I get the impression some of you want a new coach. Cronin is not getting fired. But he may quit in disgust if he doesn't get enough NIL money to field a more competitive Big-10 team and goes to another school which will give him more support. OK, I'll play along anyway. If you can take a giant leap of faith and assume our incompetent A.D. won't give us Deshaun Foster 2.0 (after spending all our money on a football coach), I'll help find a replacement. How about someone who had made a Final Four? That would be nice.
There have been 18 coaches who have made a Final Four since Cronin took over at UCLA. They can easily be placed into a few categories:
Highly unlikely to leave their current schools(11)
Kelvin Sampson
Mark Few
Bill Self
Dusty May
Danny Hurley
Matt Painter
Nate Oats
Todd Golden
Jon Scheyer
Hubert Davis
Scott Drew
Retired(4)
Mike Krzyzewski
Jay Wright
Jim Larranaga
Bruce Pearl
Do we really want either of these guys?(2)
Kevin Keatts - In his seven seasons at N.C. State, other than the Final Four run, he hasn't won a tournament game.
Brian Dutcher - Has a very good record, but is a defense first coach with offensive rankings consistently much lower than Cronin's. Doubt you want that.
One we already have(1)
Mick Cronin
So no good candidates there. Let's try another criteria. Since a power conference coach isn't likely to come here if he can't get more NIL than he already has, let's look at mid-major coaches who have made the Sweet 16 since Cronin took over:
Porter Moser (Loyola Ill) - 25-45 conference record at Oklahoma.
Paul Mills (ORU) - 13-23 conference record at Wichita St.
Shaheen Holloway (St. Peter's) - 31–40 conference record at Seton Hall
And these recent Sweet 16 Big East coaches:
Ed Cooley (Providence) - 14–37 conference record at Georgetown.
Sean Miller (Xavier) - Pass.
Mitch Henderson (Princeton) - The Ivy League isn't the Big-10.
Shaka Smart (Marquette) - Dismal failure at Texas.
Greg McDermott (Creighton) - Very good coach with very good record. Would he leave Creighton after 16 years there?
So most of the hires based on this criteria got burned.
Here are two mid-major current "hot" coaches:
Travis Steele is in his eighth year as a head coach. His first six weren't very good. In four seasons at Xavier, he failed to make the NCAA tournament, a school which made it in 16 of the previous 18 years. He was fired and then hired by Miami (Ohio) where he was 27-37 his first two seasons. But then he turned it around, winning 25 last season and is currently 23-0 and averaging 88 points a game (but with a very mediocre defense). Expect a floundering Major to hire him after the season.
The other is intriguing. Josh Schertz was tremendously successful at Division II Lincoln Memorial going 337–69 with three Final Four appearances. He then got hired by Indiana State where he went from 11 to 23 to 32 wins in three seasons. Last season he took over at Saint Louis and is now 21-1 and nationally ranked with the 5th highest scoring team in the nation at 90 points a game and leads the nation in effective FG% defense. There should be a lot of competition to get him.
Try something else? How about DII coaches? Two of them have dominated the division this decade: Ben McCollum of Northwest Missouri State and Jim Crutchfield of Nova Southeastern. McCollum got hired by Drake, had a great season and now is in his first year at Iowa. He's not leaving there. But Crutchfield has an incredible 221–26 record at Nova and runs an exciting uptempo, full court pressure system. He also has a UCLA connection as his star player a couple seasons ago was the son of a Bruin All-American volleyball player. So what's the catch? He's 70.
How about NBA coaches who previously coached in college. Several were very successful. Calipari, Brown, Pitino. There is one current NBA coach who fits the profile: Billy Donovan. He just signed a multi-year extension with the Bulls last season even though he hasn't been over .500 the last four seasons. But NBA coaches get fired all the time.
So unless those of you who want a new coach can come up with some realistic gettable, successful possible candidates, you can't keep complaining about Cronin. Anybody but Cronin isn't an acceptable alternative. If you just don't like his demeanor, remember a coach with a worse one just won two national championships. Few of the replacements mentioned above, except the first list of untouchables, can match Cronin's resume. But I'm open to suggestions.