As some guy from Gainesville once said, "The waiting is the hardest part." We here at GMYH can't stand the anticipation, which is why we have compiled the first official GMYH IU Head Basketball Coach List of Attainable Coaches (or GIHBCLAC). The following is a list, in order, of the coaches who IU could lure from their current positions*, who GMYH believes would be the best coaches to replace Mike Davis:
- Mark Few - Gonzaga head coach. Supposedly IU has already tried to contact Few, but his team is still in the tournament (perhaps the IU administrators forgot that Gonzaga beat us 4 days ago). Unfortunately, the longer Gonzaga plays in the NCAA tournament, the less likely it is that IU will be able to nab Few, both because he will be unavailable until after the season is done and because it will mean that he can get far in the tournament with Gonzaga.
- Billy Gillispie - Texas A&M head coach. He has done wonders with A&M, which is a traditionally terrible basketball school. In only his 2nd season, he took A&M from 7-21 the year before he got there to their first NCAA tournament since 1987, their first NCAA tournament win since 1980, and within a miraculous last-second three-pointer (by LSU) of the Sweet 16. All reports say that he's a great recruiter and the kind of in-your-face, enthusiastic coach that IU fans would really take to. As an added bonus, he has been an assistant coach in the Big Ten (at Illinois under Bill Self).
- Tom Crean - Marquette head coach. Crean is a Tom Izzo disciple, has taken Marquette to a Final Four (2003), and made the smoothest transition to the Big East out of all of the former Conference USA teams. In Marquette's first season in the Big East (this season), the Golden Eagles tied with Pitt and Georgetown for 4th place at 10-6 in the conference, with only West Virginia, UConn, and Villanova finishing ahead of them, and they were the only former C-USA team from the Big East that made the NCAA tournament. The closest other Big East rookie (Cincinnati) finished at 8-8, while all of the other former C-USA teams (Louisville, DePaul, South Florida) finished no better than 6-10. Also, he has shown that he can recruit in Indiana (freshman stud Dominic James in from Richmond).
- Karl Hobbs - George Washington head coach. He has done a great job thus far at GW, turning it around from losing seasons in his first two years to the NIT the next year and then Atlantic-10 championships the past two years. Aside from an A-10 tournament loss to Temple, their only two losses this season were to NC State and Duke. His UConn playing and coaching pedigree (including being an assistant on the 1999 NCAA title team--he is credited with recruiting Rip Hamilton and Khalid El-Amin) shows that he knows how big basketball schools operate.
- Randy Wittman - Orlando Magic assistant coach. He played at IU and seems to want to keep the job in the family, already talking about bringing back a bunch of former players to unify the IU basketball family. However, he doesn't have any college coaching experience and a pretty terrible NBA head coaching record (62-102).
- Rick Majerus - Former Utah head coach. A great coach with Indiana ties. He would be higher on the list if I thought he was going to live for more than 5 years.
- Mark Turgeon - Wichita State head coach. Turgeon has taken the Shockers to the Sweet 16, and has a pretty good shot at taking them to the Elite 8. Also, he played and was an assistant coach at Kansas, so he knows what it's like to be part of a big-time basketball program.
- Johnny Dawkins - Duke associate head coach. A Coach K player and assistant coach, Dawkins is about ready for a head coaching job. The biggest concern, though, is that Coach K's former assistants and players haven't had the greatest head coaching success. Also, one of the biggest knocks on Mike Davis was that he had never been a head coach before coming to IU. Dawkins would face that same problem, and IU officials would be under some pretty intense scrutiny if Dawkins didn't do well at IU.
- Brad Brownell - UNC-Wilmington head coach. He has Indiana connections (high school teammate of Calbert Cheaney) and has done very well at UNC-Wilmington, averaging 20+ wins in 4 seasons, going to the NCAA tournament twice, losing to Maryland in 2003 on a last-second 3-pointer by Drew Nicholas and losing this year in overtime to George Washington.
*GMYH does not believe that the following head coaching candidates (all of whom have been mentioned as possibilities at one point or another) would be willing to leave their current positions: Mike Anderson (UAB head coach), Rick Barnes (Texas head coach), John Bielein (West Virginia head coach), John Calipari (Memphis head coach), Billy Donovan (Florida head coach), Thad Matta (Ohio State), Mike Montgomery (Golden State Warriors head coach and former Stanford head coach), Rick Pitino (Louisville head coach), Scott Skiles (Chicago Bulls head coach, even though he has a house in Bloomington).
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4 comments:
What about Kevin Stallings, former ISU coach? Wasnt he up for it too?
Yeah, Stallings has been mentioned, but I don't think he's done enough at Vanderbilt to garner as much attention as these other coaches. At Vandy, he's only been to 1 NCAA tournament in 7 seasons, only had 2 20-win seasons, and finished above .500 in the mediocre SEC only twice.
Plus, he's a Purdue grad, and IU's women's coach is already a Purdue grad. Having PU grads as both the men's and women's basketball coaches would be a terrible idea, in my opinion.
And he has a kid named Jordyn. I just can't respect that spelling.
No way to Kevin Stallings. That guy just oozes Purdue and blandness (yes, I realize those terms are synonymous) from every pore in his body.
While I may not be the candidate chosen, I do know that Indiana will not stoop to hiring a follicly challenged coached. Unlike Purdue, we IU grads have far too much pride in our doo's; else we should not have poked so much fun at Mean Gene.
As I leave you, avert your eyes from my magnificent locks.
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