Coaching Hotboard Volume 1: Candidate Tiers

The last time I put one of these lists together was May 2019. I was in Barcelona on the beach enjoying the afternoon when my phone buzzed that John Beilein took the Cavaliers job. I spent most of the remainder of the (engagement) trip finding places (a hotel basement) to cobble together thoughts on a coaching search.

Prior to that moment, the idea of a coaching search had barely crossed my mind. I had spent almost no time considering who would be a candidate for Michigan’s head coaching job, and it was hard to imagine the program without John Beilein at the helm.

Five years later, it is time for another coaching board. This time, coaching candidates have been the only relevant Michigan basketball conversation for the last two or three months. Despite weeks of deliberation and thousands of message board posts, it still isn’t much easier to put together a candidate list with any certainty than it was then.

There’s no obvious choice to fill Michigan’s vacancy, and every candidate has their own strengths and weaknesses, reasons to take the job, and reasons not to. To start the discussion, here’s a wide-ranging list of reasonable (and less reasonable) candidates who could be considered for the role. I broke the list up into tiers like realistic fits, wild cards or home run swings.

The board will eventually develop into a realistic list of actual targets, but for now this should serve to establish the playing field.