Dana Altman vs.

Here's just a few fun little tidbids. Read into them as much, or as little, as you like.

At Creighton, Dana Altman has only coached against 1 current Pac-10 head coach, that being Arizona's Sean Miller. Creighton was 3-1 vs. Miller's Xavier squad.

The Tucson Citizen has some quotes from Miller at the time.

“They beat us up,” Miller said before Xavier ended the three-game losing streak with a 79-66 win on Dec. 5, 2007. “They hit us in the mouth, and I say that in a positive way.

“One of the reasons they beat us three years in a row is their style. They really force you to handle pressure and compete at a high level.”

Even though Miller is his only Pac-10 rival, Altman has coached against some other targets on our coaching search.

Mark Turgeon was the head coach of another Missouri Valley Conference member, Wichita State, from 2000-2007. Perhaps its not an overly fair contest, as Altman had the time to build Creighton up before Turgeon began. However, Turgeon was 71-55, in conference, during those years while Altman was 91-35. As you can guess, Altman had the upper hand in the head to head meetings, 12-4. Turgeon only finished ahead of Altman once in those 7 seasons, before parlaying it into the Texas A&M gig.

According to Fox Sports, Mark had this to say about the hire.

"He’s a great hire for Oregon,” Turgeon said. "He runs a great system that is disciplined, but very exciting. I’ve watched Dana do more with less better than any coach in the country. Dana and his family with fit perfectly into the community. It’s a great hire by Pat Kilkenny.”

Billy Donovan, often rumored to be linked to airplane drops full of money Phil Knight was supposedly going to give him for the Oregon job, has also played against Dana Altman. One of Altman's tournament wins was knocking off #5 seed Florida, in the ill-fated 12/5 matchup, in 2002. A clutch 3 pointer by Terrell Taylor sealed the deal in a classic March Madness finish.

Altman later lost to Florida in the 2008 NIT, so has a 1-1 record against Billy D.

In the final week of the search Dayton's Brian Gregory was also supposedly on the short list. Altman also played Gregory to a standstill, 2-2 in four meetings against the Flyers.

A couple other names we've heard come up during our search that Altman played against, at Creighton, and his record against them.

Mike Brey (Notre Dame) 1-0
Tad Boyle (N. Colorado) 1-0
Steve Alford (New Mexico) 1-1

And the job falls to...Dana Altman.

Make no mistake. Dana Altman wasn't our first, second, or even third choice. The process of searching for a coach, after firing Ernie Kent, was monumentally bungled. When you hear Joe Giansante spin stories about how magnificent the search process was, its not true.

With all that said, we probably ended up with a better coach than the search process warranted. We didn't do him any favors in giving him the job 2 weeks after the Spring signing period began, and for that reason Dana Altman hired a month ago is a much better hire than Dana Altman hired today. However, Dana Altman is a very good coach.

I've seen mixed reactions from Duck fans, and fans from other programs, many of whom have never heard of Altman. If you haven't heard of him, its because you don't really follow college basketball. Altman's name was always brought up for major conference job openings, along with guys like Mark Few, a handful of years ago. His star has faded a bit since he backed out of taking the Arkansas job a few years ago, but he was a very hot name in coaching awhile back. Back during our first Elite 8 run, Creighton was actually in our bracket. They knocked off Florida in the first round and then fell to the same Illinois team that beat us. That was the tail end of a stretch of 5 consecutive NCAA tournaments that Altman had taken Creighton to, and he was thought to be the "next big thing", in coaching.

In hindsight, he probably should have bolted then, while his star was brightest. In athletics I'm a believer in the philosophy, "if you can go, you should go". I just think the odds are against you sticking around, as unfair as it might seem. Look no further than Taylor Mays this weekend. Could have been a top-10 pick last year. Falls to the 3rd round, after Pete Carroll passes on him 3 times, this year.

Loyalty is a great quality. Unfortunately its not rewarded in sports. When you are a hot name, nobody even considers the downside. When you stick around past that point, people begin to nitpick and to really study you more in-depth. Again, if you're a hot name, and you ever want to move on you should just do it, because odds are there's nowhere to go but down.

