Jerry Stackhouse said he expressed interest in the North Carolina head coaching job that ultimately went to Michael Malone but never received an interview from his alma mater.
Stackhouse, now in his second season as an assistant on the Golden State Warriors staff after leaving Vanderbilt, told Jim Rome that UNC informed him it would not interview him to replace Hubert Davis. He said that was especially disappointing given his ties to the program and his résumé as a head coach.
“With what was going on there with Hubert, I think nobody really liked how that went down for him,” Stackhouse said on The Jim Rome Podcast. “Being part of the family and then to not have an opportunity to talk about it, I think that was the most disappointing thing for me. They were like, ‘We’re not going to interview you.’ I feel like I have a resume that can stand up to anybody. I’ve won Coach of the Year in the SEC, I had a team that finished fourth in the SEC when we weren’t even participating in NIL. I mean, I whooped all their ass.
“So I feel like, just from an Xs and Os standpoint and being able to develop guys – guys that didn’t get all the four-star, five-star guys, but we developed them and they became all-league players. Scotty Pippen’s a pro, Aaron Nesmith is a pro. These are guys that I helped to develop while they were there. Saben Lee. So I think those are the things that was disappointing, that I didn’t get a chance to at least state my case for why we shouldn’t have to go out of the family.”
While Stackhouse would have been a name people brought up, his lack of success as the head coach of Vanderbilt, along with his successor Mark Byington’s tremendous success, gave UNC good and valid reasons for not being interested in the former Tar Heel and NBA standout.
Stackhouse went 72–93 as Vanderbilt’s head coach from 2019–24 with only one winning season and no NCAA Tournament appearances, though he did win SEC Coach of the Year in 2023 after leading the Commodores to a second straight NIT quarterfinal run.
Byington, on the other hand, has enjoyed instant success. The Commodores have gone 47–21 and led Vanderbilt to the NCAA Tournament in each of his two seasons in Nashville. This season, Vanderbilt finished in the Top 25 and were a last-second rim-out from reaching the Sweet 16. Byington’s rapid success — and the fact that his name surfaced during UNC’s coaching search — underscored why Stackhouse was an unlikely candidate despite his interest.
Despite his disappointment, he believes his alma mater is under good hands with the former NBA champion coach at the helm.
During Malone’s NBA career, Jerry Stackhouse mentioned studying his teams, especially their offense. Although he believes the new North Carolina coach will do well, Stackhouse expressed hope of at least having a conversation about the job with his alma mater.
“I think Mike Malone’s a good coach,” Stackhouse said. “He’s one of the guys that I respect in the pros. He’s one of the guys, I used to watch how his team played and how they defended – more offensively, honestly, from that standpoint.
“But I do think he’s going to do well. He has a system, he has schemes, he understands how to play. But absolutely was disappointing that I didn’t get a chance to at least talk about that job, especially with what I’ve done for that program and think what I’ve done in the coaching realm, to at least sit and talk about it.”
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