UVa's 2024-25 season winds down this week, with a pair of regular season games, ahead of whatever postseason they are to have. It's been a year of change and tumult for the program, as they seek to start over, following the surprise retirement of Tony Bennett in October.

UVa still has a season to play out, but with the offseason quickly approaching, focus will turn to the program's coaching search. The primary decision is whether to give interim coach Ron Sanchez the job on a permanent basis, or go elsewhere and start fresh. But there are a lot of factors in these decisions, and there are very few sure things in this business.

Since 2014, there have been well over 100 coaches hired by major college basketball programs. In order to see if there are any obvious trends in hiring success or failure, we took a look at every sitting head coach and other hires made in the last decade, and tried to apply some lessons to UVa's search.

Hires with HC Experience: 97 (81% )

Hires with P5 HC Experience: 40 (33%)

Alum Hires: 11 (9%)

Internal Promotions: 12 (10%)

Other (NBA, etc): 8 (7%)

Average Age: 47.5 years

Still Employed: 72 (Average Tenure: 4.7 years)

Fired: 37 (31%)

Left for Another Job: 9 (8%)

Retired: 1 (<1%)

Danny Hurley, UConn

Nate Oats, Alabama

Bruce Pearl, Auburn

Chris Beard, Texas Tech

T.J Otzelberger, Iowa State

Rick Pitino, St. John’s

Rick Barnes, Tennessee

Jon Scheyer, Duke

Too Early to tell, but promising

Mark Byington, Vanderbilt

Dusty May, Michigan

Pat Kelsey, Louisville

What this list tells us: With the exception of Scheyer, everyone on this list had won, either at the mid-major level or at a power-conference job, as a head coach. And Scheyer is probably the name that could most-easily be removed from this list, for now. His situation is a bit of a one-off, as he took over arguably the best job in the sport with incredible resources, and he’s only in year three and still has plenty to prove. The first four coaches on this list have led their respective programs (in Beard’s case, a former job) to the Final Four; Hurley obviously has two national titles at UConn. Otzelberger has won consistently in his time at Iowa State, as has Barnes at Tennessee; both raised the level for their respective jobs. Perhaps it’s a little early to have Pitino on this list, but his reboot of a dormant St. John’s program in just two seasons is remarkable.

The next three names are coaches in their first year, but have clearly done fantastic work, and are set up to keep it going. Byington has Vanderbilt headed to the NCAA Tournament in year one despite being picked to finish last in the SEC. Dusty May has a Michigan program that won 8 games last year at 22-6 and #25 in Kenpom. Kelsey has done a similar job rebooting Louisville. All three coaches seem to be doing fantastic work, but other coaches have had great first years and then fell off soon after, so time will tell.

There wasn’t a ton of risk in these hires necessarily, but they’ve all worked well. Pitino, Barnes and Pearl were proven winners at the power-conference level. That does not guarantee future success, but it’s perhaps less surprising when they do it again. Even though all three were let go by power conference programs, two were for cause outside of performance, and Barnes was doing quite well, but Texas thought they could do better. So far, they haven’t. The rest of the hires were up-and-comers and were well received at the time. Beard and Otzelberger were perhaps lesser known than Oats and Hurley after their NCAA Tournament successes at Buffalo and Rhode Island respectively, but both Beard and Otzelberger had been top assistants at the places that ended up hiring them, prior to going out on their own and proving themselves at the mid-major level.

The success of Byington, May and Kelsey can tell us a lot, however, about the current state of the game and a recipe for success. All three programs they took over were in need of major roster shakeups, but had resources committed to make that happen. Then, those coaches went out and identified players and were able to earn the commitments, and hit the ground running in year one. The three programs have a combined one returning starter from last year, according to Kenpom. But it’s also fair to say that while all three coaches brought in good players from the portal, they didn’t exactly “buy” a brand new team of super stars. That’s evident in the preseason expectations for those programs, which were not sky high. We mentioned Vanderbilt was picked dead last in the SEC, but Michigan and Louisville were both picked to finish 9th in their respective leagues. So it's both talent acquisition and coaching, but it might not take as long as it used to if the new coach can do both things well.

