Men's College Basketball Coaches on the Hot Seat Late in 2025-26 Season
As conference play in men's college basketball continues to heat up, so, too, are the seats of several head coaches of teams that simply are not as good as they expected/used to be.
Last offseason's coaching carousel was busy, per usual. For the second consecutive year, 15 of the 79 (19 percent) major-conference schools entered this season with a new head coach.
Granted, not all of those were firings. Steven Pearl replaced his abruptly retiring father at Auburn. Kevin Willard left for the Villanova opening, Buzz Williams filled his seat at Maryland and Bucky McMillan backfilled Williams at Texas A&M. And Richard Pitino only ended up at Xavier because Sean Miller bolted for Texas.
But there were plenty of Kyle Neptune, Mike Woodson and Kevin Keatts situations where the hot seat claimed a victim.
So, as most of us shiver our way through another January, which major-conference coaches are starting to sweat from the inferno burning under their rumps?
After a slew of "honorable mentions," the nine likeliest-to-be-fired coaches are presented in alphabetical order by school.
11 'Honorable' Mentions
1 of 10
Bubble Trouble
Jamie Dixon, TCU (189-133, four NCAA tournament appearances)
Thad Matta, Butler (84-68, zero NCAA tournament appearances)
Mike Young, Virginia Tech (120-91, two NCAA tournament appearances)
All three of these teams are hovering in the Nos. 45-60 range on KenPom with some hope of making the dance. But it might be the final straw if they don't. It's hard to believe Dixon has been at TCU for a decade at this point, and almost harder to believe that he merely has two first-round victories to show for it.
Where Exactly Is the Money Going?
Jerome Tang, Kansas State (71-52, one NCAA tournament appearance)
Two offseasons ago, Kansas State spent big in NIL to land Coleman Hawkins, Dug McDaniel and Achor Achor. This past offseason, they won the PJ Haggerty sweepstakes while also loading up on up-transfers Abdi Bashir Jr., Nate Johnson and Khamari McGriff. And all they have to show for it is a 26-27 record since the beginning of last season. That Elite Eight run under Tang in 2023 feels like it happened a lifetime ago.
How Much Worse Could It Get?
Earl Grant, Boston College (70-83, zero NCAA tournament appearances)
Tim Miles, San Jose State (59-94, zero NCAA tournament appearances)
David Ragland, Evansville (38-81, zero NCAA tournament appearances)
Michael Schwartz, East Carolina (56-63, zero NCAA tournament appearances)
Joe Scott, Air Force (97-186, zero NCAA tournament appearances)
Wayne Tinkle, Oregon State (170-202, two NCAA tournament appearances)
Drew Valentine, Loyola-Chicago (88-67, one NCAA tournament appearance)
Save for Boston College, all seven of these teams rank well outside the KenPom top 200 and are well on their way to extending a dancing drought to at least four years.
At least Tinkle and Valentine have led their current programs to the NCAA tournament, including Oregon State's improbable run to the Elite Eight in 2021.
Since then, however, the Beavers are nearly 40 games below .500 and have gone from a Pac-12 contender to one of the worst teams in the WCC, while Loyola-Chicago is the worst team in the A-10 by a country mile right now.
Arizona State Sun Devils: Bobby Hurley
2 of 10
Tenure (11th season): 179-160, three NCAA tournament appearances
Here's a fun fact about the NCAA tournament portion of Bobby Hurley's Arizona State tenure: Had the field never expanded from 65 to 68 teams, he never would have made a dance with the Sun Devils.
In each of 2018, 2019 and 2023, they were the second-last at-large team selected, repeatedly sneaking in by the skin of their teeth and having no round-of-32 appearances to show for it.
Up until now, that trio of photo finishes has been enough for Hurley to keep his job, but the worm has definitely turned in Tempe.
Since getting eliminated from the 2023 NCAA tournament, Arizona State has gone 38-47 overall. And since the move from the Pac-12 to the Big 12, the Sun Devils are just 6-21 in league play with two wins over Colorado, two wins over Kansas State, Saturday's home win over Cincinnati and a victory last year over West Virginia that probably cost the Mountaineers their bid.
The Sun Devils used to at least dig in their heels on defense, but they've been a disaster on that end of the floor, recently allowing Houston to surpass 100 points in a game for its first time since December 2021.
Cincinnati Bearcats: Wes Miller
3 of 10
Tenure (fifth season): 92-69, zero NCAA tournament appearances
Cincinnati made the NCAA tournament in each of its final nine seasons under Mick Cronin from 2011-19. Same goes for its final 14 seasons under Bob Huggins from 1992-2005.
So this current trend of repeatedly playing in the NIT/Crown under Wes Miller is unfamiliar territory.
The Bearcats haven't been outright awful by any means. They've ended up top 60 on KenPom in each of the past three years, which is also where they find themselves today.
