NCAA Basketball Coaches on the Hot Seat at the Start of the 2014-15 Season

Every season, we see the fins circling various coaches around college basketball. The firing-squad sharks smell blood in the water, and several boats look very leaky.

Proud programs starved for recent success don't like to make decisions rashly, but the eight coaches listed here have all had nearly a full roster cycle—three or more seasons—to show some progress.

Whether they've failed to pull a school out of its doldrums or slipped back into the muck after a brief period of success, none are considered locks to reach this year's NCAA tournament, and therefore aren't locks to be coaching in the same place next season.

These coaches' teams will be interesting to watch this year—if only to watch the ax fall in slow motion.

Coaches are listed alphabetically.

Tom Crean, Indiana

Darron Cummings/Associated Press

Elite college athletic programs will usually shrug off some measure of player misbehavior if those athletes are producing plenty of wins. Indiana basketball is certainly an elite program—and players have been misbehaving this offseason—but there has not been nearly enough winning.

Coach Tom Crean has presided over several highly rated recruiting classes, but the more recent additions to his roster caused him no end of stress in 2014.

Forward Hanner Mosquera-Perea was arrested for OWI in February. Guards Yogi Ferrell and Stanford Robinson were arrested in April for allegedly using fake IDs to enter a bar. More recently, sophomore forward Devin Davis suffered serious injuries when he was struck by teammate Emmitt Holt's car, mere days before Robinson and sophomore classmate Troy Williams were suspended for failing drug tests.

While Crean did a superb job in restoring an Indiana program that was left a smoking crater by predecessor Kelvin Sampson, the upward trend stalled out when a No. 1 NCAA seed led by Cody Zeller and Victor Oladipo could only reach the Sweet 16. Last year's Hoosiers, led by former McDonald's All-Americans Ferrell and Noah Vonleh, couldn't earn any postseason bid at all.

All the bad off-court publicity pales in comparison to the dissatisfaction of Hoosier fans with the 2013 Sweet 16 loss and last year's 17-15 record. This season's Hoosiers have a loaded backcourt (led by Ferrell) and another McDonald's game selection, James Blackmon Jr., but the front line is not of Big Ten quality.

A return to the field of 68 is far from certain, but that may be what it takes for Crean to avoid reprisal for insufficient control of his players. Five different players committing substance-related offenses in nine months is more than most programs will tolerate, especially if the team isn't contending for conference titles.

Brian Gregory, Georgia Tech

David Goldman/Associated Press

By a coach's fourth year in a job, he should have a roster full of his own recruits—players who have settled in together as part of the coach's system. Georgia Tech head coach Brian Gregory has no such luxury. Player departures and underachievement have forced him to dig into the transfer market, stitching together a patchwork roster and hoping to rebound from a 43-52 record in his first three years.

Contending in the ACC is harder than ever now that former Big East programs Syracuse, Pitt and Louisville are entrenched alongside the usual Tobacco Road titans. But that's what the proud Georgia Tech program expects.

This year's Tech team has a potential star in Marcus Georges-Hunt, but will otherwise rely on freshmen (like guard Tadric Jackson) and transfers (like ex-Ole Miss big man Demarco Cox and East Carolina import Robert Sampson). Neither of the latter two was a star at his previous school.

The Yellow Jackets haven't missed five straight NCAA tournaments since Bobby Cremins ended a 24-year drought in 1985. Sitting out the 2015 event would make four straight under Gregory.

If the Jackets can't crack the ACC's crowded middle tier and at least earn an NIT berth, the only thing that saves Gregory's job may be the school's reluctance to dive into another contract buyout while still handsomely paying predecessor Paul Hewitt. Hewitt endured four losing seasons in his last six, but he also steered Tech to a national runner-up finish in 2004.

Gregory has no deep tournament run or exorbitant buyout clause to hold as a trump card.

Steve Lavin, St. John's

Seth Wenig/Associated Press

In January of this year, Ken Pomeroy took a more detailed look at St. John's—a team that nearly every national analyst continually described as one of the country's most talented.

While the Red Storm may have had highly ranked recruits—particularly in the 2011 class led by Moe Harkless, Phil Greene, D'Angelo Harrison and Sir'Dominic Pointer—those players still have never formed the core of a particularly cohesive offensive team, let alone one that could make the NCAA tournament.

Coach Steve Lavin hasn't had trouble drawing hyped recruits to New York City in the years since, but a tournament bid still eludes him. Now, those first recruits are all seniors (except Harkless, who went pro after one season).

Those veterans, along with sophomore point guard Rysheed Jordan, have the opportunity to contend in a muddled Big East if a shaky frontcourt can produce. If it can't, the Johnnies will once again have little to show for all those recruiting service stars. No one doubts Lavin's ability to attract gifted athletes, but St. John's may need a coach who can turn high school stars into college players.

Oliver Purnell, DePaul

John Minchillo/Associated Press

Oliver Purnell built winning teams at Old Dominion, Dayton and Clemson, winning four regular-season conference titles and making six NCAA tournaments. The program at DePaul, however, may be beyond even Purnell's powers of resuscitation.

