Louisville officials schedule meeting with Xavier coach Chris Mack for head coach opening

Officials from the University of Louisville are scheduled to meet with Xavier coach Chris Mack for the first time this weekend to discuss the school's opening for a head men's basketball coach.

Mack has long been considered the top coach on Louisville's list, and the scheduled meeting is the first sign of the coaching search process taking shape.

A source with knowledge of the interview process initially told Courier Journal of the expected meeting. Mack later confirmed his plans to a USA Today Network reporter in Cincinnati.

On Wednesday, interim Louisville athletics director Vince Tyra dodged a question about the merit of reports that Mack was the top candidate for the job, saying he didn't think "anything has any merit until we have somebody signed up."

Tyra said he was spearheading the search with help from a circle of informal advisers. The goal, he said, would be to land a coach in the next week-to-10 days.

"It is an elite program," Tyra said. "It's going to remain an elite program. And our opportunity right now is to hire an elite coach to maintain that. We certainly didn't make the NCAA this year, and everybody knows that our expectations are much higher than that, to compete for national championships. They're difficult to come by. We've only had one in the last 32 years and it got snagged away from us. We're going to work hard to get back in that circle and we're going to do it right away."

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Mack, 48, is the winningest coach in Xavier basketball history, with 215 victories over nine seasons. His Musketeers reached three Sweet 16s and an Elite Eight in his tenure, winning two Atlantic 10 regular-season titles and one Big East regular-season championship.

Mack, who grew up in the Cincinnati area, was a guard at the University of Evansville before transferring to Xavier for his last two seasons. He joined the college coaching ranks in 1999, when he signed on as Skip Prosser's director of basketball operations at Xavier.

Mack followed Prosser to Wake Forest in 2001 before returning to Xavier three years later to join Sean Miller's staff as an assistant. He took over for Miller in 2009 after Miller left for Arizona.

Seven of Mack's nine teams at Xavier have won 23 or more games, including this past season, when the Musketeers went 29-6 and earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Mack also has a personal connection to Louisville: His wife, the former Christi Hester, was a standout basketball, softball and volleyball player at Holy Cross High. She was a runner-up for Miss Basketball and an all-state selection in the other two sports.

The Macks still have family in the area.

Once Louisville parted ways with interim coach David Padgett on Wednesday, the intrigue surrounding the school's interest in Mack amplified.

Tyra said Wednesday he was specifically looking for someone with head coaching experience at a high level.

"I think being an assistant coach and being a head coach is a big difference," Tyra said. "We've seen that. And I would say that I don't think our programs today — based on where this athletics department has gone based on (former AD Tom Jurich's) leadership to get us to where we are in the ACC — that we're a steppingstone."

Jeff Greer: 502-582-4044; jgreer@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @jeffgreer_cj. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: www.courier-journal.com/jeffg.