Ranking the coaching hires for the 2026-2027 men's hoops season

One of the most shocking offseason moves was Randy Bennett leaving Saint Mary's after 25 seasons to head east to Arizona State. It is quite a move for a 64-year-old coach who made his roots with the Gaels and helped build a consistent NCAA tournament program. Bennett is an Arizona native who grew up in Mesa and has turned down bigger jobs to stay at Saint Mary's... so it's interesting to see what he does with the Sun Devils. Bobby Hurley saw some success early on before it faded away, and Bennett will make a major jump from the West Coast Conference (which now has no Gonzaga) to the Big 12. 

This is a massive departure from the way Carolina basketball has operated for nearly 70 years -- hiring a head coach with no ties to the program. After firing former player and five-year head coach Hubert Davis after five seasons and missing on some high-profile college targets, the Tar Heels went outside the box, not only for them but for most college programs. Michael Malone is an NBA coach who hasn't coached in college in decades. He is a coaching lifer from a coaching family who has won at the highest level in the sport (the 2023 NBA championship with the Denver Nuggets). But he hasn't been around college for decades, and adjusting from coaching NBA MVPs to coaching and recruiting 18-year-olds will take some time.

It is a bit of a risky move for a couple of reasons: Can he coach college kids? Will the Carolina Family fully embrace him? Will this be another Bill Belichick situation for the school? So far it seems that he's rallied the fans and program behind him and, ultimately, winning will be what the fans truly want. 

Will Wade to LSU, Part II. Wade coached the Tigers for five seasons before an FBI investigation and scandals left the program reeling and led to his firing. He has worked his way back up the coaching ladder, with a strong two-season run at McNeese State (NCAA tournament bids in both seasons and a first-round win in 2025) and a decent season at NC State last year. LSU knows what they are signing up for with Wade -- a very confident coach who is willing to think "outside the box" when building his team. Wade certainly has his haters (see: NC State fans), and the pairing of him and Lane Kiffin as the faces of LSU athletics may rub some the wrong way, but he did have success in Baton Rouge his first time around (LSU won an SEC regular season title) despite the cloud of the FBI hanging over him and the program. 

Chris Mack is another coach working his way back up the coaching ladder. He reached power-conference status with Xavier and Louisville before losing his job with the Cardinals over controversies involving his coaching staff. He's spent the last two seasons at Charleston, going 45-20 and finishing in the top three of the CAA both years. He heads to South Florida as the fifth head coach in five seasons with the Bulls. South Florida is coming off an American Conference tournament championship and an NCAA tournament bid. 

Ben Jacobson leaves Northern Iowa after 20 years to help Utah State launch a new Pac-12. He took the Panthers to five NCAA tournaments, including last year as Missouri Valley champion. Utah State has been successful with their recent coaching hires -- maybe too successful. Jacobson replaces Jerrod Calhoun, who leaves the Aggies for Cincinnati. Calhoun replaced Danny Sprinkle, who left Utah State after one season to take over the Washington Huskies. Sprinkle replaced Ryan Odom, who left after two seasons for VCU (and is now at Virginia). Odom replaced Craig Smith, who left for Utah.

Jacobson, whose coaching career is best known for Northern Iowa's Sweet 16 run in 2010 and an upset win over No. 1 seed Kansas, is a great hire for the Aggies. He's shown an ability to not only have success where he's been, but also a desire to be there long-term. 

St. Bonaventure has had coaching stability as Mark Schmidt retired from the Bonnies after a 19 year run. In comes Mike MacDonald, who has won over 500 games at Canisius, Division III, Medaille, and USCAA, and Division II, Daemen. At Daemen, he went 265-86 ... including 61-3 over the past two seasons and 32-0 in East Coast Conference play. The Atlantic 10 is a step up from the ECC, but he's a coaching lifer in western New York. He graduated from St. Bonnie, knows the area, knows the people, and knows the connections. He is a seven-time conference coach of the year and won the 2015 USCAA national championship at Daemen. What may work against him is his time at Canisius -- his only previous experience at the D-I level -- where he went 108-153 over nine seasons. St. Bonaventure is banking on his growth since then and the power he developed Daemen into.

Casey Alexander will be tasked with bringing stability to Kansas State after the ugly end to the Jerome Tang era in Manhattan. Alexander has been a great head coach at both Lipscomb and Belmont, where he consistently kept both schools near the top of their conference standings. He has struggled to turn that regular season success into the conference tournament, as he won four regular season titles but couldn't come away with the conference tournament championship and corresponding NCAA tournament berth (he did win the 2018 ASUN title as a two-seed and the 2020 Ohio Valley tournament, but the NCAA tournament was canceled).  

