis, getting beat easily by Louisville and Gonzaga before finally getting a win over Providence. The performance dropped them out of the Top 25.