Friday, April 3, 2009

The Domino Effect Among Coaches When an Elite Job Opens Up


Usually when a head coaching position opens up at one of the elite college basketball programs, it will start a domino effect throughout the rest of the nation.

Remember back in 2003 when North Carolina needed a new head coach. Roy Williams left Kansas to take the job, Bill Self left Illinois for Kansas, Bruce Weber left Southern Illinois for Illinois and Matt Painter (who is now at Purdue) took over at Southern Illinois.

The madness was basically contained among those schools. What is happening right now is insane.

Kentucky needed a new head coach and signed John Calipari. Meanwhile in Arizona, the Wildcats are looking for their next Lute Olsen.

None of the other dominoes have begun to fall ... yet. Memphis was rumored to have offered Tennessee head coach Bruce Pearl their gig. Pearl then ended up signing a restructured deal with the Vols. Arizona offered their job to USC head coach Tim Floyd (he was also rumored to be in the running at Memphis as well) but Floyd decided to stay in SoCal.

So both jobs are still open and both schools are looking for big names to fill those spots. In the span of a day, people put Tim Floyd at Arizona ... then Pitt's Jamie Dixon taking the vacated USC job ... then who knows would take the Pitt gig.

This doesn't even mention Missouri's Mike Anderson signing a new deal after Georgia courted him or Tony Bennett leaving Washington State for Virginia. I'm certainly not talking about Anthony Grant leaving VCU for Alabama.

It is great fodder during the long down time before the Final Four begins tomorrow. Still, all this posturing has to make a lot of fans at a lot of schools a bit nervous that their coach may be caught up among the dominoes.

No comments: