Grading hires from 2026 men's college basketball coaching carousel
Grading hires from 2026 men's college basketball coaching carousel
Craig Meyer, USA TODAY NETWORKTue, March 24, 2026 at 8:57 AM UTC
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Grading hires from 2026 men's college basketball coaching carousel
For 68 men’s college basketball programs, March comes with the opportunity to compete for a national championship in front of millions of fans on the biggest, grandest stage that their sport has to offer.
For dozens of others outside of the NCAA tournament field, and even some in it, March is a time to dream of better days that might be ahead in the not-so-distant future.
The annual college basketball coaching carousel is a time for hope, with programs across the country looking for the x-and-o maestro or ace recruiter who can help them compete for NCAA tournament appearances, conference titles and maybe just maybe Final Fours and national championships.
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It doesn’t always work out that way, of course. For as many schools that find their savior, there are many more than find themselves in the same position of looking for a new coach only a handful of years later.
As hires are made, they’re dissected by fans and media across the country who try to assess whether or not they’ll work. It’s an imprecise exercise. In the past 10 years alone, there are universally praised hires like Archie Miller at Indiana and Chris Mack at Louisville who didn’t pan out and were gone within four years. Conversely, there are other, more unproven commodities like Tommy Lloyd at Arizona and Jon Scheyer at Duke who had never previously been Division I head coaches, but who now lead teams that are No. 1 seeds in this year’s NCAA tournament.
All of this is a longwinded way of saying what you’re about to read could turn out to be hilariously wrong.
As the coaching carousel starts to settle, USA TODAY Sports has graded hires from college basketball’s five major conferences.
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College basketball coaching hire grades
This will be to include hires as they occur.
Jerrod Calhoun, Cincinnati: A-
A Cincinnati program that has been shut out of the NCAA tournament every year since Mick Cronin left for UCLA in 2019 may have finally found the right person to lead it back to prominence.
Calhoun checks off virtually every quality the Bearcats could have hoped to fulfill. He has ties to the area, as an Ohio native and a Cincinnati graduate. He has ties to the program’s glorious recent past, having worked as an assistant under Bob Huggins. Most importantly, he’s been a winner everywhere he’s been. He went 124-38 and finished as national runner-up once in five seasons at Division II Fairmont State. He put up a respectable 118-106 record at Youngstown State, one of the more difficult jobs in the Horizon League. Most recently, he guided Utah State to a 55-15 mark in two seasons, which included two NCAA tournament berths.
There’s no guarantee he’ll thrive with the Bearcats — in a league as deep and difficult as the Big 12, that’s impossible — but on paper, he makes all the sense in the world for a historically decorated program that’s dying for a winner.
Randy Bennett, Arizona State: A-
For all of their inherent advantages — an enormous and famously fun school in one of the country’s biggest cities — the Sun Devils have been a basketball afterthought for much of their recent history, having not earned better than a No. 10 seed in the NCAA tournament since 2009 when James Harden was suiting up for them.
With Bennett, there’s reason to believe better days should be ahead. Bennett completely transformed Saint Mary’s, leading a program with three all-time NCAA tournament appearances at the time of his hiring in 2001 to the Big Dance 12 times in his final 22 seasons there. He did so with a distinct and consistent identity, with plodding, tough-minded teams built around strong defenses and international players.
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The question becomes how transferrable is that blueprint from the West Coast Conference to the Big 12, especially at a school with so little historical success, but Bennett’s fully capable of doing what so many haven’t in Tempe.
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Iowa State Cyclones fans cheer against the Kentucky Wildcats during the first half in the second round of the 2026 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament at Enterprise Center on March 22, 2026 in St Louis, Missouri.
Bryan Hodgson, Providence: B+
Hodgson’s resume is relatively thin, which is the only reason this grad isn’t higher, but it’s quite impressive.
The 38-year-old western New York native learned for eight seasons as an assistant under one of the country’s best coaches in Nate Oats and has implemented Oats’ fast-paced, 3-point-heavy system to great success at Arkansas State and South Florida, where he went 70-37 in three seasons and showed an eye for overlooked talent like eventual American Conference player of the year Izaiyah Nelson.
There’s some risk with this hire, but the upside, particularly with what projects to be a large NIL war chest for the Friars, is immense.
Alan Huss, Creighton: B+
This hire wasn’t exactly a surprise, as Huss was tabbed as Creighton’s associate head coach and coach-in-waiting last year. With Greg McDermott’s retirement this month, he officially takes over at his alma mater.
Huss is as familiar with Creighton as anyone, having played at the school and later coached there under McDermott for six seasons as the Bluejays were regularly among the best teams in the Big East. He thrived for two seasons at High Point, taking over a program that went 14-17 the season before he took over and guiding it to a 56-15 mark while coaching some of the top offenses in the country.
Moving on from a long-tenured coach like McDermott is never easy, but this is a transition that, at least on paper, should work out.
Casey Alexander, Kansas State: B
Alexander never technically made the NCAA tournament at Belmont – his 2020 team qualified before the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the event – but he did about everything else you realistically could. He went 166-60 and won at least 20 games in each of his seven seasons at his alma mater. He ran a beautiful, modern offense. Perhaps most importantly for a school like Kansas State, he was a masterful player evaluator, signing the previously unheralded likes of Wil Richard, Ja'Kobi Gillespie and Cade Tyson before they transferred to power-conference schools.
He inherited a much better situation from Rick Byrd at Belmont than he will taking over for Jerome Tang at Kansas, and the geographic fit isn’t seamless for someone who’s spent his entire career in the southeast, but this is an understandable move.
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Gerry McNamara, Syracuse: B-
The program hiring a successful former player to be its head coach has been a well-traveled path in college basketball the past 15 years, one that has been unsuccessful more often than not.
There’s reason to believe McNamara could be different, though. Unlike some of those other hires like Patrick Ewing and Chris Mullin, he has previous college head-coaching experience, having taken over a Siena program that was 4-28 the season before he arrived and leading it to 23 wins and an NCAA tournament berth only two years later. He’s spent all but five of the past 24 years of his life at the school in some capacity, making him intimately familiar with some of the challenges it presents. If nothing else, his status as a beloved former player should help the Orange in their NIL efforts.
Syracuse has been largely an afterthought the past five years and reportedly lagged behind many of their ACC competitors with what they paid for their roster, but with McNamara, there’s at least potential for a better way forward.
Scott Cross, Georgia Tech: C+
Cross has been one of the more underrated coaches in the sport for the past 15 years and his firing at UT Arlington in 2018 stands as one of the most baffling college basketball coaching moves this century. He has a strong overall record, 350-260 across 19 seasons in Division I, and just led Troy to five straight 20-win seasons and back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances.
If anything, this grade’s more of a reflection of Georgia Tech, which has inherent, sometimes unavoidable obstacles and which has one NCAA tournament berth since 2010. Cross has shown he can do more with less and he’ll need to if he’s going to turn the Yellow Jackets into a steady winner in an improving ACC.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: College basketball coaching hires: Grading the moves in 2026 carousel
Source: “AOL Sports”
