2025 coaching hot seat: Which team could set off the dominoes?

When we published this column a year ago, we weren’t anticipating too much movement from coaches. The 2023 coaching cycle was long, headlined by changes at former powerhouses Georgetown and St. John’s and the departures of a pair of longtime faces of the sport, Jim Boeheim and Bob Huggins. The early read on the 2024 hot seat felt quieter.

We were … wrong, to say the least.

The 2024 cycle was anarchy. Ohio State firing Chris Holtmann with a month left in the regular season barely registers as one of the shockers now. Ditto for Michigan parting ways with Juwan Howard. The openings at the Big Ten rivals — and Louisville — led to an intriguing waiting game around Dusty May. The Florida Atlantic coach ultimately chose the Wolverines, while Pat Kelsey moved from Charleston over to Louisville, and the Buckeyes promoted interim head coach Jake Diebler.

But the real action took place when SMU decided to fire Rob Lanier after two seasons, setting off three weeks that shifted the landscape of men’s college basketball. The Mustangs reeled in USC‘s Andy Enfield; the Trojans, in turn, poached Eric Musselman from Arkansas, which then simply went out and landed the biggest name in the sport, John Calipari. After Kentucky took a few big swings, it landed on former player Mark Pope, who had been at BYU, in mid-October.

We’re not going out on a limb in predicting the 2025 coaching carousel should be less dramatic — especially given that it already began with a stunner: Virginia‘s Tony Bennett retiring three weeks before the start of the season. But could Indiana cause dominoes that opens up a half-dozen jobs? Could another coaching legend opt to call it a career? When it comes to the coaching carousel, there are no guarantees.

Here’s the state of the coaching ranks before 2024-25 play begins.

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