College Basketball Preview: 5 Coaches Who Could Be on the Hot Seat in 2011-12

As the 2011-12 college basketball season approaches, head coaches and players alike are ready to get it going!

Some teams anticipate challenging for conference titles and deep runs in the NCAA tournament. Other teams are hoping that they can turn things around from a single, disappointing season in 2010-11.

And still other teams wonder if they may be playing in order to help their coach keep his job.

Here are five coaches who could be on the proverbial hot seat.

It's not that they are bad guys or that they haven't had success in the past.

But, if they don't lead their respective teams to a better level of success this year, they could find themselves riding the coaching carousel next spring.

Rick Majerus: St. Louis

Rick Majerus will probably surpass the 500-win mark this coming season.

He has had great success at his various coaching stops at Marquette (56-35), Ball State (43-17), and Utah (323-95) before being hired as the head coach at St. Louis in the spring of 2007.

In four seasons as the Billikens' head coach, though, Majerus has posted a disappointing 69-61 record and has taken SLU to the postseason only once (CBI Finals in 2009-10).

Last season, St. Louis went 12-19 and was tied for tenth in the Atlantic 10 Conference.

SLU doesn't have much of a winning tradition. None of their last four head coaches (Rich Grawer, Charlie Spoonhour, Lorenzo Romar and Brad Soderberg) had a career winning percentage of 60 percent or better either.

With a combination of Majerus' ongoing health issues and his apparent inability to elevate the SLU program to at least the upper-division of the A-10, could this be his final year on the St. Louis sidelines?    

Craig Robinson: Oregon State

Being the brother of the First Lady, Michelle Obama, must have some serious upside.

If Craig Robinson doesn't get things going in a different direction up in Corvalis, he might need to ask his brother-in-law for a job.

After going 18-18 in Robinson's first season (winning the CBI Championship), the Beavers won 14 games in 2009-10, and then only 11 games this past year.

In five years as a head coach (two years at Brown before coming to Oregon State), Robinson has an overall record of only 74-85.

While the seat may not be hot yet for the Princeton grad, it sure might be getting a little warm. 

Stan Heath: South Florida

Back in the late 1990's, Stan Heath was one of the "hot, young head coaching prospects" as he served on Tom Izzo's staff at Michigan State.

In 2001, Heath was hired by Kent State, where he led the Golden Flashes to a 30-6 record, a Mid-American Conference championship and tournament title.

Kent State came within a victory of reaching the Final Four.

Heath used his success at Kent State to move after one year to take the head coaching position at Arkansas.

In five seasons, Heath led the Razorbacks to a 82-71 record.

Heath was then off to Tampa and the University of South Florida. In four seasons, he has posted a 43-62 record, only taking them to the postseason (2010 NIT) one time.

Last season, USF went 10-23 (3-15, 15th place in the Big East).

Even though the Bulls return most of their players from last season, without landing any big-time recruits for 2011-12, the outlook doesn't look good for Heath and USF.  

Jim Christian: TCU

Jim Christian has been the head coach at TCU since 2008.

Before coming to TCU, Christian had great success at Kent State, where the Golden Flashes put up six consecutive seasons of twenty or more wins, with four Mid American Conference East Division titles, and two overall MAC titles.

His teams appeared in the NCAA Tournament twice and the NIT three times.

As Christian was hired at TCU, ESPN College Basketball Analyst Jay Bilas stated, "When you watch Christian's team play, you see just how good of a coach he really is.

I have been surprised that someone hasn't plucked him out of Kent State sooner, but this was a tremendous hire by TCU and one that will pay dividends for them in the near future."

However, in Christian's three seasons in Fort Worth, the Horned frogs are 38-58 in the Mountain West Conference.

Early last year, they beat SMU, Houston, USC and Texas Tech, appearing to be on their way.

But, overall, they went 11-22, only winning one of their sixteen conference games.

With TCU moving to the outrageously competitive Big East Conference starting next year, Jim Christian has this year to prove that he can move the program forward or he will be keeping up with the Horned Frogs from a distance. 

Tom Crean: Indiana

Tom Crean may be the college basketball coach of a major program who has the hottest seat.

After nine successful years at Marquette (190-96, making it to the postseason in all but one season), Crean came to Indiana to try to get the Hoosiers back on track.

To say "that has not happened yet" would be a huge understatement.

In three years under Crean's leadership, IU has gone 28-66 overall and has only won eight of 54 Big Ten games.

Indiana has been in 11th place two of his three years.

This past season, in order to build a better win total, Indiana played such "elite-level programs" as Florida Gulf Coast, Mississippi Valley State, North Carolina Central, Northwestern State, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville and South Carolina State (Can you name a single player on any of these teams? I cannot). 

These six games accounted for half of the Hoosiers' '10-11 victories

That's not exactly how they used to do things down in Bloomington, is it?

While Crean has had some recruiting success as of late, he'd better convert those off-court achievements into on-court W's—fast!