I think you could make the same argument about Ernie. Shortly after that first Elite 8, Ernie could have gone. If he did, nobody would have ever thought anything other than that he was great here. His first 6 seasons resulted in 3 tournament appearances, including that Elite 8, a Pac-10 championship and we finished in the top half of the conference 5 out of those 6 years. Ernie could have walked away a legend, gotten a better job and again, if people took my advice of leaving when they are hot, we might have ended up with Dana Altman right then as well.

I'll be doing a lot more, in-depth, blogging on Altman in the coming days and weeks. With some detailed looks, and probably video, of his Creighton teams. With scores and analysis of how they play against top competition, and lesser competition. And how I think he'll utilize the roster we have returning.

Thud!

Hopes come crashing down, once again, as Mike Anderson turns down a million dollar raise to coach here. Its not overly suprising. I was more suprised that he appeared to show interest, last week, to be honest. I never thought he would be on our list. Anderson is my favorite coach in the game, though, so this one definitely stings. We won't do better than him.

Not that we have to do better than him, to be successful. Some of the names we are hearing now, however, definitely are not better. Mark Gottfried is the latest name they are throwing around. Yes, Mark Gottfried with some baggage. Yes, Mark Gottfried, forced out of his alma mater midway through last season in part because of results like the 30 point beating Oregon's 8 win team gave him in the Maui Invitational.

It was only one game, and Gottfried's entire tenure at Alabama wasn't as bad as that last year might have made it seem, but still he's a pretty medicore hire. 7 tournaments in 13 years is nice, and better than what Ernie did, but not outstanding. They were a middle of the road SEC team for most of his tenure, and he did go as far as the Elite 8 one year in the tournament. He's probably a better coach than Ernie, despite the results of the last head to head meeting. With that said there are advantages at coaching your alma mater. Ernie had some here, and Gottfried did at 'Bama. Its hard to say if he would be any more successful than Ernie, better coach or not.

Mike Anderson would be the perfect fit for us

The latest news is all a buzz about Pat Kilkenny meeting with Mike Anderson today, in an attempt to entice him to Oregon. This is absolutely great news, to me, and would be a fantastic hire. Mike Anderson would be the perfect coach for Oregon right now and I hope we can make it happen.

First of all, if you've read my posts on the message boards in the past, or read this blog a bit, you probably know that Anderson is my #1 "fantasy" choice for a coach. To be honest, I never thought he was on our radar, or more importantly, that we were on his radar. He's a southern guy who has played, coached and lived exclusively in the south. And while he's a hot name in coaching, he doesn't tend to get the big hype in part for that reason. He's been mostly a regional guy, and not in our region.

However, I started following his coaching career when he was at UAB. I first really took note of him in 2004, when UAB beat Washington in the first round of the tournament. It was the most fun game to watch in the tourney that year, UAB won 102-100 and that was not an Overtime score. Both teams were really getting up and down the court.

Anderson is an outstanding coach, who coached under Nolan Richardson for 17 years. He took over at UAB in 2002 and won 22+ games there every year for 4 seasons. He took UAB to the NCAA tournament 3 times in those 4 years (and the NIT semi finals the other year), going as far as the Sweet Sixteen. He then rebuilt Mizzouri and went as far as the Elite 8, just last season, which was also a 31 win season.

Anderson is a good recruiter and graduates players. Ernie's tradition in the classroom would likely continue under Mike Anderson.

Most of all, Anderson is a perfect fit for our current roster. He has adopted Nolan Richardson's "40 minutes of Hell" strategy, where they play pressure defense all the time, and pick up full court. Its incredibley fun style of play to watch that emphasizes a fast pace game, and forces that on the defensive end of the floor. The make up of his team consists of a stable full of great athletes, and liberal substitutions. Our roster was recruited to do the same thing, we just didn't have a coach that knew how to do so. We even heard lip service to playing "40 feet of hell" at the beginnig of this year, if you remember.

Malcom Armstead is a prototypical Mike Anderson point guard. Teondre Williams and Jamil Wilson would be electric in his system. Garrett Sim excels in the open court, but really struggles in the half court. EJ Singler is great playing a point-forward role on the break. Humphrey, Longmire and Dunigan are all well suited for an open court style of play.

Terrence Jones and Terrence Ross, should they decide to come to Oregon, would be outstanding under Mike Anderson.

You really couldn't find a better match for our current roster than Mike Anderson.

