Category: College Basketball (Page 96 of 153)

Former Missouri head coach Quin Snyder is out of the limelight, but happy living another basketball dream. There is a great story on his year coaching the Austin Toreros in the D League.
I coached against him in his last year at Missouri. After the game he looked like death warmed over. I am happy he has found his way back to the game. He is not truly how the media portrayed him. I always found him to be very outgoing and sincere. Then again the media decides how they view someone and then they run with it. Sometimes it’s fair and sometimes not. In this case it was not fair how he was treated at Missouri.

The media always liked to talk about how he brought the program down at Missouri and the probation. They seemed to forget the scandals under previous head coach, Norm Stewart. And they don’t seem to be lighting the world on fire with their new head coach.

College basketball lost one of it’s good guys today when Bucknell coach Pat Flannery retired. After 14 years at his alma mater he will move into fundraising for the university.

Flannery, a fiery sideline coach and great teacher, will be most remembered for his back to back first round (NCAA tourney) victories over Kansas and Arkansas. He also had Bucknell ranked in the top 25. Can you tell me any other coach who had the type of run he had at that level. There is none. Sure some made the tournament, but none won a game when they got there.

He will be greatly missed by a profession that needs more men like him!

The million dollar man has arrived in Stillwater and it’s not Bill Self or a big name. Travis Ford took UMass to the NIT this year and coached Eastern Kentucky to one NCAA tourney appearance. He still finished 20 games under .500 at E. Kentucky. It is unbelievable to me that $1.3 million a year will be paid to a coach who has been to 1 NCAA in his first 7 years as a Division I head coach. That’s nuts. Then again the AD at OSU if a former golf coach. Must be suffering from too much sun on the golf course.

I am not saying Ford is a bad coach, but with so much money at your disposal you can’t tell me you are not capable of hiring someone with a bigger name and more of a track record. Ford’s best performance may have come in the movie Sixth Man. However, if he is smart he will hire former Missouri State coach Barry Hinson. Hinson is well known and very popular in the area. The downside is he has a better record than Ford. Good luck in turning it around in a hurry!!!

Stanford Update:

Former asst and current ODU head coach, Laine Taylor, appears to be a front runner, but don’t count out Fran McCaffrey from Siena.

UMASS Update:

Look for Derek Kellogg (Former player and current Memphis asst.) to be at the top of the pack. That is if the AD has any sense.

After dalliances with LSU and Providence, Travis Ford (UMass) pulled the trigger today by accepting the Oklahoma State head coaching position. His run at UMass combined with the rebuffs by Bill Self and Billy Gillespie led Mike Holder (Cowboy AD) to hire Ford.

On the surface it is a strange hire. Ford’s run at UMass only got his team into the NIT which is something that the fired Sean Sutton did. Also, his ties are to the East Coast and a more sensible hire would have been Chris Lowery from S. Illinois or even Tim Jankovich (Illinois State), who know the Big 12 and led the Redbirds to the NCAA tournament this year. Just another bizarre hire this year. Not quite as much of a reach as Craig Robinson at Oregon State or Rex Walters at San Francisco.

Providence nabs Keno Davis. One and done is not only for players. Drake head coach Keno Davis took the Providence job after a once and a lifetime year this past season. Time will tell if he is a “one hit wonder.”

This new round of hirings means there are only three sizable jobs still open. Drake could bump up the other Davis assistant (Chris). Stanford is looking for the right fit and UMass could go after Fran McCaffrey, who led Siena to the NCAA tournament this year. McCaffrey would be a great choice seeing he is the only coach to take three different non-bcs schools to the big dance.

Taylor King, a former McDonald’s All-American, decided a couple of weeks ago to transfer out of Duke. Recently, he decided to play for Jay Wright at Villanova.

By NCAA rule, King won’t be eligible to compete for a year. But he figures it will actually work in his favor. By the time King is ready to play, the Wildcats will have lost Shane Clark and Dante Cunningham to graduation.

“It just couldn’t be a better fit for me,” King said. “It wasn’t about getting it over with. I wanted it. This gives me the best opportunity to start right away.”

Speaking of fits, it was clear from the start that he wasn’t a very good fit at Duke. The Blue Devils are known for taking a lot of threes, but 75% of King’s shot attempts were from behind the line. His 3P% (37.7%) was fifth best on the team, but his shots per minute (0.461) dwarfed that of Gerald Henderson (0.369), the team’s second-most shot happy player. Basically, King would come into the game and start firing up threes. Mostly, it was his suspect defense that limited his minutes this season.