Monday, March 7, 2011

The Coaching Carousel Begins

A day after Bradley fired Jim Les, two other Division I schools made head coaching changes. Texas Tech fired Pat Knight after three seasons after taking over the gig from his legendary father. Also, Pat Kennedy of Towson resigned after a four win season for the Tigers (his son Joe played for Northwestern and now is the Director of Basketball Operations for the Wildcats). Click here to access ESPN's list of NCAA head coaching changes.

Speaking of Les, the Peoria Journal-Star published an interesting list of possible coaching candidates to replace Les. The list is definitely realistic, as Bradley isn't one of the premier jobs in college basketball. Your not going to get a Duke or Kansas associate head coach or even a star coach at a mid-major like Butler's Brad Stevens. With that said, Bradley is definitely an attractive head coaching job. BU is a school where basketball is king, a tradition rich program, pretty good area to recruit from, relatively easy to good players in and for the players to pass their classes.

I think hiring either Greg Gard or Paul Lust, the associate coaches at Wisconsin and Purdue respectively, would definitely be solid hires, if they will listen to Bradley and the national search committee Bradley is using. My favorite name on the list is Tommy Amaker, who is on the verge of leading Harvard to its first Ivy League Championship. While the talent level in the Missouri Valley Conference is better, Amaker would have an easier time getting good recruits to come to Bradley than Harvard. If he could bring Bradley back to being a consistent winner, he would get a lot more credit, in my opinion, then from being the Harvard coach.

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