College basketball coaching rumors: Fran Dunphy and Temple parting ways

Although the college basketball season isn’t officially over, the coaching rumor mill is firing on all cylinders. Tom Crean has already taken over the reigns at Georgia, but with big openings at Louisville, Pittsburgh, and UConn, there will be a lot more moving pieces as the off-season ramps up.

Hurley has accepted a six-year deal to coach the Huskies, per ESPN. He’s led Rhode Island to back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances.

UConn fired Kevin Ollie just four years after winning the national title. The Huskies have been under .500 the last two seasons.

News broke March 30 that Temple University would be parting ways with head coach Fran Dunphy and that assistant Aaron McKie would be taking over the reigns.

Dunphy has been the head coach at Temple since 2006 and has amassed a 247-152 (62%) record with the Owls. Prior to Temple, Dunphy coached 17 seasons as the head coach at Penn. The Owls finished 17-15 (8-10 AAC) this year, ending their season with a 63-57 loss to eventual NIT champion Penn State.

The Kevin Stallings experiment did not go well for the Panthers. Pitt decided to part ways with Stallings after just two seasons, the latter of which saw the Panthers go an abysmal 0-18 in the ACC. They will owe Stallings $9.4 million, and nine of the team’s current players have asked for releases to transfer, as did their two incoming recruits for 2018. So, not exactly the best situation for a coach to come into.

Early Wednesday, rumors started swirling about Arizona’s current head coach Sean Miller (who played for Pitt from 1987-92) returning to his alma mater.

Those were quickly refuted by Miller, who hasn’t been relieved of his duties at Arizona yet, in an official statement.

Things seem to be getting more interesting:

Miller’s name wasn’t the only one linked to Pitt during the search. After Pitt athletics director Heather Lyke and the Panthers missed out on Hurley, Adam Zagoria reported they have been chatting with Nate Oats of Buffalo.

Another name to keep an eye on emerged on Friday (March 23) in relation to the Pitt opening: St. Bonaventure’s Mark Schmidt.

Looks like it isn’t going to be Schmidt, either.

The search wasn’t going well, so far at least, as Pitt cancelled an athletic board meeting that was expected to discuss that topic.

With Duke losing to Kansas in the Elite Eight, there have been some conversations surrounding Jon Scheyer potentially heading to the ‘Burgh. Scheyer, who played for Duke from 2006-2010, has been an assistant under Mike Krzyzewski for four seasons now.

What started as Twitter rumors have picked up a little steam (Pittsburgh Sports Now confirmed he’s a “serious candidate”), but they were quickly extinguished by Gary Parrish of CBS Sports.

Finally, and

It’s been an intense year for the Cardinals as they’ve dealt with scandal after scandal, leading to the firing of Hall-of-Fame coach Rick Pitino and athletic director Tom Jurich, and the NCAA eventually vacating their 2013 national championship. After not making the NCAA tournament, they ended their season with an embarrassing 79-56 NIT loss to Mississippi State. Interim head coach David Padgett did an admirable job stepping up, but he will not be promoted into the role full-time.

Now, it appears as Louisville’s new athletic director Vince Tyra has his sights set on Xavier’s Chris Mack. Tyra’s interim tag was removed by the school as he was unanimously named the athletic director on Monday afternoon, which some think mean a coaching hire will be announced soon.

Louisville and Mack are reported scheduled to meet this weekend, as first reported by Jeff Greer of the Courier-Journal and confirmed by ESPN.

Mack has been at Xavier since 2004 (which was actually his second stint with the Musketeers), and was promoted to head coach in 2009. He’s amassed a 212-96 (68 percent) record in his nine seasons, and has had a winning record each year.

Tyra and the Cardinals introduced Mack as the new head coach in a press conference on March 28.

With Mack gone, Xavier continued its lengthy tradition of promoting from within by naming Travis Steele as the new head coach of the Musketeers.

Steele had been an assistant during all nine of Mack’s seasons at Xavier, and had served as the Musketeers associate head coach since 2015.