However, "haven't been outright awful" isn't exactly what Cincinnati's higher-ups had in mind when they handed the keys to Miller five years ago. And though this year's team is defending about as well as it ever did under Cronin or Huggins, it is also threatening to be less efficient on offense than any Bearcats team has been in the KenPom era.
They did have an impressive 79-point showing in the upset of Iowa State, but the Bearcats have been held to 65 points or fewer pretty much every other time they've faced a tournament-caliber foe. (They also managed just 56 points in the reprehensible home loss to Eastern Michigan, though they were without three of their eight main players for that one.)
Reinstating last year's leading scorer Jizzle James 10 games into this season—fresh off a 19-point loss to Georgia—felt like a Hail Mary to spark something on offense. But three of their four lowest point totals of the season came in January as they appear destined to miss the dance yet again.
LSU Tigers: Matt McMahon
4 of 10
Tenure (fourth season): 58-60, zero NCAA tournament appearances
Matt McMahon had one heck of a seven-year run at Murray State, winning nearly 70 percent of games and culminating in a 31-win No. 7 seed in 2022.
Since taking the reins at LSU after Will Wade's abrupt exit, though, things haven't gone nearly as well for McMahon.
Struggling in that first season? Totally understandable. He brought several key players with him from the Racers, but that Tigers roster was gutted, needing to replace all six of the leading scorers.
Even since that rough start, though, LSU has continued to consistently struggle with tournament-caliber competition.
The Tigers have gone 7-42 against KenPom top 50 foes under McMahon—plus, you know, 18 losses outside of that group—and they've been exposed in January after going 12-1 against a nonconference slate on which the second-best win was against DePaul.
One key factor working in McMahon's favor is that he has been able to land both quality recruits and quality transfers. No 5-stars yet, but solid classes on the whole, and goodness knows we've seen teams stick with a coach for arguably a year or two too long for fear of losing that pipeline.
At some point, though, you need quality wins and not just roster building. And if LSU doesn't turn a corner in these next few weeks, they might turn the page.
Memphis Tigers: Penny Hardaway
5 of 10
Tenure (eighth season): 171-78, three NCAA tournament appearances
One year removed from winning 29 games and securing a No. 5 seed in the NCAA tournament, Memphis is sputtering through one of its worst seasons in a long time, putting Penny Hardaway right back on the hot seat.
Save for point guard Dug McDaniel, the offense has been a calamity. Hardaway has been throwing anything and everything at the wall to see if it will stick, with 13 different Tigers starting at least one game. None of it seems to help, though, recently getting pummeled at Tulsa by 17 in what could be a precursor of Memphis' exit in the semifinals of the AAC tournament in about seven weeks' time.
There had already been plenty of off-court problems during Hardaway's time at the helm, but winning at least 20 games in each season helped placate some of those issues—even if all those regular season wins merely amounted to one win in the NCAA tournament.
But this year's team is projected to finish 16-15, which might be the final straw.
There is, however, the added complication of Hardaway's deep-rooted connection to the city of Memphis.
It was hard enough for Georgetown to fire Patrick Ewing a few years ago, and he was merely a star for the program who was born and raised in Jamaica before spending his high school years in Massachusetts. (And Georgetown's on-court product under Ewing was way worse than what Memphis has been this season.) Hardaway, on the other hand, is from Memphis, played at Memphis, coached middle/high school ball in the city before getting the Tigers job and has invested a ton of money into the community.
That said, the Tigers knew when they hired him that they might eventually need to fire him. And maybe this offseason is the inflection point where keeping him becomes more uncomfortable than canning him.
Oklahoma Sooners: Porter Moser
6 of 10
Tenure (fifth season): 85-68, one NCAA tournament appearance
During Porter Moser's time as the head coach of Oklahoma, the Sooners have consistently struggled through a tale of two seasons.
In the nonconference portion of the season, things typically look pretty great. Excluding postseason tournaments, Oklahoma has a 55-10 nonconference record under Moser.
But for the fifth consecutive season, things have taken a serious turn for the worse for the Sooners once they started waging war within their own league. Including the Big 12 and SEC conference tournaments, they've gone 29-56 in-conference.
They darn near threw away what was a 13-0 start to last season, losing 12 of their first 16 SEC games before saving their bacon with three straight wins late in the campaign. Had they not done so, it would have been the program's first tournament drought of at least four years since the 1970s, and may well have been the end of the line for Moser.
Unfortunately, it has been more of the same this year, tied for last place in the SEC and presently saddled with a six-game losing streak.
At this point, Oklahoma is nowhere close to the at-large conversation, and it would take a considerable turn of events for that to change. And unless someone like Bill Self, Rick Barnes or Rick Pitino retires, Oklahoma could be the most coveted opening in this year's coaching carousel.
