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.

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!