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.