Kenny Payne, Louisville

Kim Anderson, Missouri

Wyking Jones, California

Tom Crean, Georgia

Kevin Stallings, Pitt

Mark Fox, California

Patrick Ewing, Georgetown

Chris Mullin, St. John’s

Bryce Drew, Vanderbilt

Jerry Stackhouse, Vanderbilt

Danny Manning, Wake Forest

Kyle Neptune, Villanova

Too early to tell, but not good so far

Red Autry, Syracuse

What this list tells us: This is a longer list, but it was difficult to truly decide which hires were the worst. All of these coaches with the exception of Neptune, who is on this list because he has a premier job and has done very little with it, had losing records at their respective jobs. Payne at Louisville was an epic disaster that would be nearly impossible to top; he won just 18 percent of his games at a great job. Wyking Jones at Cal and Kim Anderson at Mizzou were nearly as bad though, winning less than 30 percent of their games. Crean, Stallings and Fox weren’t able to get anything going at their new job after previous power-conference head coaching experience. Stallings was a disaster off the court and on at Pitt, and Crean, despite winning a bunch of games at Marquette, followed up a disappointing run at Indiana with a worse run at Georgia.

So are there trends in this list? A lack of college head coach experience stands out. Payne, Jones, Ewing, Mulllin and Stackhouse had never been college head coaches, and only Payne and Jones had coached in college in any capacity. Anderson was a successful head coach, but at the D2 level. Neptune had just one .500 year of head coaching experience at Fordham before returning to Villanova after years as an assistant there. Only two coaches on this list, Danny Manning and Bryce Drew, had head coach experience and were considered to be on a career upswing, which is how the majority of power-conference hires have gone over the past decade. In Drew’s case, Vanderbilt is clearly a difficult job since they have two coaches on this list, and Manning had only been a head coach for two years at Tulsa after years as an assistant at Kansas, though he was coming off of an NCAA Tournament appearance when he got the Wake job.

Promoting from Within

We’ll start here, because this has a direct tie to UVa’s current situation. Of the 120 hires made at power-conference jobs over the past decade, 10 percent have been internal promotions from within the existing staff. Three of those coaches had been the interim coach for one reason or another, before getting the job full time. Of the 12 promotions, only three could be considered obviously successful; Duke’s promotion of Scheyer, Wisconsin’s elevation of Greg Gard after Bo Ryan stepped down, and Butler promoting Chris Holtmann after his head coach, Brandon Miller, stepped down because of health issues. Gard was the only one of the three that served in an interim role. Holtmann left Butler after three years to take the Ohio State job.

One-third of the internal promotions from this decade have already been canned; two were out within two years, and only Oklahoma State’s Mike Boynton made it more than four years. Wyking Jones succeeding Cuonzo Martin at Cal was a disaster, while Travis Steele couldn’t build on Chris Mack’s success at Xavier and lasted four years. Mark Adams was fired for cause in year two after taking over for Chris Beard, and Boynton had a short-lived run of success because he was able to get Cade Cunningham to Stillwater, but didn’t really accomplish anything else.

There are a bunch of other internal promotions where either the jury is still out, or performance has been mixed to this point. Rodney Terry might be out at Texas in a few weeks. He got the Longhorns job after a good interim run after Beard was fired early in the season for cause. Red Autry has been pretty bad at Syracuse in two years, and will probably be on the hot seat next season. Hubert Davis made an improbable run to the title game a few years ago, but it doesn’t exactly seem Carolina fans are thrilled with the job he’s doing of late. He could also be in danger soon. Jake Diebler got the Ohio State job after a successful run as an interim coach last season, but results have been mixed there this year, and there are already plenty of folks with second thoughts about whether that was the right move.

