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Mike Woodson will step down as IU basketball coach after the 2024-25 season. Athletic director Scott Dolson is currently searching for the program’s 31st head coach.
Inside the Hall will examine many of the candidates being discussed for the job over the coming days and weeks. Our fourth profile takes a look at Creighton coach Greg McDermott.
Previously: Dusty May, Scott Drew, Mick Cronin
Now in his 24th season as a head coach at the Division I level, Greg McDermott has built a consistent winner at Creighton.
A native of Cascade, Iowa, the 60-year-old McDermott played at Northern Iowa from 1984 through 1988 and averaged 9.4 points and 4.4 rebounds in 110 career games for the Panthers.
After playing at Northern Iowa, he moved directly into coaching, joining North Dakota as an assistant from 1989 through 1994. His first head coaching job came at Wayne State, a Division II program in Nebraska, where he won 116 games and reached the Sweet Sixteen in his final season.
After one season as North Dakota State’s head coach (2000-01), McDermott got the call from his alma mater and took over beginning in the 2001-02 season.
Over five seasons at Northern Iowa, McDermott reached the NCAA tournament three times and won 20 games in each of his final three seasons. That success in the Missouri Valley Conference made McDermott an attractive target for Iowa State, who hired him in the spring of 2006.
Things never got off the ground for McDermott in Ames, as he had a losing record in each of his four seasons and never finished better than seventh place in the Big 12. After Creighton coach Dana Altman left for Oregon in the spring of 2010, McDermott resigned from his post at Iowa State and accepted the job in Omaha.
“The thing I’m most disappointed with is that we just haven’t won as many games as I’d like,” McDermott said as he left Iowa State. “That will always be in the back of my mind, that I left before the job was totally finished. But you don’t have control of when opportunities present themselves, and this one certainty came out of left field.”
Now in his 15th season at Creighton, McDermott led the Blue Jays through a transition from the MVC to the Big East early in his tenure and is now captaining one of the most consistent programs in the league. Early on at Creighton, McDermott coached his son, Doug, a three-time All-American and the national player of the year in 2014. As solid as some of the early years at Creighton were, McDermott has continued to post 20-win seasons and postseason appearances in a competitive league as his tenure has progressed.
McDermott has reached the NCAA tournament at Creighton in the last four seasons, including a round of 32 appearance, two Sweet Sixteens and a trip to the Elite Eight in the 2022-23 campaign. McDermott won the Big East regular season championship in 2020 and was also named Big East coach of the year.
Last fall, McDermott passed Altman for the most wins in Creighton’s program history (328). Many of McDermott’s Creighton teams have proven to be elite offensively. The Blue Jays have finished with a top-five adjusted offensive efficiency, according to KenPom.com, five times. And they’ve defended very well, too. Creighton finished in the top 32 in adjusted defensive efficiency in the last four seasons, according to KenPom.com, and is on pace to do so again this season.
After he was linked to the Ohio State coaching opening last spring, McDermott agreed to a contract extension with the Blue Jays, the terms of which are not public because Creighton is a private university. McDermott did, however, express his desire to finish his career in Omaha.
“There is no place I would rather be for the rest of my career than Creighton,” he said in a release announcing the extension.
Despite the extension, McDermott has been discussed as a potential candidate for the IU job, and for good reason. He’s consistently won at a power five job over the last 15 seasons. The challenge of restoring a prestigious program to success could be appealing as the final chapter in his career.
Category: Coaching search
Filed to: Greg McDermott
