With Texas A&M hiring Samford's Bucky McMillan as its new head coach before the Final Four and no retirements in the days that followed, it appears a high-major coaching carousel that started more than five months ago has stopped spinning.
Weeks before the 2024-25 season even tipped off, Virginia's Tony Bennett stunned the college basketball world by retiring -- only five and a half years after winning the national championship. His announcement was the first in a string of retirements: Miami's Jim Larranaga called it a career on Dec. 26, in the middle of the season, followed by Florida State's Leonard Hamilton, who announced in early February that he would step down at the end of the season.
But it was a fourth retirement that really kicked the carousel into high gear. In early February, Indiana and Mike Woodson began discussions about the head coach's exit; on Feb. 7, the school announced he would step down at the end of the season.
With six weeks until the NCAA tournament, four Power 5 jobs were already open. Utah would join that mix in late February, when the Utes let Craig Smith go, followed by four more firings before Selection Sunday: Kevin Keatts at NC State, Ben Johnson at Minnesota, Fran McCaffery at Iowa and Kyle Neptune at Villanova.
It was clear fairly quickly, however, that this carousel wasn't likely to fall off the rails like it did last year, when SMU's decision to fire Rob Lanier after two seasons led to John Calipari leaving one of the biggest jobs in college basketball (and, ultimately, BYU landing the No. 1 prospect in high school basketball).
The primary reason was financial. Without clarity about what the landscape will look like in a post-House settlement world, schools were caught between paying money to fire their coach or paying more money on their rosters. That carried over to the replacement market; schools were simply not going to pony up eight figures to win over the likes of Nate Oats, Todd Golden, Dennis Gates, Tommy Lloyd, Mick Cronin, etc. A carousel of mid-major or outside-the-box hires was always likely.
Indiana did take bigger swings, with Brad Stevens publicly saying he's not a candidate and Michigan's Dusty May signing a contract extension. Overtures to names like T.J. Otzelberger and Scott Drew didn't work out, either. Hoosiers athletic director Scott Dolson appeared to settle on a shortlist that included Drake's Ben McCollum, Clemson's Brad Brownell and West Virginia's Darian DeVries -- and hired DeVries days after the Mountaineers were left out of the NCAA tournament.
Miami opted for Duke assistant Jai Lucas, while Florida State and Utah went the NBA assistant route with program alumni Luke Loucks and Alex Jensen, respectively.
After the first weekend of the NCAA tournament, a wave of expected hires became official: VCU's Ryan Odom to Virginia, McNeese's Will Wade to NC State, Drake's McCollum to Iowa and Colorado State's Niko Medved to Minnesota. Then, West Virginia hired North Texas' Ross Hodge a few days later.
Two changes did threaten to ignite the cycle, but the dominos were contained quickly. Rodney Terry had been on the hot seat all season at Texas -- even a third NCAA tournament appearance in three seasons wasn't enough to keep his job. He was replaced by the coach whose team beat him in the First Four, Xavier's Sean Miller. And the Musketeers moved quickly to hire New Mexico's Richard Pitino, who had been in play at seemingly every power opening this cycle.
Villanova was one of those openings that had Pitino on its list. The Wildcats, however, had zeroed in on Maryland's Kevin Willard early in the process. And despite Willard going scorched Earth on the Terrapins' administration in NCAA tournament press conferences, the deal ultimately went through shortly after Maryland's Sweet 16 loss to Florida. Maryland needed to land a big name quickly after losing Willard and went for Texas A&M's Buzz Williams, who had just led the Aggies to their third straight tournament.
For a day or two, it was believed that the ramifications of the A&M opening could jumpstart a second wave of the carousel, especially when Ole Miss' Chris Beard emerged as the top target. But after a cycle filled with unsurprising moves -- Odom, Wade, McCollum, Medved, Miller, Willard and Williams were all considered top candidates when their respective new jobs opened -- the Aggies going outside the box with McMillan brought an end to the movement.
Perhaps it was fitting that a cycle that began with a stunning decision by Bennett ended with an equally surprising move by A&M opting for the 41-year-old McMillan, who was still a high school coach when Bennett won his title in 2019.
As the carousel winds down, 55 jobs have changed hands as of writing -- the fewest since the pandemic-impacted 2020 cycle with 68 last offseason, 61 in 2023, 60 in 2022 and 57 in 2021.
See the full list of official changes here.
April 2
What are the pros and cons of the Texas A&M job?
Williams leaves A&M after guiding the Aggies to three straight NCAA tournament appearances, though they haven't advanced beyond the first weekend since Billy Kennedy led them in 2018. The program has never advanced past the Sweet 16, so athletic director Trev Alberts will hope his next hire breaks through.
A&M has a reputation of having lots of resources and very deep pockets. And it does, but it hasn't shown a propensity to use it for hires in major sports. In football, the Aggies hired Mike Elko after two solid seasons at Duke. In baseball, they promoted from within when Jim Schlossnagle left for Texas last June.