What it means for UVa: Ron Sanchez is still a candidate for the Virginia job, despite a down year for the program. Sanchez is 14-15 as UVa’s interim coach, and the Hoos have their first losing season in conference play since 2010-11, and will miss the NCAA Tournament unless there’s a shock ACC Tournament run. But results for the internal promotion group have not been great. The three interim coaches that got the job full time, the current situation for Sanchez, did much better than Sanchez has done this year in their interim roles, and exceeded their expectations. And now two of them are either on the hot seat or headed there.

One thing worth noting, however, is that most of these internal promotions were coaches that had not been head coaches previously; Holtmann, Terry and Adams had coached at the mid or low-major level; Terry and Adams were fired from those jobs, while Holtmann voluntarily left Gardner Webb to join the Butler staff. Terry is probably the best comp for Sanchez; both were mid-major head coaches with .500-ish records and very little postseason success, and were thrust into their roles surprisingly and had to make the best of it. Terry got the job because he led Texas to the Elite 8; Sanchez hasn’t come close to that as UVa’s interim.

Alum Hires and Ties to Program

It’s not quite as easy as promoting from within, but many programs have opted to either hire an alum, or someone that used to work at the school before moving on. 11 alums have been hired at their alma mater over the previous decade. A few of these coaches also fit into the internal promotion category as well (Hubert Davis, Scheyer, Autry, for example).

Alum hires have had very mixed results, especially if it seems their connection to the school was the primary reason they got the job. Guys like Chris Mullin at St. John’s, Juwon Howard at Michigan and Patrick Ewing at Georgetown were legends at their school, but couldn’t lead those programs to sustained success. Scheyer has done well, but there have really only been a couple of other alums that have been obvious successes at their programs. Matt Painter has easily been the best, but he got the Purdue job 20 years ago, and had been both an assistant at Purdue and a mid-major coach. Jamie Dixon has done a solid job at a TCU program that has had very little success otherwise. Mark Pope is in year one at Kentucky, and while his connection to Big Blue helped him get the job, he was also doing a good job at BYU and could have gotten other power-conference jobs at some point if he wanted one. And it’s way too early to say whether he’ll be good at Kentucky.

There are also a lot of coaches that have been hired, at least in part, because they’d worked at the school as an assistant. This group has been a mixed bag too. Otzelberger at Iowa State and Beard at Texas Tech are the success stories, but both had won at the mid-major level. Neptune has largely failed at Villanova, and a few others have already been fired. There are also, strangely enough, three coaches that were re-hired from a school that they had previously left for a bigger job. Thad Matta (Butler) and Sean Miller (Xavier) are currently back in their old stomping grounds, with the latter doing a solid job and the former seemingly not working out in his second run with the Bulldogs. UVa fan favorite Dave Leitao got a second run at DePaul, and flamed out as everyone else has with that program since Leitao’s first tenure, before he took the UVa job.

What it means for UVa: Not a ton, really. There don’t seem to be a lot of alums truly in the running for the job (Byington didn’t play at UVa so we’re not counting his graduate degree from the school as being an alum hire). Sanchez sort of fits into the “former assistant” camp, though he returned to Virginia before Tony Bennett retired. He didn’t have anywhere near the success that Otzelberger, Beard or Mark Pope (was an assistant at BYU and then returned as head coach) had at their mid-major stops before returning to the big time.

Mid Major Winners and Lateral Movers

Nearly half of the hires at this level have been coaches that have led mid-major programs, but haven’t led a power conference program. Of those, 15 have already been fired, including a couple fired for cause. Six more were good enough to earn a bigger job, and left. Of those still at their jobs, eight were given a rating of “great hire,” and five more were categorized as “good hires.” It’s arbitrary, but every job is different so it’s hard to determine between, good, great and average, at times. The rest of the group ranges from coaches on the hot seat, like Neptune, to coaches who have been up and down, like Mike Young and Kevin Keatts, to those who haven’t had a ton of time to prove themselves yet, like Damon Stoudamire (who coached at Pacific before going to the NBA) and Steve Lutz at Oklahoma State.

