Indiana Basketball Coach Search: Big Names Not Coaching in NCAA Tournament

Timing is an important thing in sports, especially when it comes to coaching hires. 

A candidate could seem like a great fit, but their career path may not align with certain openings. Some fans wish Indiana would have moved on from coach Mike Woodson a year earlier so it could have hired Michigan’s Dusty May, an Indiana alum. Auburn coach Bruce Pearl is on record that Indiana was his dream job years ago, but there’s no good reason for him to leave a program where he’s earned the No. 1 overall seed.

Indiana’s latest coaching search was always going to follow a certain timeline. Though it announced on Feb. 7 that Mike Woodson would step down, Indiana was never going to announce a coaching hire before the season's end. Well, that came somewhat abruptly Sunday, as Indiana was left out of the tournament field in a bit of a surprise. The Hoosiers won’t play in the NIT or the College Basketball Crown. It’s coach search and transfer portal time in Bloomington.

The timing gave the CBS Selection Sunday show a different tone from an Indiana perspective as focus shifted from the tournament snub to thoughts of the Hoosiers’ next coach. The season is over, and Indiana could theoretically hire as soon as it wants any coach who’s not participating in the tournament. 

That made it hard to ignore one member of the CBS Selection Sunday show – former Villanova coach-turned analyst Jay Wright. Other national champion coaches who’ve left the college game, such as former Virginia coach Tony Bennett and Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan, came to mind. We wrote about Darian DeVries’ candidacy weeks ago and again Tuesday, and he fits that bill after West Virginia was the first team out of the tournament. 

Each of those four situations are a bit different, but they share the fact that Indiana wouldn’t have to wait to hire them. That’s part of the advantage it gained by starting the search in February.

Let’s start with Wright. He left Villanova after the 2021-22 season, so he’s been out of coaching for three full seasons now. But over the previous decade, he was arguably the sport’s best coach. Wright led Villanova to national championships in 2016 and 2018, and he went out with a Final Four run in 2022. The Wildcats won seven Big East titles in Wright’s last nine seasons, including six years with 29-plus wins. He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2021.

Wright surprisingly retired in 2022, saying that he didn’t have the edge he had earlier in his career. Now 63, he may be content to end his career as a television analyst, and Indiana may prefer a younger option. But maybe time away from the game has him feeling re-energized and motivated to return to coaching?

A key factor to keep in mind with Wright is that he left coaching right as the transfer portal and NIL started to become prominent aspects of college basketball. It’d be important to Indiana to evaluate his feelings toward the portal and NIL, as that simply can’t be ignored. 

That’s also the case with Bennett, who Dick Vitale suggested Indiana should hire. When he retired out of the blue before the 2024-25 season, he said he supported players’ rights to receive revenue but cited the lack of structure and rules around the transfer portal and NIL. Bennett, 55, won the national title in 2019, before NIL existed and at a time when transferring was less frequent. He also won two ACC titles in his last four seasons but did not win a tournament game after the national title run.

Donovan has been in the NBA since 2015, even further removed from modern college basketball. But like Wright and Bennett, he was a top coach in the nation during his prime. Donovan, 59, won back-to-back national championships with Florida in 2006 and 2007, and his final five seasons from 2010-15 included a Final Four run and three additional Elite Eight appearances. The Bulls are just 185-201 under Donovan, though that could be attributed mostly to front office failures in the draft, free agency and trade market.

It’s become more and more common in college basketball to hire general managers whose responsibilities revolve around the transfer portal and NIL, in order to give the head coach more time to focus simply on coaching. Setting up Wright, Bennett or Donovan with that model could be an appealing way to lure them back to college, given Indiana’s strong NIL resources.