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Jeff Goodman (I think) tweeted earlier this evening that Coach Mack had emerged as a viable candidate for the Wake Forest job vacated by Jeff Bzdelik's removal. On the surface, this makes loads of sense for at least one side. Wake Forest has been miserable under Bzdelik, whom they pried from Colorado after he put together three season in which the program averaged 12 wins. His tenure at Wake was as much a basketball nightmare as his name is a phonetic one.
Coach Mack, on the other hand, has been at Xavier for five years and made the NCAA tournament in four of them. He can clearly recruit, bringing in heralded classes or pinching a big commit on more than one occasion. Even the perceived shortcomings he has - player development, for instance - are minor compared to what Demon Deacon fans have endured of late.
The question then becomes what kind of program Xavier is. In the past, X has not been a destination for coaches. Thad Matta, Sean Miller, and even the venerated Skip Prosser fled Xavier for pastures whose shade of green was dictated by the Department of the Treasury. Coach Mack wouldn't even be the first head coach to split for Wake Forest.
If there is any coach X could hold onto, though, it's at least ostensibly Mack. He played at Xavier, spent time on the bench before moving up to his current position, and was even raised locally. The move to the Big East was, at least in part, about retaining talent like Coach Mack, or at least moving it on terms dictated by the school. Xavier has great facilities, plays in a power conference, is all-in for basketball, and has the payroll to match the offers that come rolling in from elsewhere.
The goal is for Xavier to be a place that players and coaches want to be, not someplace they just end up or stop off at. Anyone who has ever been on a road trip with children knows what question is being asked: are we there yet? Every time a situation like this comes up, we get the answer.