One-third of the coaches hired this decade have been power conference coaches previously. These coaches are either making lateral moves, or are bouncing back after being let go somewhere else. 11 of the 40 hires have already failed, and resulted in a firing. Five of those 11 had been fired at their previous power-conference job, including guys like Mike Anderson (St. John’s), Leitao (DePaul), Fox (Cal) and Ben Howland (Mississippi State). Others that have been fired already include those that were not fired at their previous job but did a relatively average job and may have left to avoid the axe; this includes Kevin Stallings, who went from Vanderbilt to Pitt, Cuonzo Martin, who bounced from Tennessee to Cal to Missouri before getting canned, and Jim Christian, who had a forgettable tenure at TCU, before going to a mid-major, and then to Boston College.

The hire with power-conference experience might be the most-successful group though, even though some of these coaches were fired at their previous major job. 19 of the 29 hires still employed have clearly been successful in their role, including two that already left for another gig (Buzz Williams going from VT to A&M, for example). 10 of these hires were categorized as great hires, more than any other sub-group. Seven more have been categorized as good hires, and most of these coaches have a chance to go up or down, as they’re relatively new to their current gigs. 10 more have been categorized as having mixed results, but some of those, like John Calipari at Arkansas, are just getting started and can move into good or great territory. Then there are others, like Pitt’s Jeff Capel, who have had some success but not enough to be considered a truly good hire.

What it means for UVa: There is an obvious correlation between success as a head coach, somewhere, and more success at the power conference job, at least when comparing to coaches with no prior head coach experience. There seems to be more variance among the mid-major coaches getting hired, with some truly excellent coaches moving up the ranks, and some hires that bottomed out. Mid-major jobs are not exactly like power-conference jobs, though there is a difference between programs in, say, the Atlantic 10 or Mountain West, and ones in smaller leagues where resources and talent are vastly different. Coaches that have shown something at the power conference level, at least enough to get another chance, have done relatively well. UVa will be looking at a lot of mid-major head coaches and a few with some level of P5 experience, and while each case is different, coaches that have had opportunities and didn’t fail are more predictable than those with limited experience.

Second Chances

20 of the coaches hired in the last decade were fired at some point prior to that appointment. And really, there are two reasons a coach can get fired. The first, is for performance. Simply put, losing more than the athletic department can stomach. And the second, is to be fired for cause, or something other than wins and losses. In some cases it was violating NCAA rules, and in others, personal issues did them in.

Of these 20 coaches on their second chance, six were fired again, and another retired. Only one of those coaches, SMU’s Rob Lanier, was not coming directly off of being fired in their most-recent college job; Lanier was fired early in his career at Siena, bounced back at Georgia State and got the SMU job, before getting canned after just two years so the Mustangs could hire Andy Enfield. All of the coaches fired for the second time were in their 50’s when hired the second time around.

There have been a bunch of redemption stories, too, however. 13 of the coaches on their second chance are still in their jobs, and eight of them are doing quality work. This includes a bunch of names already mentioned, like Barnes and Pitino, as well as Shaka Smart at Marquette, who is still only 47 years old. The coaches fired for cause have had the best bounce backs, which makes sense. These are usually good coaches that schools didn’t want to move on from, but had to for one reason or another. Bruce Pearl is doing a great job at Auburn, Kelvin Sampson has built Houston into a juggernaut, and Pitino is finding success at St. John’s. Beard is still working on rehabbing his image at Ole Miss, and Sean Miller is getting another chance at Xavier.

What it means for UVa: We’re not advocating for hiring someone that got fired for cause necessarily, but there have been plenty of examples of coaches growing and finding success at another stop. For coaches like Sampson and Pearl, the things they got fired for aren’t even against the rules anymore, but pretty much anyone who has been fired for cause is probably off limits at a place like UVa.