Syracuse hopes this mulligan works. Anyone who took on the Syracuse job after Jim Boeheim retired was going to have absolutely massive shoes to fill, and Adrian Autry just couldn't do it. Enter another former Orange player, Gerry McNamara, to try to make it right. McNamara won a national championship at Syracuse on the Carmelo Anthony-led 2003 squad and was a major part of that magical 2006 Big East tournament championship run. He returned to Syracuse in 2011 as an assistant on Boeheim's staff until he got the chance to run his own program at Sienna in 2024.

At Siena, he took a bad program and flipped it in just two seasons. Last year the Saints won 23 games and the MAAC tournament championship. That's a small sample size to fully believe McNamara will lead the Orange to their first NCAA tournament since 2021, but the program has renewed energy.

Bryan Hodgson, from the Nate Oates coaching tree, is on a fast track to a Big East job. He led Arkansas State to a 45-28 record over two seasons before taking over South Florida last season. He took the Bulls to American Conference regular-season and conference tournament championships before losing in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Now he leaves for Providence, a program that knows a thing or two about good, young coaches. The Friars have been a stepping stone for Dave Gavitt, Rick Pitino, Rick Barnes, Pete Gillen and Ed Cooley. Kim English was looked at as the next in that line, but he was fired after an unimpressive three-year stint.

Hodgson may be only 39 years old, but he's paid his dues to reach Providence. He's been an assistant at Fredonia State, Jamestown Community College, Midland, Buffalo, and Alabama before getting his first head coaching opportunity in 2023. He doesn't sit still, which could be an issue if he does what the school hopes he does -- win. 

Alan Huss played at Creighton at the turn of the century and returned last year as Greg McDermott's head coach-in-waiting. The wait is over. Huss has been around the block -- he's been a head coach at the high school level before coming to the college level as an assistant at New Mexico and Creighton before getting the head job at High Point. Those High Point teams were highly successful, going 56-15, winning two regular-season Big South titles and reaching the 2025 NCAA tournament. He left to return to Creighton, knowing he would eventually run the Bluejays, and made a big leap to the Big East. Creighton has quietly become one of the better programs in the Big East (a testament to what McDermott built in Omaha), and Huss will be tasked with continuing that success.

Not many people would pay attention to Boston College hiring another basketball coach, but Luke Murray is a name to watch. Let's start with that name -- Murray is the son of actor Bill Murray, who tends to show up to Luke's games over the years. And Luke definitely has put in the work. He's been an assistant at Arizona and Towson; he worked on Chris Mack's staff at Xavier and Louisville, and he's been alongside Danny Hurley at Wagner, Rhode Island, and UConn. He was one of Hurley's most trusted assistants and is a fantastic hire for a program that needs success. The Eagles have had just two winning seasons since 2011 and haven't reached the NCAA tournament since 2009. 

Cincinnati has been a program that's been a bit of a roller coaster over the last 30+ years. The Bob Huggins era brought massive success but ended with a controversial firing. Since then, the Bearcats have bounced from conference to conference and tried to find the right head coach after Mick Cronin left for UCLA in 2019. They believe Jerrod Calhoun can be that guy. He has some ties to the university, as he was Huggins' student assistant for one season in the early 2000s. He has methodically built up a nice coaching career at Fairmont State, Youngstown State and Utah State (where he was 55-15 and reached the NCAA tournament in both seasons in Ogden) before coming to Cincinnati. The Bearcats haven't reached the tournament since Cronin's last season and they haven't finished better than 7th in the Big 12 since joining the conference. 

Sometimes it isn't about the coach or the school, but it is about the timing of everything. Dusty May won a national championship with Michigan in April while waiving off other high-profile jobs during the Wolverines' title run. However, when the NBA's Dallas Mavericks called in June about their head coaching job, May couldn't resist. That left Michigan behind in the coaching search game, so they promoted assistant coach Mike Boynton to the head job.

Boynton does have previous head coaching experience at Oklahoma State from 2017-2024 where he coached No. 1 overall NBA draft pick Cade Cunningham. He only reached the NCAA tournament just once in his seven years at Stillwater and was fired after a dismal 14-20 season. Again, it was tough for Michigan to find a suitable replacement for May in June, so getting someone with head coaching experience at a power conference program is a decent break. 

When Ben Jacobson left Northern Iowa after 20 years to take over Utah State, the Panthers brought in Iowa State assistant Kyle Green to run the program. Green knows Iowa from five years with the Cyclones, and he knows UNI from three previous stints in Cedar Falls. Green was an assistant with the Panthers from 2001-2003 before leaving for Marquette. He returned in 2006 before leaving to become head coach at Wisconsin-Eau Claire in 2011-2012. Green returned to UNI as associate head coach and stayed until 2021, when he left for Iowa State.  This seems to be a solid hire for a program that values stability and quality head coaches, and Green clearly feels at home here.