Pittsburgh Panthers: Jeff Capel
7 of 10
Tenure (eighth season): 122-119, one NCAA tournament appearance
With Jeff Capel, there has been a lot of talk about what is believed to be a steep buyout, if fired without cause. Two summers ago, he was extended through the 2029-30 season, and it would likely cost at least $10M to have him now not coach for the next four seasons.
But at what point does this university instead begin to worry about the buy-in?
The Oakland Zoo used to be one of the better crowd environments in all of college basketball, but I've been to petting zoos that are more raucous than the current standards at the Petersen Events Center.
In year No. 8 of the Capel era, the Panthers have been to one NCAA tournament, just barely making the cut as a play-in team back in 2023.
Pitt has usually been at least competitive in recent seasons, but this year's team is just a hot mess, already losing home games to both Hofstra and Quinnipiac and more recently getting obliterated 100-59 by a Louisville team that was missing both a projected lottery pick (Mikel Brown Jr.) and a key rotation piece (Khani Rooths).
Things got so bad so fast under Kevin Stallings that they might still be worried that the grass isn't always greener on the other side of the hot seat. Capel has also put together a pretty stout recruiting class for next season, and that trio of 4-star players might bail if he's no longer the coach. But those are risks Pitt just about needs to take at this point.
Rutgers Scarlet Knights: Steve Pikiell
8 of 10
Tenure (10th season): 156-151, two NCAA tournament appearances
This one is tough, because Steve Pikiell put Rutgers on the map for the first time in a long time.
The Scarlet Knights hadn't been to the NCAA tournament since 1991 and hadn't appeared in the AP poll since the end of the 1978-79 campaign, but Pikiell ended both of those droughts. He also pulled off the coup of the century in convincing Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper to play there last season. Rutgers had never signed a top-60 recruit before, yet it landed two of the top three in a single year.
Here's the thing, though: That team finished two games below .500 and completely lost its "Pounding Nails" identity on defense.
Rutgers also finished two games below .500 the previous year. And it feels like it would take a small miracle for this year's team—already saddled with a 13-point home loss to Central Connecticut—to even come that close to breaking even.
Coaches typically get a grace period devoid of pink-slip speculation after winning a title, but what's the grace period for twice making the dance as a double-digit seed after a three-decade drought?
Because while Pikiell did temporarily put Piscataway on the map, the Scarlet Knights have stumbled right back into the Big Ten's basement.
Syracuse Orange: Adrian Autry
9 of 10
Tenure (third season): 46-39, zero NCAA tournament appearances
One month into the current campaign, it looked as though Syracuse was finally turning a corner in Adrian Autry's third year at the helm.
The Orange ultimately went 0-3 in the Players Era Festival, but they battled tooth and nail with both Houston and Kansas before coming back home and upsetting Tennessee in the ACC/SEC Challenge.
Since then, though, they've lost at home to Hofstra, suffered an equally embarrassing loss at Boston College, given away a 10-point lead in a home loss to Virginia Tech and haven't picked up a single win worth mentioning.
There's virtually no chance they'll make the NCAA tournament at this point, which is simply unforgivable given the amount of talent on this roster.
And the Syracuse faithful are fed up.
To be sure, when Jim Boeheim retired and Autry got the job, it wasn't quite the "gifted a Rolls Royce" situation that Kyle Neptune inherited at Villanova. If you temporarily ignore what was going to happen in March 2020, the Wildcats had been a No. 6 seed or better in each of Jay Wright's final nine seasons at the helm, while Syracuse had not earned better than a No. 8 seed in any of Boeheim's final nine seasons.
All the same, Syracuse really ought to be a whole lot better than it has been under Autry, and he may well be out after three years just like Neptune.
Wake Forest Demon Deacons: Steve Forbes
10 of 10
Tenure (sixth season): 103-74, zero NCAA tournament appearances
Here's your "Did You Know?" for the day: Wake Forest has not played in the first round of the NCAA tournament since 2010. The Demon Deacons did make the dance once under Danny Manning in 2017, but lost to Kansas State in the First Four.
Is this once-proud program content with just never being nationally relevant again?
Well, if they miss the tournament yet again and stick with Steve Forbes as their head coach in spite of six consecutive misses, I believe you have your answer.
In defense of Forbes, Wake Forest has been relatively close to making the dance in three of the past four years. At any rate, among the teams who consistently haven't made the tournament in recent seasons, we've probably devoted the largest quantity of bracketology words to the Demon Deacons.
But this is neither horseshoes nor hand grenades, and it'd be highly unusual for a major-conference program to bring a coach back for a seventh season when he whiffed on his first six. Even DePaul has consistently pulled the plug after five or six fruitless seasons.
Worth noting: Chris Paul is available now, if he even wants to try his hand at coaching? Maybe he could recruit some guys from that Team CP3 AAU squad.
