LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Former University of Louisville men's basketball coach Chris Mack is expected to be hired at College of Charleston, according to multiple reports.
Mack, whose tenure at Louisville ended in Jan. 2022, takes the position of head coach after Pat Kelsey accepted Mack's former job at Louisville. Kelsey had a 75-27 record in three seasons at Charleston before accepting the position at Louisville this week.
Excited for @patkelsey to lead the Louisville Cardinals. He will be amazing in every way. UofL is in great hands! Winner!!
— Chris Mack (@CoachChrisMack) March 28, 2024
Mack was hired in 2018 to help restore and rebuild the University of Louisville men's basketball program after Rick Pitino was dismissed for the program's role in a national scandal in 2017. He was dismissed before the end of his fourth season after a negotiated settlement with the school.
As part of the $4.8 million settlement, the university will pay Mack $133,333.33 at the end of each month through January of 2025. Mack hasn't coached since he left Louisville.
Mack left with a record of 11-9 in his final season at Louisville and an overall mark of 63-36 at the school. He led Louisville to the NCAA Tournament in his first season, where it suffered a first-round loss to Minnesota. The Cardinals were set for a high seed in his second year when COVID scuttled the tournament, and did not make the field after a COVID-plagued 2020-21 season.
Mack decided not to renew the contracts of longtime assistants Dino Gaudio and Luke Murray after that season. Gaudio, who had been a friend of Mack's and a mentor for 30 years, reacted angrily and demanded a severance package, or some other form of payoff, or, he threatened, he would turn over allegations of NCAA wrongdoing.
Mack secretly recorded the heated conversations and turned them over to authorities. The result was Gaudio pleading guilty to an extortion charge in federal court, and U of L self-reporting possible violations to the NCAA, including improper use of graduate assistants in practice and the production of impermissible recruiting videos.
On the day Gaudio was sentenced in Federal court, then-Louisville athletics director Vince Tyra announced that Mack would be suspended without pay for the first six games of the 2021-22 season. The NCAA later amended its Notice of Allegations in the pay-for-play scandal to include Level 2 allegations against Mack stemming from Gaudio's accusations.
He had arrived at Louisville after nine successful seasons at Xavier, where he won the Henry Iba Award as the U.S. Basketball Writers Association National Coach of the Year while also earning the CBS Sports and Basketball Times magazine National Coach of the Year awards that season. He led Xavier to a 28-6 record in 2015-16 and achieved a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament and a No. 5 ranking in the final AP poll, which at the time was the school’s highest seed and ranking in school history.
Charleston reached the NCAA Tournament each of the past two seasons under Kelsey. He served as an assistant coach at Xavier from 2009-11 under Mack.
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