DePaul squanders its prime location by playing games at the outlying Allstate Arena in Rosemont, 15 miles from downtown Chicago. A new arena at McCormick Place will put Blue Demons games closer to downtown, but it's not expected to open until 2016 at the earliest.

Unless DePaul storms to its first winning season since 2006-07, Purnell isn't likely to have that kind of time. He lost two of the school's top-seven all-time scorers in Cleveland Melvin and Brandon Young, and he is now relying on sophomores Billy Garrett Jr. and Tommy Hamilton to replace some of that production.

Even with Melvin and Young, Purnell has only led the Blue Demons to a 9-63 conference record. That sort of futility will get anyone fired, even the seemingly Teflon-coated Purnell. He's been a head coach continuously since 1988, but could he land another job immediately if DePaul gives him the boot?

Lorenzo Romar, Washington

Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

Lorenzo Romar's accomplishments at Washington are impressive. He's made six NCAA tournaments, won two Pac-12 regular-season titles, claimed three conference tournament titles and produced 12 NBA players.

So what in the name of Nate Robinson has been going on the past three seasons? The Huskies have slumped to a 35-31 record over the past two years. The season before that, UW was left out of the NCAA tournament despite winning one of those regular-season titles noted above.

Attendance is slumping, players are transferring out and Romar may be running out of time. The Huskies aren't projected to finish among the top half of the Pac-12. Despite a talented backcourt duo of Nigel Williams-Goss and Andrew Andrews, the frontcourt has little in the way of proven production. Last season's defense was horrible, and improvement may arrive slowly (if at all).

The hope in Seattle is that Romar can continue his career's odd roller-coaster pattern. Since 2000, Romar's teams at Saint Louis and Washington have alternated multiyear NCAA droughts with multiyear streaks of relevancy. He has never missed the tournament four straight years, but he's sitting on three right now.

The bar is high at Washington, but Romar's the one who set it there. Now, can he get back up to it?

Herb Sendek, Arizona State

Jeffrey Phelps/Associated Press

As Herb Sendek enters his ninth season at Arizona State, he closely resembles a cat that's used up a few of its proverbial nine lives.

After his first NCAA bid in 2009, Sendek and the Sun Devils had to wait five years to get back, enduring a pair of losing seasons in the process. That tournament team lost top scorers Jeff Pendergraph and James Harden, which is similar to this season's need to replace stars Jahii Carson, Jermaine Marshall and Jordan Bachynski.

Sendek has turned to junior college transfers, a breed that he never landed in his tenure at NC State. The reliance on two-year players makes the future volatile in Tempe, even as Sendek attempts to ensure that his program keeps its head above water.

The top half of the Pac-12 should be strong enough to at least figure in the bubble conversation, and that's Sendek's goal. The university granted him a raise and an extension in September, but it wasn't for the purpose of letting the program drop 20 games again, as it did in 2011-12. Sendek is another coach who at least needs his team to appear in the NIT.

Mark Turgeon, Maryland

Gerry Broome/Associated Press

When a coach faces stress about his future, moving to a new conference can sometimes provide a boost. When that conference is the Big Ten, however, the only guarantee is more angst.

Maryland's Mark Turgeon went to four straight NCAA tournaments at Texas A&M, but he's 0-of-4 as the top Terrapin. Last season's team regressed from 25 wins to 17, then saw five players—all important recruits—transfer out.

True to his history, Turgeon has landed more-than-capable replacements—247Sports ranked the Terps' class No. 14 in the nation—but he'll immediately be relying on some of them. Unless you're John Calipari, building largely around newcomers is a dicey proposition.

The Terps do have the talent to contend for a top-four finish in their powerful new league, but they could just as easily struggle to a 10th-place finish and miss yet another NCAA tournament. Turgeon may get one more year as a nod to the difficulty of the transition, but the pressure could be unbearable for all concerned next season.

Kevin Willard, Seton Hall

Frank Franklin II/Associated Press

Like Mark Turgeon, Kevin Willard has a very talented freshman class coming to Seton Hall. Led by McDonald's All-American Isaiah Whitehead, the group actually places No. 12—two spots ahead of Maryland—in 247Sports' rankings.

Recruiting bonanzas can be a life-saver for a beleaguered coach, but they can also grease the skids to send him out the door.

UCLA's Ben Howland was done in after landing an elite class, even though he won 25 games and a Pac-12 regular-season title. Willard's Pirates may be projected to finish in the top half of the Big East, but if not, he doesn't have Howland's three straight Final Fours to point to as evidence that his system can work.

Willard struck a package deal to land hyped shooting guard Whitehead, but in doing so, he may have given away his power in the locker room. Assistant coach Dwayne "Tiny" Morton was hired as an inducement to get Whitehead to commit, according to CBS Sports' Gary Parrish.

Two of Whitehead's high school teammates also came to Seton Hall, so that's a substantial chunk of the roster that grew up playing for Morton. If the season goes sideways early, the Pirates could spend a month or two being ravaged by internal power struggles. By then, Willard—who has had only one winning season in four—may be praying for the ax to fall.

For more from Scott on college basketball, check out The Back Iron. Now playing: the Opening Weekend Extravaganza, featuring Scott's preseason top 25 and All-American selections.

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