I'd go after Scott Drew, now.

The latest news has Jamie Dixon signing an extension at Pitt today.

Now, I'm going to make some assumptions. Lets assume that we don't have something serious in the works with Tom Izzo or Billy Donovan. Let's assume that the movement of Gonzaga assistants means that Mark Few is staying put. Let's assume that Tubby Smith is staying at Minnesota. Let's assume that Turgeon is happy with his extension.

Well, that's pretty much depleated our list of tier 1 coaches. Other names that are, or might be, mentioned are Brad Stevens of Butler, Steve Alford of New Mexico, Randy Bennett of Saint Mary's and Scott Drew of Baylor.

This list is a huge step down from the top tier. Stevens is getting a lot of love, but I think he's a huge risk and too green (no pun intended) for our job. We are looking to take Oregon to "the next level", wherever that may be. We are coming in, guns blazing, plopping down fistfulls of cash to build the most expensive arena in the conference. We fired a fairly successfull coach by our standards, to turn our basketball program into something more along the lines of our football program, if not even bigger. Nike is an even bigger player in the basketball world and we'll be putting that connection out there, for the world to see, like we have been for football.

Brad Stevens is 33 years old. He's coached for 3 years, at any level. He's, undeniabley done an outstanding job, but is he really ready to step up to this level? Consider this...He grew up in a tiny town in Indiana ( population 8,700). He played ball at DePauw University (enrollment 2,400). He then started as an assistant at Butler (enrollment 4,000) at age 23 and has been there ever since. He was handed Butler in an already good situation, and has done a great job with it.

I think its an awful tough task to ask him to take over an operation the scale that we are asking him to. I also have serious doubts about him even being all that interested in the job, given his current situation.

Steve Alford has a track record similar to Ernie's. You could even consider it worse, depending on your point of view. It doesn't have the lows that Kent did, but it also doesn't have the highs. In 8 years at Iowa he only went to the tournament 3 times, and only won 1 game there. He finished in 2nd place once, in 4th place twice and in the bottom half of the conference the other 5 seasons. He had only 3 seasons with a .500 or better conference record.

Randy Bennett has done a good job at Saint Mary's. He's done even better than Ernie did there. However, he's relied entirely on recruiting Australian players and I really question how he will recruit at Oregon. Also, his last game was a flat out embarrasment in that loss to Baylor. I know its only one game, but to flop that badly in the tournament (even the Sweet Sixteen) makes you wonder. Ernie came from Saint Mary's as well, and its definitely not an exciting hire. I just don't think you fire Ernie and replace him with either Alford or Bennett.

That leaves Scott Drew. The negative with Drew is that it took him quite awhile to get going at Baylor. He inherited a really horrid program and his first 4 seasons were all losers. His last 3, however, have all been been 20 game winners, culminating in this year's elite 8 run. He plays up-tempo ball. He's doing it in a major conference. He recruits well. His bigs are agressive and dunk the ball when they're near the rim. He's really built Baylor from the ground up into a fine looking program, and one that's really fun to watch. He comes from a good basketball family, with ties all over the country, and I think if you give him the new arena he's got the most upside of the remaining candidates.

Now, perhaps one of our first choices will still take the job. Its far from unheard of for guys to leave, even shortly after signing extensions. All we can do, from the sidelines, is make wild guesses based on all the misleading information that's out there. If we are, where we appear to be, with this search, Scott Drew is the guy I would want us to get.

KEZI says Tubby Smith is not a candidate.

A U of O source has apparently told KEZI that Tubby Smith is not a candidate and has not been contacted. kohd.com/page/167831

If the reports are all true, it has to make you wonder about what is going on with the search.

Donovan is reportedly out. Few is reportedly out. Turgeon is reportedly out. Smith is reportedly not being looked at. Kilkenny has stated that he believes we will have a coach hired before the Final Four, which would mean that Scott Drew and Brad Stevens are not in the running (they are both still playing). The options would appear to be getting more limited by the day.

Of course we don't know who is truly on their short list. But the short list of "name" coaches we might be after doesn't go much further than those mentioned above, plus Jamie Dixon, who most would consider a long shot.

Donovan rumors running rampant.

It seems unlikely on the surface, but the rumors of Billy Donovan being offerred the Oregon job are heating up. I suppose it can't hurt to try.

I will say that hiring Donovan fits in perfectly for what we are trying to accomplish moving forward. We are basically trying to turn our basketball program into what our football program has become.

