The 2024-25 men’s college basketball season was a banner campaign for first-year head coaches,
Dusty May took Michigan from an 8-23 mark the year before to 27 wins and a trip to the Sweet 16. Pat Kelsey earned ACC Coach of the Year honors for winning 27 games at Louisville, which had won 25 games in the prior three seasons combined. Mark Pope got Kentucky to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019.
Here are five new hires for 2025-26 who are poised to replicate that level of success in their first years on the job.
Will Wade, NC State
Say what you will about him, the man wins wherever he goes. And with the roster that Wade has assembled for his first season, there’s no reason for NC State to not go from missing the ACC Tournament in 2025 to safely making the NCAA Tournament in 2026.
Texas Tech transfer Darrion Williams was one of the best players in last year’s Big Dance, and he’ll be joined by a loaded portal class that also features Tre Holloman (Michigan State), Terrance Arceneaux (Houston), Jerry Deng (Florida State) and Ven-Allen Lubin (North Carolina).
A sign that Wade believes his program is poised for immediate success? He’s wasted no time in lobbing shots at in-state rival North Carolina.
Ryan Odom, Virginia
Virginia still hasn’t won a game in the NCAA Tournament since cutting down the nets in 2019, and is now coming off its first losing season since 2009-10. The Cavaliers will fully move on from life with Tony Bennett this season and will do so with the man who engineered the most embarrassing moment in UVA sports history.
Ryan Odom, who became the first head coach to lead a 16 over 1 upset in the NCAA Tournament when his UMBC squad shocked No. 1 overall seed Virginia in 2018, is now the man at UVA. He arrives in Charlottesville after additional stops at Utah State and VCU, both of which he took to the NCAA Tournament in his second year on the job.
Success at Virginia could come one year earlier for Odom, who has brought in 10 newcomers to fill his roster. That group is highlighted by San Francisco transfer Malik Thomas, who has the potential to be an All-ACC performer. With the addition of German big man Johann Grunloh, Odom will have the ability to put a lineup on the court that has a three-point threat at every position.
Odom wins wherever he goes, and now he has the resources and players to win at a level that wasn’t possible at any of his previous stops.
Sean Miller, Texas
Texas hasn’t missed the NCAA Tournament since 2019, but back-to-back underachieving seasons with rosters that seemed capable of much more spelled the end of the Rodney Terry era in Austin. More times than not over the past 15 years or so, it’s felt like the Longhorns have produced results disproportionately low to the level of talent they’ve had at their disposal. It’s a trend the powers that be at UT hope changes under the direction of Miller, who made the somewhat surprising decision to bolt from Xavier for a second time, despite the fact that the school had thrown his career a lifeline in 2022.
In his first year at Texas, Miller will combine an interesting mix of newcomers with three key returnees — Jordan Pope (11.0 ppg), Chendall Weaver (6.4 ppg), and Tramon Mark (10.6 ppg) — from a Longhorn team that got bounced by, ironically enough, Miller and Xavier in the First Four of last year’s NCAA Tournament.
The Longhorns don’t have the talent to get Miller to his ever-elusive first Final Four just yet, but there’s enough there for UT to be top 25 good.
Darian DeVries, Indiana
Do not be shocked if the Hoosiers achieve way more in 2025-26 than most people are currently projecting.
Darian DeVries won 20 or more games in all six of his seasons as the head coach at Drake, and then should have gotten West Virginia into the NCAA Tournament last season despite being hit with a rash of injuries in his first and only season with the Mountaineers.
In Bloomington, DeVries has already assembled a top 10 transfer portal class headlined by his son, two-time Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year Tucker DeVries. Fellow transfers Reed Bailey (Davidson), Lamar Wilkerson (Sam Houston) and Tayton Conerway (Troy) have the potential to be stars at the power conference level.
There might not be a fan base in college basketball more desperate to return to the elite of the sport than Indiana. An NCAA Tournament in year run would be a nice first step from DeVries to show Hoosier Nation that he’s capable of being the guy who finally gets that done.
Jai Lucas, Miami
The only man on this list without prior head coaching experience, Lucas got the gig in South Beach after three seasons as Jon Scheyer’s right-hand man at Duke. In order to give himself the best chance at immediately assembling a competitive roster at Miami, Lucas made the unconventional decision to leave Duke at the end of the regular season, and wasn’t with the Blue Devils during their run to the Final Four.
The move paid off. Lucas immediately convinced a handful of the best transfer portal players in the sport to sign with the Hurricanes, most notably Michigan point guard Tre Donaldson, Indiana forward Malik Reneau, and TCU big man Ernest Udah Jr.
Lucas’ coaching chops are unproven, but the talent level at The U for 2025-26 is not. If Lucas has the goods, the Hurricanes should, at the very least, be in the mix for an NCAA Tournament spot just a year winning seven games and finishing dead last in the ACC.