Will Vanderbilt basketball fire Jerry Stackhouse midseason? What history says

Jerry Stackhouse is on the hottest of seats with Vanderbilt basketball.

Sitting at 6-16 and 1-8 in the SEC, the Commodores have already exceeded the loss total for all of last season. They are rated as the worst SEC team and second-worst power-conference team by KenPom. Vanderbilt has a loss to Presbyterian, and its win against Missouri on Saturday was its only one against a power-conference opponent this season. The Commodores have not beaten a team in the top 100 of KenPom.

As the team continues to take beatings, including an embarrassing 109-77 loss to Kentucky on Tuesday at Memorial Gymnasium, will one of them result in Stackhouse being fired immediately? Not so fast. Vanderbilt has a long history of letting coaches finish out a season before firing them, and many coaches retired or resigned rather than being fired.

In a November interview with The Tennessean, athletic director Candice Lee would not say whether there was any sort of ultimatum on Stackhouse that would result in his firing if he did not meet certain expectations.

There have been a few midseason coaching changes in Vanderbilt football, but they come with caveats. In 2010, Robbie Caldwell − originally named the interim head football coach after the retirement of Bobby Johnson − announced that he would resign prior to the final game of the season against Wake Forest, though he did ultimately finish out that game.

In 2020, football coach Derek Mason was fired on Nov. 29 after a game against Missouri. At that point, the Commodores had two games remaining on their schedule, though only one was eventually played due to COVID-19 concerns. The date that Mason was fired also came after a normal season would've ended, but the 2020 season got started late due to the pandemic.

Why midseason coaching changes in basketball aren't as common

So far, there has been only one coaching change in men's college basketball this season that was unrelated to scandal or retirement: DePaul fired coach Tony Stubblefield on Jan. 22.

As opposed to football, where midseason coaching changes are commonplace, it's far less common in basketball. In 2022-23, there were two coaching changes that happened prior to March for reasons that were unrelated to scandals or health. That number was four in 2021-22.

At some schools, the athletic directors already have indicated that they will wait until the end of the season to make a decision on hot seat coaches, including at Michigan and Ohio State.

There are a few reasons midseason changes are less common in basketball. First, someone has to take over as the interim coach, and the staff usually remains short-handed until a new staff is hired. In football, where there are 10 on-field assistants and only 12 games, that's easier than in basketball, where teams can have five assistants − but only three who can recruit. More games and a smaller staff means that playing down a coach for a month or two is more difficult than in football. None of Vanderbilt's current assistant coaches have head coaching experience.

Unlike in football, where head coaching candidates sometimes leave their team prior to a bowl game, that is not generally the case for coaches with teams in March Madness, extending the hiring timeline.

In football, it's viewed as important for teams to get ahead of coaching changes due to the recruiting calendar with the early signing period taking place less than a month after the end of the season. In basketball, the early signing period happens in November. In some cases, a coach's buyout decreases at the end of a season. It is unknown whether that is the case with Stackhouse, whose contract is not public.

Perhaps the biggest reason for the lack of midseason coaching changes in basketball is simply that other teams don't do it either. When there aren't many teams in the market for coaches until March, there's less of a need to get ahead by making a firing earlier.

Why a midseason firing could make sense

Without a pressing need to have a new coach in place by signing day (Vanderbilt does not have any commits who are signing during the late period) or to get ahead of other teams that could make coaching changes, there are fewer reasons to make a midseason change. But the arguments in favor of it still exist.

The first argument is optics. Firing a coach midseason can help to appease a fan base that is desperate for a firing and perhaps to restore some attendance − though season tickets already have been sold and it's unclear whether, and how much, attendance would improve for a team whose season has long since lost hope.

In the current era, with NIL and the transfer portal so central to roster building, firing a coach midseason may be necessary if donors are refusing to cooperate under the current coach. That was reportedly a reason that DePaul fired Stubblefield.

In some cases, athletic directors prefer to wait until the end of the season to evaluate a program in the case of a late-season turnaround, similar to what Stackhouse did in 2022-23. In others, a program wants to fire a coach before that coach gives them any reason to hold off. Neither of these instances likely applies to Vanderbilt because there isn't any hope of turning the season around at this point other than by winning the SEC Tournament.

ESTES Vanderbilt doesn't want to fire Jerry Stackhouse, but it may not have a choice

What could, and should, Vanderbilt do?

History, both of Vanderbilt individually and college basketball as a whole, suggests that a change is not likely to be imminent. Just because a firing may not happen immediately doesn't mean it's not still coming, though. In 2021, Lee originally announced that Stephanie White would return as women's basketball coach but later fired her when several starters transferred from the program. That search landed the Commodores with Shea Ralph, who has begun to turn the program around.

Stackhouse has not qualified for the NCAA Tournament in five seasons, and the Commodores likely won't be favored in any of their remaining games, making a 1-17 finish in SEC play a real possibility. That would be the second-worst finish in program history, after the 0-18 SEC season in 2018-19 that resulted in the firing of Bryce Drew.

Ultimately, if Stackhouse is fired, it is unlikely to make a big difference whether it happens in the middle of the season or at the end. What matters most will be who is coaching the team in 2024-25, and Vanderbilt will need to get that decision right to resuscitate its program.

Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on Twitter @aria_gerson.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Will Vanderbilt basketball fire Jerry Stackhouse midseason?