Men's College Basketball Coaches on the Hot Seat Late in 2023-24 Season
The Kenny Payne era at Louisville has been nothing but pain for the Cardinals faithful, but Payne is far from the only power-conference coach who will be coaching for his job over the course of the 50ish days remaining until Selection Sunday.
Payne tops the list with a preposterously poor .200 winning percentage in his year-and-a-half on the job, but we've ranked the nine coaches most perilously perched on the chopping block, in ascending order of how likely it is they get the ax.
"Why nine?" you might be asking. "I prefer nice round numbers like 10."
Well, it was a top 10 with DePaul's Tony Stubblefield at No. 3 on the list, but the Blue Demons already fired him with a 3-15 record on Monday. You don't see a whole lot of in-season firings in college basketball unless it's for some sort of scandal, but clearly DePaul had seen enough. (The Blue Demons are currently 279th on KenPom. No other power-conference team is outside the top 200.)
And if you count the four "honorable" mentions, it's actually a top 13, which is how many power-conference coaching changes there have been on average over the past three offseason cycles.
Records are current through the start of play Tuesday.
'Honorable' Mentions
1 of 10
Brad Brownell, Clemson: Three weeks ago, it looked like Brownell was going to avoid the chopping block yet again in his 14th season with Clemson. But the Tigers have crashed and burned in ACC play. If that continues and they miss the dance, it might finally be time to cut ties with the long-tenured coach who has just two NCAA tournament wins.
Johnny Dawkins, UCF: Dawkins' Knights have already embraced the role of spoiler in the Big 12, upsetting both Kansas and Texas after doing nothing good in nonconference play. But Dawkins is in year No. 8 at UCF and has just one Tacko Fall-fueled NCAA tournament appearance to show for it. And the program might have less patience now that it's in a power conference.
Bobby Hurley, Arizona State: It's hard to believe this is year No. 9 in Tempe for Hurley. Wasn't he just coaching at Buffalo like two years ago? In those first eight years with the Sun Devils, though, Hurley has three NCAA tournament appearances, all as one of the "Last Four In" and none resulting in a trip to the Round of 32. A narrow miss this year might be enough to save his job, but anything close to a .500 record might be the end.
Rodney Terry, Texas: The Longhorns simply had to hire Terry after the job he did last season taking over for Chris Beard. But the honeymoon is over, and Texas has a lot of work to do to get back into the NCAA tournament conversation. They do have a really strong recruiting class lined up, though, so he'll probably get at least one more year to see if he can build a program.
9. Jeff Capel, Pittsburgh
2 of 10
2023 Record: 11-7
Season on the Job: Sixth
Overall Record: 86-88 (No. 11 seed in 2023 NCAA tournament)
Jeff Capel saved his job by sneaking into the dance and even winning a pair of tournament games last year.
But how much of a grace period did that actually buy him?
And did the road win over short-handed Duke extend that grace period?
Because prior to that game this past weekend, the Panthers were winless in seven tries against KenPom Top 125 competition this season. And even after that marquee victory, Capel still has a sub-.500 record during his six years there.
Pitt did need to replace four of its five leading scorers from last season, and losing top recruit Papa Kante to a season-ending knee injury in September is a very noteworthy asterisk on this disappointing campaign.
Still, there's enough talent on the roster to be better than this, yet it looks like the Panthers are on their way back to the "borderline top 100 team" that they were in their first three years under Capel.
Capel does at least recruit reasonably well, but it's not like Pitt would be saying goodbye to 5-star guys if it gives him a pink slip. Per 247 Sports, the Panthers haven't signed a 5-star recruit since Steven Adams in the 2012 class, and they don't even have a 4-star guy signed yet for next season.
Could be a good time for a clean break if they don't claw their way back into the mix for an at-large bid.
8. Chris Holtmann, Ohio State
3 of 10
2023 Record: 13-5
Season on the Job: Seventh
Overall Record: 136-80 (Four NCAA tournament appearances, no Sweet 16s)
Of the coaches in this top 10, Chris Holtmann has had the most success. And with the exception of Juwan Howard at Michigan, no one is particularly close. Holtmann has led the Buckeyes to four NCAA tournaments, won at least 20 games in each of his first five seasons and has an overall winning percentage of .630.
But his teams have also had a bad habit of falling apart in the second half of the season, and they only have three first-round wins to show for those four trips to the dance.
In 2018-19, Ohio State started out 12-1, only to go 8-14 the rest of the way. It wasn't quite that bad the following year, but that 11-1 start gave way to a 10-9 finish. In 2020-21, the Buckeyes lost their final four games of the regular season before getting stunned by Oral Roberts in a 15-over-2 upset. And last year, they started 10-3 before losing 14 out of their next 15 games.
It just seems like they're always falling short of what they could/should be.
And they ran Thad Matta out of town for much less than this. Matta went 18-9 in the NCAA tournament with the Buckeyes and had an overall winning percentage of .733, but it only took two disappointing years for them to give him the boot.
If Holtmann misses the tournament this year—the Buckeyes aren't all that close to the at-large conversation with just one remotely good win at the moment—that would be two in a row and maybe the final straw.
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7. Wayne Tinkle, Oregon State
4 of 10
2023 Record: 9-9
Season on the Job: 10th
Overall Record: 136-167 (Two NCAA tournaments, surprise run to 2021 Elite Eight as a No. 12 seed)
The big unknown regarding Wayne Tinkle's job security at Oregon State is what exactly the administration expects from its men's basketball team.
At most major-conference programs, Tinkle would've been gone a long time ago. The Beavers went 5-27 in 2017. And in the first two years after that stunning 2021 Pac-12 tournament title and subsequent run to the Elite Eight, they went 14-49. In all three of those years, they ended up outside the top 200 on KenPom.
But we're talking about a major-conference program that had missed the NCAA tournament in 24 consecutive years before hiring Tinkle, and one that has not spent a single week in the AP poll since the end of the 1989-90 season.
Yes, he's 31 games below .500 in his decade at the helm, but at least he's had five winning seasons. They had a grand total of two winning seasons from 1990-2014.
They just might be content to let him come back for an 11th season.
But if they were to finish in dead last in a Pac-12 conference that isn't exactly going out with a bang, a changing of the guard would be justified.
6. Juwan Howard, Michigan
5 of 10
2023 Record: 7-11
Season on the Job: Fourth
Overall Record: 86-59 (Elite Eight as No. 1 seed in 2021; Sweet 16 as No. 11 seed in 2022)
If the Michigan Wolverines were simply sputtering through a down year on the court, Juwan Howard probably doesn't even crack the top 10 here.
He would've made the NCAA tournament in 2020, and he did make it to the second weekend in both 2021 and 2022. Though Michigan missed the cut last season, it was a top-50 team that just suffered too many agonizingly close losses. And it's not Howard's fault that Caleb Love didn't meet the academic standards to transfer into Michigan this past offseason, leaving the team stuck between a rock and a hard place when he decommitted in late May.
But between Dug McDaniel's bizarre "road games" suspension, Howard's confrontation with Michigan's strength coach last month and his decision to let Phil Martelli coach the game against Penn State in his old stomping grounds of Philadelphia, this has gone from an "oh well, we'll get 'em next year" sort of letdown for Michigan to the most high-profile "what in the world is going on there?" disaster in the country.
Because of those factors, No. 7 might even feel too low for Howard, who has been the first coach mentioned in any hot-seat discussions in recent weeks.
To some extent, Michigan's decision hinges on how poorly the rest of the season goes. KenPom has the Wolverines projected to finish at 11-20, which would probably be grounds for termination, even if it means risking losing a major commitment from top-30 recruit Khani Rooths.
But if they can go 6-6 down the stretch and pick up a couple of quality wins along the way, maybe they let their Fab Five coach come back for another year.
5. Mike Boynton, Oklahoma State
6 of 10
2023 Record: 8-10
Season on the Job: Seventh
Overall Record: 115-99 (One NCAA tournament appearance and victory as a No. 4 seed in 2021)
Save for that one big year with No. 1 recruit and eventual No. 1 pick Cade Cunningham running the show, it has been tough sledding for Mike Boynton at Oklahoma State.
Take that 2021 outlier out of the equation and the Cowboys are basically a .500 team with no NCAA tournament appearances.
Realistically, Boynton might have needed to make the tournament this year to save his job. And opening the year with a home loss to Abilene Christian put a serious damper on that plan in a hurry.
At this point, this year's team is the worst Oklahoma State has been in a long, long time.
Per KenPom, the Pokes are 115th-best in the nation and have not previously finished a year outside the top 100 in the history of the site, which dates back to 1997.
They are projected to finish 11-20, which would be their worst winning percentage since 1987—when a young man by the name of Leonard Hamilton struggled in his first season as a head coach.
Boynton even put together a pretty solid recruiting class this year, featuring top-50 talents Eric Dailey and Brandon Garrison. But having those young stars in the starting lineup hasn't done much good for a team that realistically could go 0-18 in Big 12 play.
4. Mike Hopkins, Washington
7 of 10
2023 Record: 11-8
Season on the Job: Seventh
Overall Record: 112-99 (One NCAA tournament appearance and victory as a No. 9 seed in 2019)
When Jim Boeheim's long-time right-hand man first took the job at Washington, things were looking great. Replacing Lorenzo Romar after a 9-22 disaster in 2016-17, Mike Hopkins immediately won 21 games in his first season. He proceeded to win 27 games in year No. 2, getting the Huskies to the NCAA tournament for the first time in eight years.
Since that hot start, though, it has been painful mediocrity in Seattle, finishing the past four seasons at a combined 16 games below .500.
Most of that losing was contained to the 5-21 disaster in 2020-21, but Washington simply has not been good in a while, winning either 15, 16 or 17 games in each of the other three seasons.
The real shame was going 15-17 in 2019-20 with two first-round picks (Isaiah Stewart and Jaden McDaniels) on the roster. They could have canned Hopkins right then and there and we would've understood.
