Rob Dauster of Ballin’ is a Habit is the RTC correspondent for the Big East Conference.

Around The Big East:

• NCAA Sanctions: From a basketball perspective, the biggest story in the Big East this summer was up at UConn. The Huskies received a notice of allegations from the NCAA in May, informing them of eight major violations in the recruitment of Nate Miles. UConn will find out its final punishment from the NCAA in October, but the violations have already cost them two assistants — Beau Archibald and Brad Sellers, the son of former Husky star Rod Sellers. Jim Calhoun avoided the heavy artillery — getting grazed with a citation for “failure to monitor” the program, which is ironically what the best coaches need to do to succeed.
• Coaches: The NCAA infractions weren’t the only reason Calhoun was in the news. Ailing health as he nears 70, impending NCAA sanctions, a team that is going to need some rebuilding, and the fact his contract was up made many believe Calhoun would hang ’em up this summer. Wrong. He signed a five-year deal instead.  Calhoun had far from the worst summer for coaches in the Big East. Rick Pitino let the world — and every single opposing student section — know about his 15-second tryst on a restaurant table with one Karen Sypher. Bob Huggins fell, a result of being in Vegas the medicine he took on an empty stomach making him light-headed, and broke seven ribs. Fred Hill was run out of Rutgers, in part because he lost it on the Pittsburgh baseball team’s coaching staff. Through all of that, perhaps the worst summer was had by Bobby Gonzalez, who lost his job at Seton Hall, had the entire episode come out in the New York Times, sued his former employer, was unable to receive credentials at the NBA Draft, and then find himself arrested for attempting to steal a $1,400 man-purse satchel. The three new coaches to the conference: Oliver Purnell left Clemson for DePaul; Mike Rice left Robert Morris to fill in for Hill at Rutgers; and Kevin Willard left Iona and took Gonzo’s spot at Seton Hall.
• LOIs: Three Big East teams made headlines for issues with recruits signing LOIs. DePaul initially refused to release Walter Pitchford, Jr., from his LOI. He signed with Jerry Wainwright, who was at DePaul before Purnell was tabbed. After appealing both the school and the NCAA, DePaul finally released Pitchford. The same thing is currently happening to Joseph Young at Providence, who as of this writing has not yet been granted a release by the Friars. At Marquette, DJ Newbill was dropped from his LOI when Buzz Williams had the opportunity to bring in former top 100 recruit Jamil Wilson, a transfer from Oregon. All in all, Big East members did not shine bright this summer.
• Back to Providence: Man oh man, did they have a rough summer. Two freshmen kicked out of school for beating up a student. Their star, Greedy Peterson, thrown off the team. Another player arrested.  Did Keno Davis have this much trouble in mind when he took the job two years ago?
• Seton Hall Didn’t Fare Much Better: Aside from their coach being kicked to the curb, the Pirates had their best big man spend nearly a month in the hospital because he collapsed after finishing a workouts and saw Robert “Sticks” Mitchell get arrested for (get this) robbing eight people at gunpoint just two days after being kicked off the team.

Power Rankings:

1. Villanova: While the Wildcats lose All-American Scottie Reynolds, Jay Wright‘s club (as always) will be more than fine in the backcourt. Corey Fisher, fresh off an alleged 105-point performance in a Bronx summer league, and Maalik Wayns will be as dynamic as any backcourt in the country and should be able to thrive in Scottie’s absence. Corey Stokes is still going to be a lights out shooter. Dominic Cheek and James Bell will be dangerous on the wings. Up front, the five-man rotation of Antonio Pena, Mouph Yarou, Isaiah Armwood, Maurice Sutton, and JayVaughn Pinkston gives Villanova a very deep, very talented roster for the upcoming season. The Wildcats should compete for the Big East title and, depending on how well some players develop (Armwood, Cheek, Wayns, Yarou) and how good a couple of freshmen are (Bell, Pinkston), Nova could very well make a run at the Final Four.
2. Pittsburgh: The Panthers were the surprise of the Big East last season, and with the majority of their roster coming back this season, its tough to envision Pitt falling off. Pitt has almost reached the level of a Wisconsin — no matter who is on their roster, this is a team that is disciplined and well-coached to the point that they are always going to be competitive. As always, expect a gritty, defensive-minded team from the Panthers. An already-solid back court of Ashton Gibbs, Brad Wanamaker, and Travon Woodall will be bolstered by the addition of freshmen Isaiah Epps, JJ Moore and Cameron Wright, as well as Lamar Patterson finally getting healthy. Gilbert Brown, who missed the first half of last season due to academic issues, will be back at the small forward spot. Brown had an inconsistent season in 2010, but showed flashes of some serious potential. Gary McGhee and Nasir Robinson will bolster the front line, but the real x-factor on this team is going to be sophomore Dante Taylor. Taylor was one of the most highly-touted recruits last year, but it took him awhile to adjust to the Big East. If Taylor can live up to his promise, Pitt is a potential Final Four team. If not, this is still a club that will be competing for a league title.
3. Syracuse: It is easy to look at the Orange and think that, with the players they lost (Wes Johnson, Andy Rautins, Arinze Onuaku), they will be down next season. Well, they might not win a Big East title, but they certainly will be in the mix atop the conference standings. Brandon Triche and Scoop Jardine will anchor the backcourt, with freshman Dion Waiters providing an offensive spark as an off-guard. Kris Joseph should blossom into a dangerous weapon as a slasher on the wing, and if he can add some strength and a jumper this summer, could very well be in the running as a first-team all-Big East selection. Rick Jackson will be paired with Fab Melo, who Jim Boeheim has been raving about (he raved about Johnson last summer, and look how that turned out), in the frontcourt. With guys like CJ Fair, Mookie Jones, James Southerland and DaShonte Riley providing minutes off the bench, there is no doubt Syracuse will be a good team. How good — borderline top-25 or a potential Big East champ — remains to be seen. Read the rest of this entry »

