25 worst coaching hires in the history of college basketball

14. B. J. Hill – Northern Colorado (2010-2016)

• 86-98 record (6 seasons)

Northern Colorado joined D1 basketball less than two decades ago and is certainly not a household name. These Bears were a mess back in the mid-2000s until new head coach Tad Boyle helped turn this program around. By 2010, the Bears were a 25-8 team that looked like a contender in the Big Sky, and Boyle left the program in fantastic shape before departing for nearby Colorado, a job he still holds today. For a program still new to D1, it was important to hire the right man to take that momentum and keep running with it.

Northern Colorado turned their attention to B. J. Hill, who had been on Boyle’s staff for the last four seasons. Hill did not have any head coaching experience, nor did he even have D1 coaching experience prior to Northern Colorado. He’d done work at a bunch of community colleges, plus a year at South Dakota State, but he was certainly a pick part of the reason the Bears had turned the corner the last couple of years. However, his work as head coach instead left a dark cloud over the program.

In his first season, he led the Bears to their first NCAA Tournament, but it all fell apart in the coming years. Over the course of his six years as head coach, he and his staff were guilty of numerous NCAA violations, most notably doing coursework for players and giving impermissible benefits to prospects. He was given a six-year show cause in 2017 and clearly has not returned to coaching since his firing by the Bears. His disastrous tenure makes the work of successor Jeff Linder, who put up three 20-win seasons in the first four seasons after Hill’s removal.