Louisville basketball fans are often lauded as an intelligent bunch. So, let’s hear your suggestions; If you’re writing off Chris Mack, who should UofL replace him with?
As Louisville basketball fans, our expectations should be high. Elite Eights, Final Fours, and National Championships should be the goal. Conference titles should be in the picture.
However, oftentimes, expectations are not steeped in reality. As fans, we get caught in the rat race that is constantly trying to one-up Kentucky and other rival programs.
Lately, the rumblings have been getting louder. The Louisville Twitter echo chamber is becoming more vocal. Fans want a change, and many think the change should come in the form of a new head basketball coach.
Don’t take my word for it, just look around social media.
This is just a quick synopsis of what Louisville Twitter looks like. Chris Mack was trending nationally Friday afternoon. Facebook has gone from a cesspool of dismay to users literally losing brain cells just by logging in.
Additionally, rumors have been circulating that higher-ups at UofL wanted Mack out after he spoke with Dino Gaudio in private without an intermediary. Many have indicated that perhaps it’s best to move on.
Louisville basketball fans are known to be a smart bunch. With that in mind, the experts must have some logical replacement plan for Mack.
Are the finances in place?
The first thing that any Louisville basketball expert has surely done is looking over the UofL financials.
As you can imagine after a season where the Cardinals got to play 20 games in a COVID-19-shortened season, the books are looking real nice.
Never mind the Bobby Petrino severance, the Rick Pitino severance, the litany of court fees, and NCAA fines. Forget that. Definitely don’t consider that Louisville furloughed or laid off 45 staff members during COVID. Those are all just lines on a budget sheet. Surely donors are lining up to help rescue the athletic department. Let’s just set these very real and ever-present budgetary issues aside.
Fans have likely looked at Mack’s contract and seen that starting in 2019, his buyout decreased by $500,000 a year. That means that Louisville would only have to shell over $5 million were he to be fired without cause. Chump change. And the $4 million per year over the next four seasons as stipulated by said contract? No big deal.
Who would Mack’s replacement be?
Say someone does shell over tens of millions of dollars to pay Louisville’s legal fees, get the athletic department running at full capacity, buy out Mack and hire a different head coach.
Who the hell are you going to hire?
Let’s get the fun ones out of the way. Why not?
How about Billy Donovan? Old Billy D has been waiting for the right opportunity to get out of the crap bum NBA to coach at a school with more scandal issues than the Clinton family. His mentor was ousted by said school five years ago so, sure, why wouldn’t Donovan want to be the next Hall-of-Famer to coach in the 502.
If not Donovan, what about Chris Beard? Guy has had more jobs in the last few years than Michael Strahan. He might as well come to a real basketball school.
You’ve gotta make Beard say “no,” but if he does, you’d think Brad Stevens is taking that phone call.
In all seriousness, who is gonna come, Nancy Smith from Facebook? Who’s going to do a better job than Mack, BigCardsFan69420?
Are you going to buy John Calipari out of that lifetime contract? Things went really well last year in LexVegas. What about Scott Drew? Fresh off a national title. C’mon, Scott, we actually punish our teams for scandals here, you’ll love it. If Drew doesn’t answer the phone, your next call has to be Mark Few. Other blue bloods failed to persuade him, but maybe Mark prefers a fan base that sets unrealistic expectations instead of one that exalts him.
Let’s rapid-fire some names. Shaka Smart? Real appealing. Mick Cronin? Tom Izzo? Dana Altman. Kelvin Sampson. Sean Miller… What, did I say something wrong?
Or perhaps it’s just that no legitimate, title-contending coach in his right mind would want to touch the Louisville basketball program with a 50-foot pole right now.
All this is to say, Chris Mack was the right man for the job in 2018. In 2021, he has never felt more like the right fit. If not for what he’s accomplished at Louisville, then for what the program could realistically bring in behind him.
Mack is doing about as good of a job as we could have expected of him when the news of Pitino’s firing came down prior to the 2017-18 season.
Many experts branded Louisville as a rebuild job for the next decade. Some thought that it would take longer. Yet, Mack had Louisville as high as No. 1 in the country in his second season.
Should fans desire more? Maybe a little bit.
Has Mack royally messed up a few times? Certainly.
Is this situation completely unfair to players, fans, boosters, donors, and anyone else around the program? Hell frickin yeah, brother.
At the end of the day, however, Louisville basketball is best served to ride this shit storm out with Mack at the helm. You can’t convince me otherwise.
Next: What to make of The Dino Tapes and Chris Mack’s suspension
I wonder what the final result will be when the ncaa is finished. Until that’s over we have to stay with coach Mack.
I miss Rick….he did his job…always had competing teams. Now we have Spoonman from the Soundgarden video.
LOL! A+ for the reference.
Clown journalism
You can keep that cheap no 1 ranking , I don’t remember us being number 1 in 1980, 1986, or 2013. The years he was at Xavier, that school was in a conference, most of the time, I didn’t even knew existed and all the teams in the conference are unknown. So those cheap numbers in his record don’t mean squat, as you can tell by his coaching. But if you want to talk numbers we had Duke up by 20 and lost the game. Very few top notch coaches would have let that happen. He don’t know when to use the full court press, he don’t know when to slow the game, yaddah, yaddah,yaddah. Google most valuable team in college basketball (us) and tell me we don’t deserve better. Get a rebuilding coach and not a coach that is supposed to show and prove. Tell recruits we are going to ride it out with him and see if they come. Hey guys come to Louisville with this losing coach. Jeez…
If Mack is fired for cause, the money is not going to be an issue. There is still the issue of who wants to coach in this dumpster fire and that is a real concern. No one will touch this job without knowing the post season limitations so they understand how to recruit. It would not shock me in the least if we see most of this team gone at the end of the year via graduation or transfer. A short list of guys that will be gone: Williams, West, Faulkner, Withers (transfer), Locke, Traynor (transfer), Curry (transfer). I could see a mass exodus. Wheeler and Wiznitzer are others to wat h as well.