Geographical Fit

We mentioned alum hires and internal promotions, but there’s also another type of hire that sometimes overlaps. A lot of schools will hire a coach that may be from their state or general area, even if they haven’t played or coached there. For example, Northwestern hired Duke assistant Chris Collins, a Chicago native, who had no other direct tie to the Wildcats program. This makes sense for both sides, perhaps even more than hiring someone because they’re an alum. The coach may have recruiting ties in the area, or a general understanding of the landscape, and being closer to home can be attractive to the coach and their family, which can be good for the long term fit.

Of the 18 coaches hired that are from the general area where they’ve been hired, only three have been fired, and one of those was for cause. There have been great matches in this group too, like Texans Grant McCasland at Texas Tech and Buzz Williams at Texas A&M, Smart back in his home state at Marquette, and Manhattan native Rick Pitino back at St. John’s.

What it means for UVa: This isn’t a foolproof way to hire, but it has worked for other programs. Recruiting is more national now anyway, and UVa’s roster has had almost no local presence in the Bennett era. Still, it can help a match come together, if a coach wants to be back where they’re from. For example, Ryan Odom at VCU and Byington at Vanderbilt, both Virginia natives, already took jobs in the Commonwealth at the mid-major level, and it may be an easier sell to get them to come to Charlottesville instead of say, Texas or California or somewhere else.

Is there an ideal age?

It’s hard to say. The coaches that have already been hired and fired in the last decade were 46 years old, on average, when hired. The coaches given a ‘great hire’ rating are an average of 49 years old. But one trend we picked up was that older coaches can be among the most successful, but only if they’ve already demonstrated it. Of the coaches with ‘great’ ratings, only three were older than 53 when hired, Kelvin Sampson (58), Rick Barnes (60) and Rick Pitino (70) all of whom had a long track record of winning games at big jobs. Coaches hired over 55 or so have been good hires, when they’ve already been good somewhere else. Fired coaches getting another job later in their careers (like Mike Anderson or Ben Howland) or first timers at the P5 level (Kenny Payne, Mark Adams) have often had mixed or bad results.

A lot of the very youngest hires have failed, too. Of the 18 coaches hired at 40 or younger, half have already been fired. There have been some good ones too, like Todd Golden at Florida, for example, and of course, Tony Bennett was in his 30’s when he got the UVa job.

What it means for UVa: Not a ton. It probably wouldn’t be wise for a program like UVa to look for anyone wrapping up their careers, or someone totally unproven. Most of the candidates for the job will probably be somewhere between 40 and 55, which seems to be a relative sweet spot for quality hires anyway.

Simply put, any type of hire can fail, or succeed. But in digging through these 120 hires, it seems pretty clear that the easiest way to find a successful coach is picking one that gets the college game, and has shown an ability to win. It sounds easy enough, and coaches from any background can fail, but most of the time, the ones that have won big are candidates that are seen as logical fits and good hires from the start. The schools that have gotten cute, going to the NBA ranks to find a coach, or hiring assistants, have failed more than they have succeeded by a long shot.

It’s nothing personal against the man himself, but the data here does make it seem less likely that Sanchez would suddenly start winning a bunch of games at Virginia. That doesn't mean its impossible for him to succeed long term, it's just statistically not as likely. He had a so-so record at Charlotte and no NCAA Tournament appearances, and wouldn’t have been a candidate for a P5 job straight up when he left there. And the internal promotion or interim-to-permanent hires have been very mixed, with only three really succeeding, all younger assistants on the rise, with all three promoted coaches taking over programs recently in the Final Four.

If there was an easy blueprint to follow to find a successful coach, everyone would follow it and coaches wouldn’t get fired so often. But this hire, like all others, will come down to simply whittling the candidate pool down to a few that make sense and hopefully have proven themselves capable, and then hoping you pick the right guy. One thing is clear though, UVa has to find a coach that can navigate the current environment, because it could lead to success quicker than it used to, as we’ve seen this year at Vanderbilt, Michigan and Louisville.

Based on the data, UVa should try to find a coach that has sat in the big seat before, has won games, and has shown they can work the transfer portal and then coach players up once they get them. And of course, someone who wants to be in Charlottesville for a while, and stay out of trouble while they’re here.