But here we are four years later, the team is just as bad and the recruiting pull is a far cry from what it used to be.
Washington does have a big commitment from Zoom Diallo in next year's class. The school might want to make sure he'll still join the team even if it fires Hopkins. But Washington also has the second-oldest roster in the nation, per KenPom, practically overflowing with graduate seniors who will be out of the equation a few months from now.
Throw in the transition from Pac-12 to the Big Ten and they might as well just fully hit the reset button with a new head coach.
3. Jerry Stackhouse, Vanderbilt
8 of 10
2023 Record: 5-13
Season on the Job: Fifth
Overall Record: 66-82 (no NCAA tournaments)
Toward the end of last season, it looked like Vanderbilt finally had something brewing again, winning at least 22 games for the first time since 2012. The Commodores didn't make the NCAA tournament, but they improved from 3-13 in SEC play to 7-11 to 11-7 in the span of three years. They also brought back two of their best players from last season in Tyrin Lawrence and Ezra Manjon.
All of that positive momentum whiffed out the window, though.
Vanderbilt opened this season with an awful home loss to Presbyterian and has as many wins over teams in the KenPom top 300 as it has losses to teams outside the top 300 (one of each).
The 'Dores did have some seriously close calls against Memphis and Alabama and mostly have been able to avoid getting relentlessly destroyed in their losses.
Still, they are a mess, and they now have a fifth-year head coach who is 16 games below .500 for his career.
The Commodores do have the "Who are you even going to get?" problem if they do move on from Jerry Stackhouse. It's one of the toughest high-major jobs in the country, in part because of the high academic standards to get into Vanderbilt and in part because the rest of the SEC is so loaded with quality coaches. Kevin Stallings did great for a while at Vandy, but it feels like it would take an awful lot to get this program back to where it was in the 2007-12 timeframe.
The better question to be asking, though, might be "How much worse can it really get?"
If they can walk across the street to Belmont and talk Casey Alexander into taking the job, that could be a home run of a hire. At least the 'Dores would finally be able to put some points on the board for a change.
[I hope they keep Stackhouse forever, though. Because in a world now overflowing with coaches wearing quarter-zips on the sideline, at least Stackhouse is dressed to the nines on a nightly basis.]
2. Jerod Haase, Stanford
9 of 10
2023 Record: 10-8
Season on the Job: Eighth
Overall Record: 122-117 (no NCAA tournaments)
At a certain point, enough has to be enough, right?
Going on eight years without a single NCAA tournament appearance under Jerod Haase is bad enough on its own, but it's not even like the program is in any better shape than it was when he first got the gig, basically just hovering at .500 basketball year after year.
Penn State was content to keep both Ed DeChellis and Pat Chambers around after missing the tournament for each of their first seven seasons at the helm, but at least they went from "dumpster fire" to "not half bad" under the former and recruited a whole lot better (and eventually started playing better) under the latter.
That simply isn't the case at Stanford, though.
And now that the Cardinal are about to make the transition from the Pac-12 to the ACC, there's no time like the present to start anew at head coach, as well.
To his credit, Haase has gotten a surprising amount of highly rated recruits to play in Palo Alto. Getting that one year of Ziaire Williams was quite the coup, even though the eventual lottery pick was a bust with the Cardinal (and in the NBA). Haase also had 5-star Harrison Ingram for two years, who is now playing a massive role at North Carolina. Plenty of other top-100 talent went to Stanford, too.
None of it mattered.
The only year they would've even sniffed the tournament was in 2020, and that team completely collapsed after a 15-2 start, going 5-10 down the stretch to drop out of the conversation.
Fittingly, the Cardinal are projected to go 15-15 overall and 10-10 in Pac-12 play in what should be Haase's last ride.
1. Kenny Payne, Louisville
10 of 10
2023 Record: 6-12
Season on the Job: Second
Overall Record: 10-40 (no NCAA tournaments)
Unless there's some sort of a scandal that results in a "with cause" termination, it takes a pretty serious disaster for a coach to get fired after just two years on the job.
We're talking a "Kevin Stallings going winless in the ACC in his second season at Pitt" disaster, or a "Billy Gillespie struggling for two years at Kentucky right before John Calipari became available" disaster.
And we are pretty clearly at that point in the Kenny Payne era of Louisville basketball.
Payne did inherit a big mess from Chris Mack, but going 4-28 in that first season was still beyond inexcusable. And while the road win over Miami was a fun little surprise earlier this month, that doesn't even begin to salvage a season that included home losses to Chattanooga and Arkansas State, as well as a loss to DePaul in the battle of the worst major-conference teams in the country.
Payne put together a mighty fine recruiting class for this season, second only to Duke in the ACC as far as 247 Sports is concerned. But those freshmen haven't amounted to much, and the Cardinals might have the worst recruiting class in the entire ACC next year—though that is largely a product of only having one senior making any sort of meaningful contributions this season.
Barring an unforeseeable 180 in which Louisville wins at least half of its remaining games and gives the administration some reason to believe there's hope here, Louisville will be moving on to its fifth coach in less than a decade.
Recruit rankings via 247Sports.
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