College Basketball Hot Seat Report

Welcome to the Hot Seat Report, an updating list of college basketball head coaches with low job security. With each update, coaches will be added, removed and shuffled around based on their performance (note: coaches are listed alphabetically).

To see the list of coaching changes that have already happened, head over to the Coaching Carousel page.

** UPDATED MAY 29, 2025 **

YOUR CHAIR IS ON FIRE, SIR

Coaches at the end of the line at their current school. You should be seeing them here soon enough.

• Jeff Capel III (Pittsburgh)
  • Capel’s tenure at Pitt started with a rebuild: four-straight sub-.500 seasons, all finishing 11th or worse in the ACC. It seemed like he was finally turning a corner in 2022-23, though the Panthers ultimately blew their chance at a share of the 2023 ACC title (finished T-3rd) and limped into the NCAA Tournament with an 11-seed. Pitt won 22 games the following year, declining an NIT bid after being left out of the Big Dance, and then further regressed last year (17-15 overall and 8-12 in a weak ACC). Momentum is lost – leading scorers Jaland Lowe and Ishmael Leggett have both transferred out – and Capel’s deal only has two years left on it, setting up a classic “make or break” season for the 50-year old head coach.
• Johnny Dawkins (UCF)
  • Dawkins’ tenure at UCF has gone a lot like his time at Stanford – consistently winning games but never really getting over the hump. He’s been to the postseason five times in nine years (only one NCAA Tournament) but hasn’t made much impact. The Knights are heading into the third year of Big 12 play, winning 7 games in each of their first two. Last year’s team did ultimately hit the 20-win mark and finished as runners-up of the first annual College Basketball Crown in Vegas, but they should have higher expectations. Dawkins is 168-120 overall heading into this season and will have basically an entirely new team, with Darius Johnson graduating and 13 other players leaving via transfer. 11 transfers have committed as of this writing, but UCF’s class doesn’t even rank in the top five of the Big 12 (per 247).
• Earl Grant (Boston College)
  • Grant is year five at Boston College and coming off a regression in 2024-25 which saw his Eagles go just 12-19 (4-16) after finally reaching the 20-win mark the year prior. This is not a powerhouse program by any means, but one NIT being the highlight of your four-year tenure is not at all up to par, especially in a conference that is struggling to redefine it’s position in the larger college basketball landscape. Winning four games in last year’s ACC is a pretty damning indictment of where BC stands right now. Earl was hired in 2021 without any real connections to the city and fans (rightfully) questioned how well he could do at BC despite his success at Charleston. His predecessor Jim Christian was given seven years and only finished above .500 once, but the sport is changing and the ACC is still wide open outside of the few programs at the very top.
• Bobby Hurley (Arizona State)
  • Three NCAA appearances in ten years for Hurley, who has consistently gotten talented players into the program but has also failed to get the team over the proverbial hump. Underachievement followed Hurley from the Pac-12 to the Big 12, going 13-20 overall and finishing second-to-last (note: the Sun Devils earned an invite to the College Basketball Crown in Vegas despite going just 4-16 in league play and we are not really going to count that as a postseason appearance). A major roster turnover hit the program this offseason, with twelve guys transferring out, including prized recruit Jayden Quaintence (a former UK commit who will now actually play for the Wildcats) and literally all other players who averaged 5 or more points last season. There are a lot of transfers (all from mid-majors) and recruits coming in, but no one that moves the needle on paper. This is the last year of Hurley’s deal and it’s hard to imagine anything other than a trip to the NCAA Tournament is going to get him an extension.
• Mike Young (Virginia Tech)
  • Mike Young’s program continues to slide in the wrong direction, peaking with a ACC Tournament title in 2022 for a second-straight NCAA appearance. Since then, the Hokies have gone 51-49 (26-34 ACC) with two NITs and missed the postseason altogether in 2025. The overall job that Young has done is still decent, but momentum is not in his favor and on paper will keep moving that way – Virginia Tech ranks near the bottom of the league in both HS and transfer recruiting classes in 2025.

THIS SEAT IS RATHER WARM

These coaches need to start winning right now, but that may not even be enough…

• Porter Moser (Oklahoma)
  • Through four seasons, Moser has one NCAA Tournament and one NIT appearance but has yet to finish higher than 7th in conference. The Sooners were decent last year in the historically strong SEC, getting into the Big Dance despite a 6-12 league record. But overall this is not the program that OU fans were hoping for when Moser was hired in 2021. One thing he has done well so far is recruit the transfer portal, with another strong group arriving in Norman this offseason – four guys all ranked as four-star transfers by 247Sports, headlined by Xzavier Brown (St. Joe’s), Derrion Reid (Alabama) and Nijel Pack (Miami FL).

WE’VE GOT OUR EYE ON YOU, COACH

Here are those guys that are having a rough year (or two… or three…) but aren’t in total danger. Yet. 

