College basketball 2025 coaching changes: North Florida's Matthew Driscoll takes assistant job at Kansas State

A fun twist came near the end of this year's carousel cycle: An HBCU hired a Heisman Trophy winner to run its men's basketball program.

Charlie Ward signed a five-year deal with Florida A&M, giving the SWAC some extra swagger and pop. Ward was an electric football player at Florida State in the early 1990s, though he made his money in basketball. Imagine winning college football's most prestigious individual award, then going pro for a decade-plus in a different sport. That's exactly what Ward did. A first-round NBA Draft pick in 1994 by the Knicks, Ward spent 11 seasons in the NBA.

He spent the past seven years coaching high school basketball in Florida. Now he enters the Division I ranks and will try to get the Rattlers to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2007. Cool story.

I've got the full rundown on every coaching change in men's D-I below. Ward, Gus Argenal (UC Riverside) and Bobby Kennen (interim at North Florida) were the three final hirings of the 2025 carousel cycle. Kennen takes over for Matthew Driscoll, who accepted an offer to be Jerome Tang's associate head coach at Kansas State.

Previously ...

Creighton has its next men's basketball coach — though it will be some time before he officially gets the job.

High Point's Alan Huss agreed to a contract that will make him the coach-in-waiting under Greg McDermott, the school announced after CBS Sports reported the news. Huss, McDermott, Creighton athletic director Marcus Blossom and Creighton president Daniel Hendrickson were in communication on the succession plan for weeks, sources said. After serious deliberation, Huss made up his mind and agreed to a deal to return to his alma mater.

"Returning to Creighton, my alma mater, to work alongside Coach McDermott and contribute to the future of this program is an extraordinary opportunity and, honestly, my dream job," Huss said in a statement.

The decision was delayed because Huss was a candidate at multiple high-major openings, in addition to having some hesitation over leaving High Point. Huss' choice to leave a high-end mid-major was aided by some assurances from McDermott that he wouldn't be coaching into the end of the 2020s at Creighton. No concrete decision has been made on when the 60-year-old McDermott will coach his final games with the Bluejays, but sources said the expectation is two more years at most. Huss likely would not have agreed to the deal to leave High Point if there was an indefinite long-term timeline moving forward with McDermott.

Huss, who has deep ties to the Midwest and played at Creighton from 1997-2001, was previously an assistant under McDermott at CU from 2017-23 and helped build out the program to one of the best in the Big East during that span. Creighton is pivoting to an atypical hiring arrangement. There have been hand-picked successors in college basketball over the years, but this is a rare situation in which a former assistant has opted to leave a head job at another school to come back and theoretically wait multiple seasons before taking over.

It's happening because Huss has a high-end reputation for how he runs a program, having established himself as a head coach immediately the past two years.

The Panthers made the 2025 NCAA Tournament and fell in the first round as a No. 13 seed to fourth-seeded Purdue. Huss' team went 29-6, including a 17-2 mark against Big South teams this past season. Huss is 56-15 overall as a head coach. Creighton is coming off a second-round loss as a 9-seed to No. 1 seed Auburn. The Bluejays are 350-171 under McDermott, who has 630 career wins and taken Creighton to 10 NCAA tourneys, including the last five in a row.

With his departure from High Point, Huss' top assistant, Flynn Clayman won over the job in less than 48 hours. HPU is regarded as a top 10-15 mid-major gig. From a facilities and support standpoint, it's clearly No. 1 in the Big South.

As for the carousel overall, we had 14 flips in the five power conferences in this cycle. That's more than I expected at the start of March, and in fact matches the number from 2024. The total number of coaching changes in 2025 comes in at 56.

Major-conference changes Non-Power Five changes