After his firing of Thad Matta on Monday, Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith is struggling to find a replacement for the head coaching vacancy atop his men’s basketball program. Most recently, Chicago Bulls HC Fred Hoiberg responded to questions revolving around his name being thrown around Wednesday night by saying that “it’s an honor. But I’m head coach of the Bulls and have no intention of leaving” thus removing him from consideration.

Later on Wednesday night, the first reported news of Smith making an offer broke following a meeting between the AD and Creighton’s Greg McDermott. In his seven seasons at Creighton, McDermott has led the Jays to a 166-82 record and four tournament appearances. McDermott announced via Twitter Thursday morning that he would be returning to Omaha.

I'm blessed and honored to be the coach at Creighton…..and am looking forward to many more great years in Omaha! #rolljays — Coach McDermott (@cucoachmac) June 8, 2017

Shortly after the joint press conference announcing Matta’s departure Smith’s extremely greedy and ambitious wishlist of potential targets surfaced. Some of the names on this list included Hoiberg, Arizona’s Sean Miller, Villanova’s Jay Wright, Virginia’s Tony Bennett, Oklahoma City Thunder’s Billy Donovan, and Brad Stevens of the Boston Celtics. Out of this group, Hoiberg was certainly the most reasonable target given the tremendous success and extremely bright futures of the programs led by the other candidates. A move by any of these coaches—especially the candidates from other colleges—from their contending program to an Ohio State —a program has struggled tremendously in recruiting and retaining talent since signing 5-star D’Angelo Russell for the 2014-2015—would certainly be furthering themselves from capturing a national championship. In addition, the possibility of any of those schools or teams letting their high profile coach leave is practically nonexistent. For example, new Arizona president Dr. Robert Robbins said in an interview this week that OSU would have to hire Sean Miller “over my dead body.”

As of Wednesday, it was reported that, other than McDermott, the only other interview OSU had conducted was with current assistant Chris Jent. Looking forward, it has been reported that OSU is considering going after current Golden State Warriors assistant Mike Brown. Brown, who has no college coaching experience, is from Columbus and is currently in Ohio before Game 4 of the Finals. In addition, other possible candidates include South Carolina’s Frank Martin, Providence’s Ed Cooley, Marquette’s Steve Wojciechowski and Cincinnati’s Mick Cronin. Chris Mack’s name had been thrown around but he has since reaffirmed his position at Xavier after coincidentally putting his home up for sale earlier this week. Mack reassured Musketeer Nation that he and his family are only moving to nearby northern Kentucky and will be returning to Xavier.

While it will be difficult to lure Cronin—a Cincinnati alum—away from a Bearcat program he has rebuilt and experienced success with, he is a young, solid coach who Ohio State could target and possibly sell on all of the positives that come with being the head coach of a Power 5 Conference program.

Featured Image via Wikimedia