• Shane Burcar (Northern Arizona)
  • After six years at NAU, Burcar is 75-111 overall with just two winning records but is coming off his best season thus far. The Lumberjacks have improved their win totals in each of the last four years and last season reached the postseason (CBI) for the first time since 2015. The heat is turning down for Burcar, who has slowly built this program up from the Big Sky basement. His most recent publicly-available contract ran through March 31, 2025, so it appears a new deal of some kind is in place for Burcar to remain at NAU. We will update if/when that information is released.
• Steve Forbes (Wake Forest)
  • Five years, zero NCAA bids, and Wake Forest fans are beyond frustrated with the program (despite winning 21 games in each of the last two years). Forbes has not been particularly successful on the recruiting front, either, and while this year’s transfer class has some intriguing names, only one ranks in 247Sports’ Top 100 (Purdue’s Myles Colvin at 93).  The school announced a “long-term extension” for Forbes in 2022, and while details don’t appear to be publicly available he is likely under contract for at least several more years.
• Ben Jacobson (Northern Iowa)
  • Jacobson has been a staple in the Missouri Valley for nearly two decades, joining the staff at UNI in 2001 and becoming the Panthers’ head coach in 2006. He has led the team to some incredible highs, with eight postseason appearances including four NCAA Tournaments and a trip to the 2010 Sweet Sixteen. But it’s almost hard to believe that the Panthers haven’t been to the Big Dance since 2016 and have just 3* NIT bids since then (including one they would have gotten in 2020). The last 9 years have just been super inconsistent, with the Panthers oscillating between 20+ wins and losing records from year-to-year. Jacobson enters year 20 of his tenure coming off back-to-back winning seasons for the first time in almost ten years, so expectations are high for UNI.
• Wes Miller (Cincinnati)
  • This will be year five for Miller, who took over the Bearcats’ program in 2021 after a successful ten-year run at UNC Greensboro that included two NCAA bids (2018, 2021). He has yet to get Cincy to the Big Dance, though, which just two NITs appearances plus a trip to the Vegas in 2025 for the inaugural College Basketball Crown. The team has won 7 games in each of their first two seasons in the expanded Big 12, finishing near the bottom each year. Despite the relative lack of success, Miller might be tough to move on from as his current deal runs through 2028-29 with a buyout of nearly $10M (it drops to below $5M next April).
• Wayne Tinkle (Oregon State)
  • Oregon State is a tough job, made even more so with the break-up of the Pac-12 essentially pushing the Beavers down to mid-major status for the time-being. When they went on their improbable Elite Eight run in 2021, capping a 5th winning season through his first seven years at OSU, Tinkle bought himself a ton of goodwill in Corvallis. He also earned himself a new contract that runs through the 2026-27 season. But the reality is that Tinkle has never finished better than 4th in the Pac-12 and in 2021-22 helmed one of the worst seasons in recent history for any power conference team at 3-28 (1-19). The Beavs won a lot more games last year against a WCC schedule, which maybe bodes well for their future. This will likely be their final year as a WCC affiliate before the realigned Pac-12 is back in action, with Gonzaga and a number of Mountain West programs joining in July 2026.

MAYBE IT’S TIME TO RETIRE?

Here are some head coaches who could (or maybe should) be looking at retirement at the end of the season.

• Tom Izzo (Michigan State)
  • Look, we said some things about Izzo being “over the hill” last year and he went out and won the Big Ten outright. He can retire whenever he wants, he’s more than earned the time off, but he (along with Pitino, Barnes and Sampson) have proved that the old guard can still be successful in modern college basketball.

COACHES THAT ARE SAFE (FOR NOW)

This section is comprised of coaches who were previously in one of the above categories this season or are just starting to feel heat but are not yet in any real danger of being fired.

• Greg Gard (Wisconsin)
  • Multiple things can be true: the Badgers are coming off their best season in years under Gard with 27 wins and a 13-7 Big Ten mark, but they continue to under-achieve in the postseason. Gard took the program to back-to-back Sweet Sixteens to start his tenure but hasn’t been back there since 2017, though they do make the NCAA field nearly every year and have shared two Big Ten titles in the last six years. Wisconsin remains one of the best programs in the Big Ten, consistently succeeding without big name recruits, but Gard has not lived up to the bar set by his mentor, Bo Ryan. It’s taken a long time to get to this point, but the expectations in Madison are for the team to be competing for Big Ten titles every year and consistently reaching the second weekend and beyond in March. Gard is still safe, as he signed a five-year extension last year that keeps him under contract through 2028-29, but boosters can always find the money if they need/want to.
• Dennis Gates (Missouri)
  • Gates first landed on this list because of his second season at Mizzou, which a complete disaster that saw the Tigers go 0-18 in SEC play. The 45-year old head coach led a remarkable turnaround last season, going 22-12 (10-8) and reaching the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three years at the helm, which slides him down into the safe for now category. Gates just needs to show that he can sustain that level of success and keep building winning teams in Columbia and he will be fine.
• Fred Hoiberg (Nebraska)
  • The slam dunk hire that started out as anything but, the Huskers finally made the NCAA Tournament in year five of the Hoiberg Era and then won the first-ever College Basketball Crown in 2025. The NCAA bid got Hoiberg a two-year extension that will keep him in Lincoln through the 2028-29 season. Nebraska still ranks towards the bottom of the league with their 2025 recruiting and transfer classes, so the success will continue to ride on Hoiberg’s coaching and player development abilities. We have him safe for now, but things can change if he can’t keep the momentum going.