The Nike connection has helped us tremendously in football, and Nike is even a bigger player in basketball than it is in football. Really, we've failed to capitalize on that connection in basketball like we probably should have. The ancient Mac Court was probably the biggest stumbling block in that.

Next year we will have the best facilities in the Pac-10, and certainly one of the top in the nation. Like we do with our uniform changes in football, you can expect to see us pushing our Nike connection out there for the hoops world soon too. And that begins with this coaching hire.

Billy Donovan? A young coach with 2 national titles, and a 3rd trip to the championship game? He recruits like mad, likes to play up tempo and would seriously jump start this program in a big way.

I'm very skeptical that he would take the job, but it does sound like he is seriously getting an offer. He's already the 3rd highest paid coach in college basketball, so one conclusion you can draw, whether he accepts or not is that Killkenny and Knight are willing to pay big money for a coach.

Goodbye, Ernie!

There's been a lot of parting shots taken at Ernie over the past few weeks and months out in cyberspace. And its been completely unneccessary, as his fate has been sealed for quite some time. Ernie did a good job here and should be thanked for his time on the way out the door, not berated about not living up to my personal expecations during the last years of his tenure.

I was a student, at U of O, 13 years ago when Ernie replaced Jerry Green. If you asked any Duck fan then, if we'd take the results of the last 13 seasons, we would have enthusiastically said yes.

Consistancy was a problem, and the reason that he's no longer our coach. But here's what he accomplished while here.

1 Pac-10 regular season title:
Arizona, Stanford and UCLA each had more. Cal & UW each had 1 also.

2 Pac-10 tournament titles:
Tied for the most with UCLA and Washington

2 trips to the Elite 8:
Arizona and UCLA have done better. Tied with Stanford for 3rd.

Recruited 4 McDonald's All Americans
Produced 4 1st round draft picks
Top APR in the conference and top 10 nationally

All of these, with the possible exception of the APR (which didn't even exist) would have been thought practically impossible at Oregon when I was a student.

The program he was building outgrew him, but there's no shame in that and Duck fans shouldn't take it as if personal injury had been done to them. He coached here one year too long, but he took Oregon basketball to hieghts we didn't think possible a decade ago and paved the way for us to have an even brighter future.

Ernie's last 2 seasons have been failures that cost him his job. However, the Ernie Kent era was a huge success and should be thought of as such as we move on without him.

Goodbye Ernie, and Thanks!

Following Oregon's coaching candidates in the tournament.

For those of you, like me, that don't get any work done come tournament time each year, here are some games that might be of interest to Duck fans. Some of these candidates are, obviously, much more likely than others, but these are the names that we have been rumored to be either going after, or looking at.

Game Times Pacific

Jay Wright
#2 Villanova vs. #15 Robert Morris - Thurs. - 9.30

Scott Drew
#3 Baylor vs. #14 Sam Houston - Thurs. 11:45

Randy Bennett
#10 Saint Mary's vs. #7 Richmond - Thurs. 11:50

Lon Kruger
#8 UNLV vs #9 Northern Iowa - Thurs. 4:10

Steve Alford
#3 New Mexico vs. #14 Montana - Thurs. 6:40

Jamie Dixon
#3 Pitt vs. #14 Oakland - Fri. 11:45

Mark Turgeon
#5 Texas A&M vs. #12 Utah St. - Fri. 1:45

Mark Few
#8 Gonzaga vs. #9 Florida St. - Fri. 4:10

New Pac-10 Record!

Congratz to Tajuan Porter, the Pac-10's All Time Three point leader!

I'm on the Few bandwagon.

An article in today's Register Guard talks about the AD getting ready to open up the checkbook for a coaching hire, specifically mentioning that Few might be the top target.

I hope that's the case, and that Few accepts. Its funny how things can change. A few years ago, every Duck fan was on the replace-Ernie-with-Few bandwagon and I was not sold on him. Now, many Duck fans are starting to look past Few to other targets, and I have come around to the idea.

My very top choice isn't happening. Mike Anderson. He's a great coach, but he might not even be the best fit even if there was interest (which there's not). But, I just love the way they play.

And I still believe that Few's the best fit and the perfect choice. There's a couple other guys I'd be happy with, Turgeon among those. But I think Few is really the guy we are looking for.

Basketball-wise, its somewhat of a crap shoot no matter who you get. Everybody always likes to speak in absolutes and hyperbole, but nobody really knows how a coach is going to do at any given job until they get there. So there are arguments both for and against him, on the court (as there are for every coach).

Looking at the negatives...

