A Look At The Next Round Of Possible ACC Hires

A couple of hires are inevitable but some others might happen too.

We’re far enough in the season that we can say, with some confidence, that at least two ACC jobs will be open in March: Virginia and Miami.

Virginia is infinitely better than Miami at this point, but Ron Sanchez has nonetheless struggled. The Wahoos are just 9-10 and while fans bonded with Tony Bennett’s deliberate offense because the defense just broke teams, under Sanchez the offense still stinks and the defense is nowhere near as effective.

There’s not really a Bennett coaching tree - Sanchez is pretty much it - so they’ll be starting over. Who should they go after?

If it’s us hiring, we look at a break with Bennett Ball. We’d look for someone who has an excellent offensive record and who has built a record with as good a program as possible.

There are a lot of coaches in smaller leagues who could step up. Consider Mark Byington, who is doing a bang-up job with Vandy after leaving James Madison.

He’s not the only one who is capable of doing that.

Ryan Odom is a serious candidate. His dad, Dave, was a Terry Holland assistant back in the day and Virginia is a bigger platform than VCU.

We’d like to suggest two more.

We saw at Saint Peter’s that Shaheen Holloway is a tremendous coach but Rick Pitino pointed out recently that Seton Hall can’t compete with NIL money and if you have lesser players, it’s going to be really hard to compete. He might consider leaving his alma mater given that major limitation.

He’d be good but he’s not our favorite.

How about a guy who has won back-to-back national championships and who built a celebrated offense?

No, not Danny Hurley - he’s not coming south.

However, Luke Murray might.

Hurley’s top assistant, Murray gets a lot of credit for UConn’s beautiful offense. He’s more than ready for his own job and he’d be great. Virginia fans would relish the change in pace.

As you may or may not know, Murray’s father is legendary actor Bill Murray, but Luke has long since overcome that son-of label. He’s a highly promising coach.

As for Miami, the ‘Canes have a lot to offer. We’ve always thought they could dominate the Caribbean recruiting base and some great players have come out of there, most notably Tim Duncan. Patrick Ewing and Andre Drummond are from Jamaica, Karl-Anthony Towns is from the Dominican Republic, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s father was from Trinidad and Buddy Hield is from the Bahamas. And don’t forget that Maryland great Greivis Vasquez is from Caracas, Venezuela, which is also on the Caribbean coast, and we haven’t even gotten into Puerto Rico, where basketball is an utter obsession. There are too many guys from there to list individually so take a gander here.

Why shouldn't Miami dominate that?

Miami also gets a lot of NIL money. Their primary sugar daddy - John Ruiz - is in some legal jeopardy, but we’re there are others. NIL should not be an issue at Miami.

So who could they pursue?

Well, Holloway is a legit target. Like Hurley, he’s a Northeastern guy but Miami is so tied into the Northeast that it’s not a big leap.

Other than that, we’d look West and talk to Mick Cronin. If you listen to him, he’s clearly frustrated with UCLA’s new Big Ten travel. He talks about it all the time and finds it ridiculous. Toss in this winter’s fires and the general lack of home insurance in California now and there’s an argument that might appeal. Florida has a similar problem with hurricanes and insurance but it’s easier to build for a hurricane than it is to build for fire. Plus Miami’s climate, much like L.A.’s, is pleasant. It’d be a splashy hire.

Charleston’s Chris Mack would be a gamble but if you’re willing to take it, he’d probably have a solid program.

It might also be worth approaching Xavier’s Sean Miller. He’s also a solid coach with a questionable background but he’s rehabbed okay with the Musketeers. You get the sense that he might like life in Miami too.

We’d probably make a run at Richard Pitino as a second-tier candidate. He’s done well at New Mexico and he’s still young at 42. He might be really happy in the Pit, but it’s kind of out of the spotlight and if he’s at all like his dad, he would like the spotlight. He’d absolutely get that at Miami.

There might be some other openings as well. Leonard Hamilton can’t coach forever - he’ll be 77 this summer and that’s getting up there. He’s basically on a year-to-year basis at this point and he’s also involved in an unpleasant law suit about unfulfilled NIL promises (allegedly). We don’t really have a sense of that possible opening yet but it could be a great job for the right guy.

And the other possible opening is at UNC.

Hubert Davis has been struggling. He had a mediocre first year until his team caught fire and got to the championship game. They finished 29-8 but remember before that, UNC struggled.

The year after that, UNC didn’t make the postseason.

Last year, the Tar Heels finished 29-8 and made it to the Sweet Sixteen.

This year, UNC is 12—8 and on the bubble.They had their chances but lost to Kansas, Auburn, Michigan State, Alabama and Florida. The best wins they can get now are Duke (twice) or at Clemson.

Getting a commitment from Top Ten recruit Caleb Wilson this week may give Hubert some breathing room but things are not going well.

UNC traditionally likes to stay in the family but the tree is getting thin. The only real option is Cincinnati’s Wes Miller, who has done well at Cincinnati.

Otherwise, they’ll have to go out of The Family, and not many people alive today have a sense of UNC basketball without some Dean Smith DNA.

However, it’s one of the great jobs in college and while you can safely rule out Duke’s Jon Scheyer and Kentucky’s Mark Pope, you can’t rule too many others out.

We’d certainly call Danny Hurley, because the UNC job is that big. And if we were Bubba Cunningham, a cunning Cunningham if you will, we’d play up the whole Duke-UNC thing. Hurley has made it clear he wants to play (and beat) Duke which would, we’re sure, ease some of his psychic wounds from his college years when brother Bobby was killing it at Duke and he was something of an afterthought who nearly walked away from basketball.

If he hadn’t had such awful issues at Texas, we’d certainly go after Chris Beard. He’d be phenomenal in Chapel Hill. But we’re pretty sure he would be radioactive there.

Beyond that we might call Brad Underwood who has shown creativity this year at Illinois.

Our guess though is that UNC would go after Baylor’s Scott Drew and in just about every way he’d be a great fit.