Those who know college basketball, and Mike Anderson, will be instantly excited by this hire. For those that don't know him, they will come flocking to Mac Court when we start blasting teams and putting up 90-100 points per game in the non-conference.

If Mike Anderson opens the new arena, we are going to have a success on our hands. Our style of play in basketball will resemble the exciting style of play we have in football. Does having the most entertaining brand of football and basketball sound like something the powers that be might be interested in having?

I think so too.

Mike Anderson would be the perfect fit for Oregon basketball. The only question now is, does he see it as the right fit for him?

The Coaching Search of Diminishing Returns

So, what's the plan now? What has been the plan so far, for that matter? We got a tiny glimpse inside the process, in some stories and quotes over the past couple days, but nothing that sounds promising.

Unfortunately, time is ticking away. 6 days to go, before the spring signing period. Terrence Jones is going to wait a week longer, but time may be running out on signing him, or anybody else worthwhile, if a new coach isn't hired immediately.

It seems that the search has focused on a few names that were unlikely to come, in Dixon and Stevens. While little else has been confirmed, Kilkenny has admitted to discussions with those two. Bob Clark keeps throwing out Mike Anderson as a name, and while I'd love it to happen, he's more unrealstic than the previous two names. However, there are an awful lot of coaches that we haven't seemed to give a look to, for whatever reason.

My last post focused on Baylor's Scott Drew. He's gotten almost no attention, from day 1, but seemed like our best chance at a major conference coach, with a deep tourny run to his credit. I'm really baffled by the omission of him in this search.

The proximity to the spring signing period may now also be one more negative in the growing list of problems with this coaching search. We are the only Pac-10 school without a basketball commitment. We have, at minimum, 2 rides to give and that's assuming zero player turnover with a new coach being signed (which often is not an accurate assumption). If things stay as they are, in 2 years our new coach will lose 8 players from our huge sophomore class. These are all factors a new coach will consider, as he knows he's expected to come in and bring us success. With signing so close, will the new coach even have a realistic chance to fill our open spots (and any others that come open with player turnover) with players of the quality he will need to get the program headed in the right direction?

If Terrence Jones is one of those players, the answer is most certainly, yes. However time may be running out for him, if it hasn't already.

Factors like these may mean that coaches we could have landed a couple weeks ago, will be harder to sell on the job in the coming days and weeks. According to Kilkenny we are "not really" close to a hire at the moment.

Scott Drew, or Lon Kruger, would be our best bet to get coaches that have had success in a major conference. Both coaches are in good situations right now, and the dealys in this search are making our situation worse by the day. I'm not sure that either would leave, even given a raise, though I expect one or both may have if we'd gone at them awhile ago.

Billy Gillespie was in Beaverton yesterday, though it may have just been for the Nike Hoop Summit. A lot of fans don't want to deal with his baggage, but we may not have much choice at this point. The problem with getting a good coach at this stage, is that we need them much more than they need us. Gillespie is a very good coach that, due to his baggage, would need us as much, if not more, than we need him.

We have a couple ways we can go. Hire an unproven coach with no (known) baggage, or a proven coach with some blemishes. It would appear that hiring a proven coach with a sterling record and no issues, is out of the question for us.

Randy Bennett is still on the table, but I still really fail to get too excited about him. We may need to just bite the bullet and take him, at some point, but I just worry far too greatly about his recruiting. He relies on a connection with an Australian national team that I just don't know A) if it will last and B) how well it will translate to the Pac-10. Also, much like the other choices, believe it or not, I'm not entirely sure he'll even take the job at this point. We've drug it on too long, pushed too close to the signing period, and hindered our next coach's ability to be successful here.

PJ Carlesimo and Terry Porter keep getting mentioned. I'm completely against either one, though I suppose I'd rather have Porter, but just barely. Porter has zero college coaching experience. I don't mean head coaching experience, he has zero of any kind. Never been a college assistant, or anything. He quit playing in 2002, was an NBA assistant for only one year before taking a head coaching job. As an NBA coach, he has an under .500 record and was fired twice in only 2.5 seasons. Its a desperation hire, and we may be desperate, but I would rather take a flier on an unknown, or even assistant, from the college game than on Terry Poter.

Taking your time to get "the right" coach, rather than just any coach is a good thing...within reason. A coaching search isn't like every other job search out there and we have reached a point in which the longer it drags on the worse our coaching candidates are going to get.

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.