Let’s Speculate! Potential Missouri head basketball coach candidates

Welcome to Let’s Speculate! on Coaches Database, where we go through programs that are or may soon be looking for a new head coach and speculate who they may hire next.

Today’s program is Missouri, coached by Cuonzo Martin for the last five seasons (fired on March 11).

• Darian DeVries – Drake head coach
  • DeVries has won 20+ games in all four seasons he’s been at the helm at Drake and took the Bulldogs to the NCAA Tournament a year ago. A rising star in college basketball, he is not long for the MVC and seems like a slam dunk hire for any major program in the Midwest.
• Dana Ford – Missouri State head coach
  • There’s another rising star mid-major coach right there in the Show Me State and that coach is Dana Ford, currently in his fourth year at Missouri State. Ford won 23 games this year and a few years back was able to take Tennessee State to the CIT with a 20-win season (no easy feat). The 37-year old grew up about 350 miles from Columbia in southern Illinois and has spent his entire coaching career in the Midwest.
• Sean Miller – former Arizona head coach
  • Miller will not stay out of coaching long and Missouri might present the perfect win-win situation to bring him back into the game. He has won everywhere and what he did at Arizona would be more than enough right now at Mizzou, where fans will be happy just to get back to the Sweet Sixteen. Miller can take them there.
• Grant McCasland – North Texas head coach
  • McCasland has won 18+ games in all five seasons at North Texas and this year won his second C-USA title. He may be more aligned to a job in Texas but he is another guy who won’t be in the mid-major ranks much longer.
• Kim English – George Mason head coach
  • There are few young coaches that are more universally revered than English, who is still in his first year as a head coach at George Mason. His name has been floated for a number of jobs on the East Coast (where he is from), but Missouri is his alma mater. The major hurdle is experience, as Mizzou will probably want someone with more time as a head coach.
• Chris Jans – New Mexico State head coach
  • With five WAC titles in six years, Jans has New Mexico State absolutely rolling. But he’s also probably taken the Aggies as far as he can, with the ceiling being consistent NCAA Tournaments and the hope to win one game when they get there. Jans is from Iowa and has been around the Midwest his whole life.
• Scott Nagy – Wright State head coach
  • One of the most underrated coaches in the country, Nagy has been quietly collecting wins and championships for the last decade at Wright State and South Dakota State. He’s been to five NCAA Tournament since 2012 (including this year) and hasn’t finished lower than 5th in his league since 2009.
• Ben McCollum – Northwest Missouri State (D-II) head coach
  • McCollum may need to prove himself at the D-I level first before he is ready for a job like Mizzou, but the Northwest Missouri State head coach has been about as successful as one could possibly be at his level. Nine-straight MIAA titles, three D-II National Championships in the last six years and he is only 40 years old. Again, he may be better suited to replace any of the mid-major guys above should they get hired at Missouri. The last time UM hired a star D-II coach, it did not work out well for them.