It looks like we can put the Anthony Davis/Chicago Sun-Times fiasco behind us now and get to the normal recruiting news.

• The big news of the week was clearly Davis officially announcing that he had committed to Kentucky, which almost everybody knew he would for over a week.
• In a somewhat refreshing decision, Isaiah Austin, one of the top recruits in the class of 2012, has decided to cut the suspense short when he announced last Monday that he had committed to Baylor over a long list of recruiting powers including Kentucky. Is this the first coveted recruit John Calipari has failed to land while he has been in Lexington? He might be slipping.
• Speaking of Calipari (the man is everywhere during the recruiting season) he had another top recruit (Chane Behanan) visit Lexington on Wednesday. One of the interesting things about this is that Behanan, the top recruit in Kentucky and top 25 nationally who has been making a name for himself this summer, is still waiting for an offer from Kentucky. In the past this might have created an uproar in the Bluegrass State if Calipari had not been getting the best players from all over the nation.
• On the other end of the spectrum, Fran McCaffery extended a scholarship offer from Iowa to Perry Ellis, a small forward ranked in the top 25 of the class of 2012 (he’s not the fashion designer). We know that McCaffery is obliged to do this, but when some of the other schools who have extended Ellis offers include Kentucky, Kansas (his home state), Kansas State (ditto), Memphis, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, and Wake Forest, we think McCaffery is essentially like this kid proposing to Megan Fox. Having said that, if any female supermodels would like to date a college basketball blogger, e-mail me at rushthecourt@gmail.com (recruiting tips are also welcome).
• One of the more interesting pieces of news to come out this week was the possibility that Andre Drummond, rated as the top player in next year’s class, might be entering college a year early like Andre Dawkins did last year at Duke. His high school coach, however, says that no decision has been made at this point and he would talk it over with Drummond’s mother.
• Josiah Turner, one of the top guards in this year’s class, has announced his recruiting visit list, but we would be remiss if we didn’t note his mother’s defense of Isiah Thomas.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was a relatively slow weekend for major college basketball news so we are left to deal with issues off the court.

1. Just five years after helping UNC to a NCAA title, Rashad McCants, who was the 14th overall pick in the 2005 NBA Draft, is out of the NBA and struggling to find a way back in. McCants averaged a very respectable 14.9 PPG on 45% FG in his 3rd year in the NBA, but quickly fell out of favor with his coaches and now has a toxic reputation across the NBA. The Cavs offered him a shot on a Summer League, but McCants did not show up in Las Vegas (scroll to last section) for “personal reasons”.
2. We touched on it briefly on Saturday, but we are still waiting to hear from Notre Dame what they plan to do to Eric Atkins and Tim Abromaitis in response to their arrest on Friday night. Our guess? Nothing more than a few extra suicides at the end of practice.
3. Seth Curry suffered a sprained ankle during one of the loaded S.J.G. Greater NC Pro AM games. It doesn’t seem like it was that significant although Curry sat out the rest of the game. Curry said “It’s just a little sprain. I’ll be all right. I’ll be back out next week.” The bigger question for us is what Coach K plans to do with his starting backcourt next year as he will have to decide between Curry, Nolan Smith, Kyrie Irving, and Andre Dawkins. Our guess is that Duke will use 3 guards (with Kyle Singler at the 4 and Miles or Mason Plumlee playing at center) and Smith and Irving are basically guaranteed spots, which means that Coach K will have to decide between Curry and Dawkins as the first player off the bench. The problems of the rich…
4. While his predecessor Oliver Purnell has been busy making news at his new job at DePaul, Brad Brownell, who won 20 or more games in all four of his seasons at Wright State (no Duke or UNC on the schedule though), has been trying to get a hold of the program that Purnell built at Clemson. While the Clemson faithful were undoubtedly frustrated with the fast starts followed by what seemed like annual collapses, Purnell did build them into a solid ACC team that made three straight NCAA Tournament trips and made Littlejohn Coliseum a place that opponents dreaded coming to every year. Brownell has a solid group of players left behind by Purnell, but will have to deal with the loss of All-ACC Trevor Booker to the NBA.
5. Last month we mentioned the decision of Carrick Felix to back out of a commitment to be the first junior college recruit to commit to Duke, opting to go to Arizona State instead. Recently he sat down for an interview where he talked about the decision and, although he does not go into the specifics (we did not expect him to, either), he says that he went to Duke because that was where everyone said he should go, but it did not feel right so he went to the Duke coaches who then helped him find the right school.

