We asked our Pac-12 basketball panel about the coaches who will likely be fired at the end of the season.
Matt Zemek: Jerod Haase at Stanford and Mike Hopkins at Washington.
Zachary Neel: I think you see Mike Hopkins out at Washington.
Matt Wadleigh: I have Mike Hopkins being fired.
Don Smalley: Hopkins (Washington), Wayne Tinkle (Oregon State).
So far this season, Jerod Haase has done little to suggest that he will retain his job for one more season. Haase and Stanford had a quality win opportunity on Wednesday night against Arkansas in the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in The Bahamas. Arkansas played a terrible game, shooting poorly and failing to generate good offense. While Stanford’s defense had something to do with that, the Cardinal were hardly on top of their game.
One Stanford player, Spencer Jones, was outstanding against Arkansas. Jones scored 27 points on 10-of-20 shooting, 5 of 10 on 3-pointers. If you take away Jones’ shooting numbers, Stanford shot under 36 percent from the field and only 20 percent from 3-point range. The Cardinal gave up 19 turnovers, too. They weren’t good. Yet, Arkansas shot just 30 percent from the field and made only 4 of 19 3-pointers.
The game was there for the taking. Stanford couldn’t take it. The Cardinal already lost at home to Santa Clara and need high-end wins to create an NCAA Tournament resume to save Haase’s job. Haase has been coaching Stanford since 2016, and he still doesn’t have a single NCAA Tournament. He has won one postseason game, an NIT first-round game. That’s it.
In seven-plus seasons.
If he doesn’t make the NCAAs this season, that has to be it for him.
Stanford faces Michigan on Thanksgiving Day in the Battle 4 Atlantis. A loss there would cement Stanford’s position as a team going nowhere. If the quality wins don’t emerge soon, Haase’s bizarrely long tenure at Stanford will finally come to an end.
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