So the coaching carousel rumor mill is blowing up right now, and this one is on a little firmer footing than yesterday’s Knight/WKU rumor (which interestingly still hasn’t been refuted), but Pat Forde and others are reporting that UMass coach Travis Ford (and NIT finalist) will take over the head position of the LSU Tigers later this week. The firm leading the search for a new head coach (and AD) had this to say:
Dan Parker of Parker Executive Search denied Wednesday an ESPN report that LSU is prepared to name University of Massachusetts Coach Travis Ford as its next basketball coach. “We’re waiting on the new athletic director to be named today or tomorrow, then we’ll engage with him,” said Parker, whose firm was hired last week to assemble candidates and was also hired for the AD search. “There have been no interviews, but we have made some phone calls. LSU wants it to be an inclusive search.”
If the Bayou Bengals do hire Ford, we may as well start calling the SEC the Pitino Protege conference, what with three of his former players (John Pelphrey – Arkansas; Billy Donovan – Florida) running programs down there.
This would be an intriguing hire. Ford got the previously moribund Eastern Kentucky program into the NCAAs in 2005, and even gave his alma mater Kentucky a run in the first round before losing 72-64. After a rebuilding year in 2006 at UMass, the last two seasons have been very successful by UMass standards (24-9 in 2007 and 25-10 thus far in 2008), culminating in two postseason trips to the NIT with the possibility of an NIT title tomorrow night against Ohio St.
If true, LSU fans should be thrilled. Ford is young, ambitious and has a strong hoops pedigree. But hey, anything beats John Brady, right?
Update: Ford took his name out of consideration for the LSU job (ultimately taken by Stanford’s Trent Johnson), but he had that snivelling look of someone with one foot out the door after all. He’s headed to Oklahoma St. to become Boone Pickens’ houseboy.