A year ago, NC State took a big swing and landed Will Wade -- a successful coach who was rebuilding his career. Wade delivered a 20-14 season and a First Four appearance before bolting to LSU this spring and leaving the Wolfpack back at square one. The Pack went back to the past and hired former player Justin Gainey, who played for NC State from 1996 to 2000 and worked in operations in the 2000s. He's been an assistant on staffs at Santa Clara (under his former head coach Herb Sendek), Arizona, Marquette, and Tennessee for the last five years. This will be his first head coaching job -- NC State's first brand new head coach since Everett Case in 1946 --, but he's worked for Sendek, Sean Miller, and Rick Barnes and has worked on recruiting and roster building. This is a tough job since you are working in the same community as Duke and North Carolina and Wolfpack fans believe they should be competing at their level consistently. It will be interesting to see what Gainey does at his alma mater.

This seems like an important move for both Wes Miller and the Charlotte hoops program. Miller, who is from Charlotte and played on North Carolina's 2005 national championship team, is coming off a mediocre five-year run at Cincinnati, where the Bearcats never reached the NCAA tournament and weren't any sort of threat in the Big 12. His first head coaching job was turning around a struggling UNC-Greensboro program into a power in the SoCon and reaching two NCAA tournaments. So is this the right kind of job for Miller -- a high mid-major program?

And what is Charlotte? From 1992 to 2005, the 49ers reached the NCAA tournament 9 times in 14 seasons and won four conference tournament championships. Not only have they not been to the Big Dance since 2005, but they've also only appeared in one postseason tournament since 2014 (a CBI championship in 2023). This is a big moment for the future of these two with the hope that Miller and Charlotte can get back to the way things used to be.

Scott Cross has been very successful building up mid-major programs, and now he gets his shot in a power conference.  He turned around Texas-Arlington, but was fired after 12 seasons despite going 21-13 that season and winning the Sun Belt regular season title the year before. After a season as an assistant at TCU, he rebuilt Troy and won the last two Sun Belt regular-season and conference tournament titles. Cross was born and raised in Texas and has coached there, so moving to the ACC will be a big adjustment for him, both on the court and in recruiting battles. He's also inheriting a Yellow Jackets program that has really fallen on hard times. What was once a great ACC program has cratered into a shell of itself. Last year's team went 2-16 in ACC play, and the Jackets have been to the NCAA tournament only once since 2011... and that was an improbable ACC tournament championship run in 2021.

Justin Joyner has worked for some great coaches -- he was on Randy Bennett's staff at Saint Mary's for six seasons and Dusty May's Michigan staff for two years. Now the coach who spent most of his life in California heads up the coast to take over at Oregon State. The Beavers are going back to the future as they move into the new-look Pac-12, where Joyner will face Gonzaga again. Interesting fact: Joyner's wife, Tracy, is the head women's soccer coach at rival Oregon.  

Ronald Nored, a former player, returns to his alma mater to try to right the ship. Nored takes over for Thad Matta, who retired after four seasons with the Bulldogs. Nored played on Butler's two Final Four teams in 2010 and 2011, won two Horizon League Defensive Player of the Year awards, and followed his coach Brad Stevens to the NBA. He's been an assistant for Stevens with the Boston Celtics and their G League affiliate, and he gained head-coaching experience with the Brooklyn Nets' G League squad. Nored has spent much of the last decade as an assistant with the Hornets, Pacers, and Hawks. 

Matt Majkrzak has spent the last seven seasons at Northern Michigan, where he's taken the Wildcats to four straight Division II NCAA tournaments and a 136–78 record. He'll take over a Northern Illinois program that needs a lot of work and faces a big challenge. For starters, the Huskies will leave the MAC for the Mountain West... and while there have been some defections in the MW, it is still a solid league. The Huskies haven't been to an NCAA tournament since 1996 and have only had four winning seasons since then. Northern Illinois is coming off a horrible 6-25 season and a five-year stretch of just 42-101. The school views Majkrzak as a "rising star" and is counting on him to rebuild this program in its new league.

Let's lay it out: Air Force's basketball program has been among the worst in the nation for far too long. The Falcons haven't had a winning season since 2012-2013; they've had fewer than 10 wins in four of the last six seasons and are 16-79 over the last three seasons. They are 1-39 in Mountain West play over the last two seasons, including an 0-fer last year. Air Force has been to two NCAA tournaments since 1963 and has had 18 seasons since 1990 where they won 10 games or fewer.

Enter Joe Crispin, best known as Penn State's dynamic guard in the late 1990s. He spent five seasons as the head coach at Division III Rowan and spent the last three seasons as an assistant on Penn State's staff under Mike Rhoades (the Nittany Lions have gone just 44-52 during that time). He does want to play an up-tempo style and wear down opponents in the high altitude of Colorado Springs. But there is an awful lot of work to do here.