There may still be another three games left in the college basketball season with UCONN, Miami, San Diego State and FAU still vying for the national championship, but the coach carousel has already more or less stopped spinning for the year. Since the end of the regular season earlier this month, over 50 schools have hired a new coach. Most notably, iconic Syracuse basketball coach Jim Boeheim retired after 47 years on the job and top assistant Adrian Autry will take his place. Not to be outdone by their old Big East rival, Georgetown and St. John's made dramatic, program-altering changes, bringing in high profile coaches like Ed Cooley and Rick Pitino respectively. As such, these are the five biggest NCAA basketball coaching changes of 2023.

Syracuse: Adrian Autry

Like UNC and Duke, Syracuse decided to keep things in the family after the retirement of their head coach. Rather than embark on a high profile nationwide search, Syracuse promoted Adrian Autry, the team's associate head  coach and a former Syracuse guard. Lifting Syracuse basketball out of their recent malaise is no easy task, but Autry seems to be off to a good start. Just days after taking the job, Autry nabbed highly touted Notre Dame transfer J.J. Starling.

Similarly, Autry has done has an admirable job retaining his current roster as no underclassmen have entered the portal. While Boeheim had a reputation for being an uninterested recruiter, Autry has clearly prioritized it, hiring new assistant coach Brenden Straughn, who has extensive connections to several prominent east coast AAU programs and should resurrect Syracuse basketball's historically fruitful Philadelphia pipeline.

Georgetown: Ed Cooley

Mired in the worst stretch in program history, Georgetown approached their coaching change with a single-minded focus on making it back to the NCAA Tournament and lured Providence coach Ed Cooley to D.C.

In the most controversial move of the off-season, the Hoyas became the first team in Big East history to poach the coach of a conference rival. Despite his repeated assurances that Providence was his dream job, Cooley (a born and bred Providentian himself) ultimately couldn't resist the siren call of Georgetown; Cooley's new contract reportedly is worth around $6 million per year, making him one of the five highest paid coaches in the country.

Even if the contract is overly decadent for a guy who has never made it beyond the Sweet 16 (Cooley is arguably not even a top five coach in the Big East, let alone all of college basketball), desperate times call for desperate measures. Under the stewardship of Patrick Ewing, the best player and worst coach in program history, the Hoyas have gone 2-37 in Big East play over the last two years. At the very least, Cooley has shown he can win in the Big East and he'll have access to significantly better resources at Georgetown than he had at Providence.

Providence: Kim English

After losing Ed Cooley, the Friars made a bold coaching change of their own by hiring George Mason coach Kim English, who's widely considered one of the most promising up-and-coming young coaches in the NCAA. A former All Big 12 player at Missouri, the 34-year-old English has soared through the coaching ranks since he joined his alma mater's staff way back in 2015. Impressively, English has galvanized Providence's NIL operation and managed to convince star players Bryce Hopkins and Devin Carter to remain at Providence rather than follow their old coach to Georgetown.

St. John's: Rick Pitino

Short of Lou Carnesecca walking through that door, Rick Pitino is just about the dream hire for St. John's. A two-time national champion with a 710-290 career record, Pitino is one of the greatest coaches of all time. St. John's is the perfect denouement for Pitino's legendary career, giving the native New Yorker a chance to coach in his hometown. After Louisville fired him in 2017 for NCAA violations, Pitino steadily worked his way back to the big time, grinding in Greece and then at Iona to earn another shot. 

Even if Pitino has to recruit an entirely new roster this season (he anticipates adding six to eight new players), it's only a matter of time before he turns St. John's into a powerhouse.

Iona: Tobin Anderson

Iona might be losing Rick Pitino, but by hiring Fairleigh Dickinson coach Tobin Anderson they flaunted their bona fides as one of the top mid-major programs in the country. For years, Iona has served as an incubator for bright, ascendant coaches and Anderson fits their mold perfectly. Beyond simply being the the architect of 16 seed FDU's shocking upset of Purdue in this year's NCAA Tournament, Anderson has a long track record of success coaching in the New York metropolitan area. Prior to his stint at FDU, Anderson coached at St. Thomas Aquinas, a Division II powerhouse, winning five conference regular season titles and six conference tournament titles in his eight years there.