Worst college basketball coaching hires of the decade

Being an athletic director is hard. Sometimes a coaching hire is a slam dunk that makes a career, and other times, you miss what once looked like a wide-open layup.

Kenny Payne - Louisville

Kenny Payne took one of the best programs in college basketball from a transition period to the worst two seasons that the Cardinals had since 1941.

When he was hired from the Knicks coaching staff as a former Louisville player who had won the national championship in 1986, it seemed like he could be the one to revive a floundering Cardinals program.

Payne was known as a phenomenal recruiter while on John Calipari’s Kentucky coaching staff and had Calipari’s blessing as a coach, high praise in the college basketball world.

Almost no one could have predicted what Payne did to Louisville basketball. Back-to-back seasons below .300 were an unprecedented low for the program that some consider a blue blood alongside teams like Duke and UCLA.

Payne won his first away game with the Cardinals almost two years into his tenure as coach, a statistic that really hammers home the true failure of this experiment.

His performance resulted in petitions and online hatred calling for his firing from fans who had come to expect a certain standard from Louisville basketball, especially after so much success with Denny Crum and Rick Pitino.

Payne also became the first Louisville head coach to not make it to the NCAA tournament since Harold Church in 1944.

Now, Payne is on the Arkansas coaching staff as an associate head coach, a role that he thrived in in the past. The current head coach of Louisville is Pat Kelsey, who has done his best to rebound from the Payne era of Cardinal hoops.

Patrick Ewing - Georgetown

Ewing is another example of a coach who was hired by his alma mater, but wasn’t able to match the success achieved as a player.

The difference between Kenny Payne and Patrick Ewing, though, is that Ewing is widely regarded as an all-time great and one of the best centers to ever play the game.

Ewing’s time at Georgetown was mostly highlighted by consistent mediocrity and a lack of any real success. A failure for a program that expects basketball well into March Madness.

Ewing was hired as the Hoyas' head coach following the firing of John Thompson III, the son of John Thompson Jr., the most decorated Georgetown head coach in the history of the program.

The Hall of Famer had been coaching with the Charlotte Hornets at the time of his hiring and was one of the most notable collegiate hires because of his fandom in the Georgetown fandom.

Ewing’s best season was in 2021 when the Hoyas finished 13-13 and lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

This hire was one of the most disappointing hires not only of the last decade but of all time because of the way that it tainted the legacy of arguably the greatest player to graduate from the Georgetown program.

Following Ewing’s firing in 2023, he shifted to the business side of basketball for the New York Knicks as a basketball ambassador. Georgetown moved on to Ed Cooley as a head coach who has maintained Ewing’s new tradition of keeping the Hoyas below .500.

Will Wade - LSU

Wade’s hiring wasn’t necessarily a failure because of his ability to coach a basketball team, but more so because he was investigated by the FBI, which ultimately overshadowed his on-court success.

Wade was hired by LSU from his position as the head coach of VCU, and the Tigers were forced to pay out $1 million to VCU to acquire him as their coach, making it an already risky decision.

Wade thrived in his second season as the Tigers’ head coach, leading them to a regular-season SEC championship, something they hadn’t achieved since 2009.

Of course, this was immediately followed by Wade being suspended as head coach during LSU’s NCAA tournament run while he was being investigated because of a recruiting violation revealed through an FBI wiretap investigation.

His suspension was lifted by LSU following the end of the Tigers’ 2019 season after he forfeited the bonuses he would have been given without his suspension.

He then served two more years as head coach before being fired the day before Selection Sunday in 2022, a day that should have been a celebrated one in Baton Rouge that was instead the end of a controversial head coaching tenure.

The official reason for his firing involved formal allegations from the NCAA for recruiting violations, but LSU had been aware of the violations for years and chose not to fire him until the NCAA took action.

Wade has since worked as the head coach of McNeese State and now coaches for NC State after following through with his 10-game suspension and his show-cause recruiting penalty enforced by the NCAA.

Wade has been vocal about his distaste for the penalties given to him because of the current NCAA landscape, with NIL money given his bribery-related charges.

Gwen Evans is a second-year student majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact her, please email her at gme5218@psu.edu.