He's been in the tournament a ton, and never taken his team past the Sweet Sixteen. This is a legitimate concern. We are replacing Ernie, who has gone to the Elite 8 twice, and expecting to get better. Can Few get deeper into the tournament? While I do feel this is a valid concern, most of our choices out there aren't going to have coached in the Elite 8.

He took over a program in great shape and has really maintained it, rather than built it himself. I don't think this concern holds much weight for a few reasons. First, we aren't asking him to do a rebuild. Yes, we've been at, or near, the bottom of the Pac-10 for 2 seasons. But we are only 2 seasons removed from the tournament, 3 seasons removed from the Elite 8, and have a roster full of talented (though raw) players.

In fact, I think you could easily take the other side of that position and frame it as a positive. Love him or hate him, Ernie was not a bad program builder. We are in much better shape than when he took over. He built and rebuilt Elite 8 teams here twice. What ultimately got Ernie fired was being unable to maintain any kind of consistancy once there. While not taking over a program that had just reached the elite 8 the year prior, like he did with Gonzaga, this situation is much closer to that, than it is to a rebuild.

I would also consider that Ernie recent pattern with his young players has been a couple years down, followed by 2 up years. Its not altogether improbable that, even had he returned, next year isn't about to hit that up-cycle anyway. Dunigan, Humphrey, Sim, Williams, Crittle, Wiley, Armstead and Jacob will be all upperclassmen (yes, time flies). Singler and Wilson were nice contributers as freshmen and next year is not nearly as bleak as this year looked.

We can find questions, answers and arguments about all of our coaching choices similar to the ones above. Where Few really seperates himself from the rest of the field would be in longevity. If he's interested in coming to Oregon, you'd have to believe its for the long haul. He's not an NBA coach. He's a local guy. He's turned down bigger opportunities than Oregon for years at Gonzaga. This would be his last stop.

I don't think you can say that about any other hire. Many of the names on the list might bolt after only a couple good seasons. Like I said, I do think that its possible we are poised to break-out next year. How would we like a young coach to come in, get us to the tournament the following 2 years, get all kinds of praise for taking over a 9th place team and getting them to the dance (even though Ernie did that twice), and then watch him bolt for greener pastures.

I'm not a fan of the coaching carousel. We're fortunate, at Oregon to have had some long timers recently. We had Bellotti for 14 years and Ernie for 13 years. Planning to stay at Oregon is high on my list of desires out of the next coach.

So, I'm out front trumpetting for Few to be the hire.

9th place eeked out. TP, 5 threes back of the record.

Not that its any suprise, but reports have been out all weekend stated that Ernie has been fired. I'll talk more about that and my thoughts on coaching replacements in another post.

For now, the only real interesting thing left is to see if Tajuan is going to break the Pac-10 all time record for 3 pointers. Right now, he's 4 back of Salim Stoudamire's mark, needing 5 to break the record.

Getting 2 games in the Pac-10 tournament would help his chances, rather than needing to make 5 against the Coogs. And we get an immediate rematch against the last place Coogs on Wednesday. It can be tough to beat a team 3 times in a season, but if this season showed anything, its that we seem to just match up better with a few teams, going 6-0 against WSU, USC and UCLA and 1-11 against the rest of the conference.

Its hard to be excited about a rematch against the Coogs, probably for either team, and for either players or fans. And you can expect nobody to be there, considering there is only 1 play-in game this year, due to USC's postseason ban.

You'd like to see them have a little success there, though with a new coach coming in, and a new system, its hard to say that it would really matter all that much. To be honest, I just want to see Tajuan break the record. I'd expect his teamates to be looking for him often.

Well, that should do it.

We are now assured of playing in the Pac-10 tournament play-in game, against either Stanford or WSU. A win tommorow is meaningless, other than keeping us out of 10th place. As I said a few weeks ago, it was looking like WSU or us for last place and, sure enough it comes down to this final game to decide who's the ultimate loser.

The Pac-10 is horrendous this year and finishing at the bottom should all but assure that tommorow is Ernie's last game coaching at Mac Court. There may have been the slimmest of chances that he would remain, after last week's sweep in southern California, but those chances went out the window last night.

After the first half, it looked like the team might actually be capable of pulling off the win. And, to point out just how poor the conference is this year, had we won, coupled with a win tommorow( over the team that shares last place with us) might have put us as high as 5th place in the conference. So yeah, there was a chance he'd stay on, before the second half meltdown.

It should be an interesting month.

Mike Bellotti and Ernie Kent coached at Oregon for a combined 27 seasons, and both will be replaced about a year apart. It will be interesting to see where this new age for Oregon athletics takes us.