Louisville basketball coach Jeff Walz smiles at a player's response during a Q&A at the ACC... — Louisville basketball coach Jeff Walz smiles at a player's response during a Q&A at the ACC Basketball Tipoff on Oct. 5, 2026.(Eric Crawford)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WDRB+WAVE) — Jeff Walz has figured out the life expectancy of a college basketball coach.

First they welcome you. Then they love you. Then they tolerate you. Then they fire you.

Walz somehow has spent 20 years avoiding step four.

“You know, this truly is a profession where you normally get out before they get you out,” Walz said Monday at ACC Tipoff. “Seven, eight years, man. Because when you first get a job, everybody’s excited. Okay, then they cherish it. Then, after a couple years after that, they just start to tolerate it, and then after that, they’re ready to get you out.”

Twenty years is an awfully long time to remain welcome anywhere. And it is an eternity in college basketball.

When Walz arrived at Louisville in 2007, the Cardinals played in the Big East. There was no transfer portal. There was no NIL. There was no revenue sharing. The idea that college athletes might someday need investment advice before they needed a diploma would’ve sounded like something from a science-fiction convention.

Now Walz is talking to his players about Roth IRAs.

He tells them that the money available to them today can become generational wealth tomorrow if they handle it correctly. He jokes that when they’re 62, he’ll be about 97, and maybe they’ll call him — or his kids — and acknowledge that the old coach who was a pain in their butt knew something after all.

The sport has changed. The coach hasn’t gone anywhere.

It’s something to appreciate as Walz begins his 20th season at Louisville, because longevity can become background noise while you’re living through it. One season follows another. One recruiting class replaces another. Another March comes and goes.

Then you look up and realize that one of the most volatile professions in American sports has somehow produced a two-decade marriage.

Walz has had chances to leave. He hasn’t. And Louisville has no desire to help him pack.

Somewhere along the way, Louisville women’s basketball stopped being a program capable of having a great team and became a program expected to have one.

That means something to Walz. He remembers what Tom Jurich told him when he hired him. Louisville had produced good teams and good players before Walz arrived. The goal wasn’t simply to do it again.

The goal was to build something that lasted.

“For us to have been able to sustain the success that we’ve had for 20 years,” Walz said, “I think we’ve been able to do that.”

He has. Final Fours. National championship games. All-Americans. Conference championships. WNBA players. Crowds that turned women’s basketball into an event in Louisville.

Walz noted Monday that fifth place is the worst Louisville has finished since joining the ACC.

But Walz is 20 years into this thing, and there is still one rather large empty space on the résumé. He knows it better than anybody.

“Our ultimate goal is to win a championship, and we have not done that,” he said. “At the end of the day, if that doesn’t happen, would I say this has been a failure? No.”

It would be absurd to call it one. But that doesn’t mean he’s willing to stop chasing the thing he hasn’t caught.

“Our goal ultimately is to cut the nets down in April,” he said.

Which brings us to this Louisville team. Walz likes it. Actually, Walz really likes it.

He doesn’t know yet whether it will defend well enough. He’s concerned about one-on-one defense. He’s concerned about rebounding. There is work to do.

Scoring? He’s not particularly worried about that.

“We’re going to be able to score, score, score the basketball for sure,” he said.

Walz believes he could have six players capable of scoring 20 to 25 points on a given night. He doesn’t think he’ll need anybody to score 25 every night. He talks instead about efficiency, depth and having enough weapons that opponents can’t simply take away one or two players and shut Louisville down.

Asked whether he can look around this particular locker room and see an ACC championship team — maybe even one capable of finally cutting down those April nets — Walz didn’t run from it.

“I think it can be,” he said.

There are plenty of miles between Charlotte in October and the final Monday night in April.

Walz knows that better than most. He has traveled almost every one of them. He has been close enough to a national championship to see it clearly and far enough away often enough to understand how difficult the trip is. He has coached long enough to watch the sport around him become almost unrecognizable.

And yet, when someone asked Monday whether he could see himself finishing his career at Louisville, there wasn’t much suspense.

“Yeah. Oh, yeah,” he said. “As I’ve said for about the past six or seven years, I’m going to retire here or get fired here. It’s one of the two.”

Then came a little Walz philosophy. Everybody says the grass is greener on the other side. Walz has a theory about that.

“It’s because it’s fertilized with a bunch of BS,” he said. “Sometimes, put two feet in where you are and water that grass.”

Twenty years later, Jeff Walz is still watering.

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CRAWFORD | Jeff Walz, 20 years later, is still watering the grass at Louisville