By Connor Wilson
This upcoming season, there will be four new head coaches in the Big East Conference. All four of these coaches all come from different backgrounds and have paved their own paths to get where they are today. Some have a lot of experience. Others not so much. So, without further ado lets take an in depth look at all of the coaching changes in the Big East.
To start, let’s look at arguably the biggest coaching change not only in the Big East, but in the entire country, in the Villanova Wildcats. For over 20 years, the man on the sidelines for Nova was the Hall of Famer, Jay Wright. Wright shocked the college basketball world in late April when he announced his retirement. This left a huge hole in the Wildcats’ program that had been filled since the Fall of 2001.
Fortunately for Villanova fans, the school had a plan in place before Wright made his decision. At the same time, he informed the team he was stepping down, he told them that his successor would be Kyle Neptune.
Villanova Head Coach Kyle Neptune
“I certainly don’t envy Kyle having to follow a legend like Jay Wright,” Kevin Sweeney of Sports Illustrated said. “He’s very fortunate to inherit guys like Brandon Slater and Caleb Daniels who know the program inside and out and can help with the transition.”
Neptune has been in and out of the Wildcats’ program since 2008. Originally, he started out as a video coordinator and was a member of Wright’s staff for the 2009 Final Four team. He then left for an assistant coach role at Niagara before rejoining the Wildcats in 2013 as an official assistant. Before the 2021-22 season, he was named the head coach at Fordham and guided the Rams to their first .500 or higher season since 2016.
At just 37 years old, Neptune is now the youngest head coach in the Big East. He is tasked with leading a team that made the NCAA Tournament last season back there, similar to another one of the new head coaches in the conference.
After making a run all the way to the Elite Eight in the 2022 NCAA Tournament, Shaheen Holloway and the St. Peter’s Peacocks were the talk of the town around the college basketball world. From winning the MAAC Tournament and entering March Madness as a 15 seed to defeating Kentucky, Murray St. and Purdue, three great programs last year, to get there, the Peacocks were the story of March.
Seton Hall Head Coach Shaheen Holloway
“What he did at Saint Peter’s is ridiculous,” said Jeff Goodman of Stadium and FieldOf68. “Now he will have another tough task.”
Before joining the Peacocks in 2018, Holloway was an assistant on Seton Hall head coach Kevin Willard’s staff. Holloway himself has been a lifelong Pirate, playing his college ball in South Orange before becoming an assistant there after he retired from pro ball.
Shortly after the Pirates were eliminated in the Round of 64 by TCU, Willard resigned as head coach and accepted the job at Maryland. This paved the way for Holloway to take over, which he formally did a couple of weeks later after the Peacocks were eliminated.
“Holloway was already an extremely qualified candidate for this job before his March Madness run for the ages, Sweeney said.” He’s an accomplished recruiter who was critical in this program’s rise under Willard and the defensive schemes he showed off at Saint Peter’s should translate to the next level.”
And so far, that has been true, as Holloway has brought in multiple experienced transfers such as a trio of ACC guards in Al-Amir Dawes, Femi Odukale, and Dre Davis to go along with forward KC Ndefo following him from St. Peter’s.
Holloway isn’t the only new head coach in the Big East to take the helm at his alma mater, however, as a particular “new” head coach in Indianapolis also makes his return to his old stomping grounds.
Since Brad Stevens departed for the Celtics job after the 2013 season, the head coaching role at Butler hasn’t exactly been stable. After LaVall Jordan was let go at the conclusion of last season, Matta will become the fourth coach in 10 years to grace the sidelines at Hinkle Fieldhouse since Stevens. Brandon Miller lasted just one season before a medical issue ended his tenure. Chris Holtmann was in charge for three seasons before taking a better gig at Ohio State.
With the revolving door that has been the head coaching position at Butler, Bulldogs fans are hoping they finally found their guy: Thad Matta.
Butler Head Coach Thad Matta
Matta has been around the Butler program his entire life. After starting his playing career at Southern Illinois, he played his final three collegiate seasons at Hinkle Fieldhouse. He later returned as an assistant coach for two different tenures, the second of which resulted in him being named head coach for the 2000-01 season. He now will return for a fourth go-around with the Bulldogs this fall.
“Butler is the ideal job for him, maybe the only one that would have gotten him back into coaching,” Goodman said. “He lives right down the street from Hinkle. Thad is a heck of a coach and a terrific recruiter — but again, it’ll all depend on how much he wants to get after it.”
Since he last coached the Bulldogs in 2001, Matta has had stops as head coach at Xavier and, more famously, Ohio State. He led the Buckeyes to two Final Four appearances, four Big Ten Tournament championships, and five Big Ten regular season titles. After the 2017 season, he stepped down due to health issues that had made it increasingly difficult to keep up with the constant grind of being a power five head coach. He hasn’t coached since.
Despite it being a half-decade since he’s been on the sidelines, there are no worries that Matta has lost a step.
“The sport has changed a lot in the five years he has been away from the game, but he’s already shown he can bring talent to Butler and at the end of the day, winners like Matta tend to win everywhere they go,” said Sweeney.
Matta isn’t the only Big East head coach returning to a school where he already coached, however. Joining him is the new head man in Cincinnati.
The Xavier Musketeers have been pretty stable at head coach for the past decade or so. Chris Mack was at the helm for nine seasons until 2018 when he took the Louisville job. Travis Steele then came in and was in charge for four seasons up until this past March. Assistant Jonas Hayes took over for the NIT, a tournament in which the Musketeers came out on top.
Despite leading Xavier to that NIT Championship, the school didn’t pull the interim tag from Hayes and started their search for a permanent coach. Their search ended with the return of a familiar face: Sean Miller.
Xavier Head Coach Sean Miller
Miller was the head coach of the Musketeers from 2004-09 and was an assistant for a few years before that. In his final three seasons, he led the team to three consecutive Atlantic 10 regular season titles. After the third, he was hired as head coach at Arizona, where he won over 300 games and was a three-time Pac-12 Coach of the Year.
“Miller was a surprising hire, but arguably the best hire of the entire offseason,” noted Goodman. “He’s a coach who has knocked on the Final Four door several times and is obviously more motivated now than ever.”
His tenure in Tucson didn’t end on a positive note, however, as Miller was fired in wake of allegations against him for paying players to come to Arizona, specifically top recruit Deandre Ayton. Despite this, Xavier still went through with the hire and believes that Miller can replicate the success he had in his first stint, or even better, take them to places the program has never gone before.
“Scandal aside, Miller’s one of the best recruiters in the sport, and built elite teams at both Xavier and Arizona,” Sweeney said. “He’s already been to the second weekend twice at Xavier during his first stint and should be a major breath of fresh air after the failed Travis Steele era.”
Overall, the Big East is going to look very different with nearly 40% of the schools having new head coaches. Nonetheless, it will as always be a very competitive league that will send numerous teams to the NCAA Tournament, including some, if not all, of the teams discussed here.
How successful will these head coaches be in their new roles? Only time will tell.