Mark Story: The winners and the losers from the 2025 men's college hoops coaching carousel

LEXINGTON, Ky. — In an era when college sports boosters are being tapped to pay players via NIL deals that can reach multi-millions of dollars, conventional wisdom has been there would be fewer coaching changes.

The theory went that, with so much cash going to the players, there would be less booster money available to fund coaching contract buyouts and help with searches.

Well, so much for that. So far this offseason, 14 power-conference men’s college basketball head coaching jobs and 53 NCAA Division I jobs overall have already opened.

Included among those vacancies were high-profile basketball coaching jobs such as Villanova, Maryland and Indiana.

With seven D-I jobs still vacant, let’s analyze the winners and losers from this year’s game of coaching musical chairs.

— Stock up: Ex-NBA assistants. Perhaps inspired by the first-year success of former Phoenix Suns assistant Kevin Young (26-10 record, NCAA Tournament Round of 16) at Brigham Young, two power-conference teams and a third program with a considerable hoops legacy all followed the Cougars’ lead and hired an NBA aide.

BYU’s archrival, Utah, hired Dallas Mavericks assistant — and former Utes standout — Alex Jensen as head coach. To replace the retiring Leonard Hamilton, Florida State tabbed Sacramento Kings assistant Luke Loucks.

Meanwhile, in a controversial move, Iona fired Tobin Anderson after only two seasons and went with New Orleans Pelicans assistant Dan Geriot as the Gaels’ new head man.

In an era when college sports is overtly professionalizing, coaches coming directly from the NBA seem to have a growing appeal.

— Stock down: Coaching retreads. Ex-Memphis and Georgia Tech head man Josh Pastner, 47, and former Lehigh, UNC Greensboro, Siena and Iowa coach Fran McCaffery are good coaches and may work out for UNLV and Pennsylvania, respectively.

Still, you wonder if the Runnin’ Rebels and the Quakers wouldn’t have been better served to go with a little fresher blood.

— Stock up: Former Drake coaches. For a small private school with an undergraduate enrollment of some 2,700, Drake has had an over-sized impact on this year’s coaching carousel.

Former Drake head man Darian DeVries parlayed his six 20-win seasons (2018 through 2024) with the Bulldogs and a winning record, 19-13, in his one season leading West Virginia in 2024-25 into the Indiana head coaching position.

After this past season’s Drake Bulldogs (31-4) advanced to the NCAA tourney round of 32, Ben McCollum turned his success — plus the four NCAA Division II national crowns he had previously won as head coach at Northwest Missouri State — into a Big Ten head coaching job at Iowa.

On a hot streak of hoops head coach hiring, Drake has turned to South Dakota State’s Eric Henderson to keep the Bulldogs’ program rolling.

— Stock down: West Virginia. The Mountaineers not only lost Darian DeVries after only one season. In hiring Ross Hodge — 70-46 in two seasons at North Texas — WVU hired a less-accomplished head man than it lost.

— Stock up: Texas. A school with massive resources and a bountiful in-state recruiting base that never seems to reap full benefit from its inherent advantages, Texas turned to former Arizona and Xavier head man Sean Miller as next man up to end the Longhorns’ pattern of underachievement.

Having lost in the NCAA Tournament round of eight four times as a head coach without ever making a Final Four, Miller, 56, has his own barriers to overcome.

— Stock down: Texas A&M. In hiring Bucky McMillan, 41, away from Samford, the Aggies hope they have landed “the next Nate Oats.”

Like the Alabama head man, McMillan employs an up-tempo, “modern” approach to offensive basketball. In the just-concluded season, Samford finished 13th in NCAA Division I men’s basketball in scoring (82.9 points a game), 11th in 3-point attempts (29.6 a contest) and 19th in fast-break points (14.18 a game).

Unlike Oats, however, McMillan at Samford struggled to win in the postseason. His five seasons at Samford yielded only one Southern Conference Tournament title and one NCAA tourney trip.

— Stock up: Minnesota. In luring Niko Medved away from Colorado State, Golden Gophers athletics director Mark Coyle — a former assistant AD under Mitch Barnhart at Kentucky — made one of the sneaky-good hires of this cycle.

Medved, 51, took Colorado State to the NCAA Tournament in three of the previous four seasons. This past season, he was a Maryland buzzer beater away from taking the Rams to the Sweet 16.

— Stock down: Hiring an ex-NBA star as a college head coach. Clyde Drexler, Isiah Thomas and Patrick Ewing are only three of the former pro basketball icons who have found mostly ignominy as college head coaches.

Drexler went 19-39 in two seasons, 1998 through 2000, at Houston. Thomas was 26-65 in three seasons, 2009 though 2012, at Florida International. Ewing put up a record of 75-109 in six years, 2017 through 2023, at Georgetown.

Next in line to try the former pro star as college hoops head man is Sacramento State, which has turned to ex-Sacramento Kings and Arizona Wildcats star Mike Bibby as their new head coach.

The Hornets are hoping Bibby proves more like Penny Hardaway — who is 162-68 in seven seasons with three NCAA Tournament appearances at Memphis — than most of the other former pro stars who have tried their hands at college head coaching.