Three things Stanford's new basketball coach needs to do in order to turn the program around

Stanford basketball ended up firing their head coach Jerod Haase after eight years of missing the tournament

Stanford is now in the early stages of a coaching search following their decision to fire Jerod Haase, and they are looking nationally for their new head coach. 

The job is certainly an intriguing one as Haase had no issues recruiting high-level talent to the program, landing three five-stars in his eight seasons. However, the program as a whole hasn't appeared in the NCAA Tournament in 10 years and is headed to a much stronger basketball conference that is the ACC.

Six intriguing names to replace Jerod Haase at Stanford

With the coaching search underway and names from near and far being thrown out as candidates, here are three qualities that Stanford's next coach absolutely needs to have.

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Maximize talent

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Throughout his tenure, the one thing that cannot be taken away from Jerod Haase was his ability to attract top talent. He landed five-stars like Harrison Ingram, Ziaire Williams, and Andrej Stojakovic but was unable to maximize them. Even the other pieces he had like Spencer Jones who is an elite shooter and defender, or skilled big man Maxime Raynaud weren't able to help get this program over the hump. Whoever replaces him needs to try and recruit the best of the best, but more importantly, needs to be able to get the most out of the high-level talent.

Get higher quality guard play

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Over the past few seasons, Stanford has had players who can shoot the lights out of the gym but they haven't had a consistent facilitator that can run an offense and score. Providence transfer Jared Bynum was the closest thing to that this season at one point, but he ended the year watching the game in the stands after seeing his minutes cut dramatically. It's a must in college basketball to have multiple players who can handle the ball, but every good team has a guard who can help set up teammates and create for himself, Stanford typically has either or but never someone who can consistently do both. This may be a recruiting weakness, or an offensive identity issue but either way, it has plagued the team for years.

Get this program out of its funk

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From 1995-2008, Stanford missed the tournament just one time. From 2009-2024 they have only made the tournament one time. Part of the problem was the administration taking too long to make tough choices, the other issues included poor performance, lackluster offenses, weak defense, and simply never getting momentum going. The new coach is coming in to change the culture, and arguably the biggest aspect of this is to make the program feel like it's a winning program. While the culture under Haase was good in the sense that everyone got along and was bought in, his replacement needs to change the narrative around Stanford. It's easier said than done, but with its resources, location, and pedigree of the entire athletics department there is no reason that basketball should be this far behind.