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.