Zagsblog overlord Adam Zagoria reported earlier tonight that 2010 recruit Walter Pitchford will be granted his release from DePaul at some point in the next two days, allowing Pitchford to sign with another school.

Pitchford, a native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, had signed a letter of intent with DePaul early in the recruiting period and was to start his college career this fall, but later asked for a release, telling Zagsblog that he asked for it because of the coaching change that saw Jerry Wainwright fired and former Clemson boss Oliver Purnell brought in to run things on the Chicago campus. He also claimed to be “concerned” with the level of crime in Chicago. DePaul initially denied Pitchford’s request, and his appeal to the NCAA was also rejected. In an ESPN.com article published earlier on Sunday, Purnell defended his new employers, saying that DePaul was retaining Pitchford because they wanted to run the basketball program “with integrity.” Purnell also voiced suspicion that there may have even been some tampering, by other schools, and reiterated that they weren’t holding onto Pitchford just to be cruel, that there was a principle involved, here, and that he wanted the entire process to play out. Then, just hours later, came the news that Pitchford was to be released.

Purnell and DePaul were put in a tough spot, and giving Pitchford his release will be better for both sides. (Photo: coachpurnell.com)

To be sure, since the moment that Pitchford asked for his release, DePaul has been in a tough spot. If they had immediately released Pitchford, they would have lost a recruit that they wanted, and in the process painted themselves as a program that can be walked on, a basketball team from which recruits are better off escaping. They would have looked like a place that has made no progress in coming back from their recent disarray, not a program doing all that it can to repair itself. If they had held onto Pitchford no matter what, there’s no way they could have come out of that positively, from a PR standpoint. If they’d have held Pitchford to his letter of intent, DePaul would have been painted as a recruit-unfriendly program that holds kids hostage. Even if the reputation would have been unfairly gained, it’s not exactly an image a new coach wants to cultivate, especially in a city as rich with young basketball talent as Chicago. And, of course, you never know what kind of effort you’d get from a player who doesn’t want to be in your program.

Now we wait to see where Pitchford lands, which will be interesting, considering his reasons for wanting out of his LOI at DePaul. We can’t really buy that there was a sudden realization in Pitchford’s camp that there might be crime in Chicago, and while we know that Jerry Wainwright was a nice guy, there’s no denying that Purnell’s resume — especially recently — is more impressive, and DePaul will be the better for his being there. Pitchford’s choice of school will have to jibe with his reasons for wanting out of DePaul. If they don’t, despite Pitchford getting his release, there will be more questions here than answers.

We’re back from the weekend with a great set of links from the past three days that caught our eye.

1. Luke Winn with another great piece for SI. This time it is on Abdul Gaddy, who came out of high school last year rated just behind John Wall, but struggled in his first year at Washington. Gaddy was stuck behind Isaiah Thomas and Venoy Overton at Washington last season (both back this year too) and behind Kyrie Irving this summer on the U18 team, but both of his coaches Lorenzo Romar (at Washington) and Jeff Capel (on the US team) think he will develop into a solid player. We will be watching the development of Gaddy, who was just 17 years old for most of last season, with interest to see if he ever develops into the star many predicted him to be.
2. We have to hand it to Bruce Pearl for picking up UNC-Wilmington transfer John Fields, who left the Seahawks after averaging 10.2 points, 8.7 rebounds and 2.2 blocked shots per game in his one season there. Fields has one more year of eligibility left and should add depth to a solid Volunteer team. He left the Seahawk program after a tumultuous season in which the head coach who had recruited him (Benny Moss) was fired at mid-season and replaced by Buzz Peterson. Because Fields will enroll in Tennessee’s graduate sports management program that was not available at his previous school, he will not have to sit out one season before playing for the Volunteers. We bet there’s another ACC team wouldn’t have minded picking up a little extra depth on the inside next season. We have a short clip from a local Tennessee news station interviewing Fields below.
3. It looks like Jon Scheyer might be moving from one championship team (Duke) to the Las Vegas favorites to win another championship (Miami Heat–we aren’t ready to hand them the title yet). Scheyer possesses several qualities as a player that the Heat need (reliable shooter who doesn’t make many mistakes and above all else will be cheap), but he won’t help in one area in which the Heat desperately need a boost — defense. We’re wondering if Coach K might lobby his USA National Team players (LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh) on behalf of his recently departed star guard.
4. Speaking of the Miami Heat, Frank Haith believes that the arrival of LeBron and Bosh will be a tremendous tool for the Hurricanes’ recruiting. We aren’t buying it for a second unless the three decide to pay back the NCAA all the money they have made in professional basketball and chase a NCAA title with Haith as their coach. The arrival of LeBron in Cleveland did absolutely nothing for college basketball in that area. LeBron may have helped his former high school coach Keith Dambrot, now at Akron, land a few recruits in the MAC, but just his presence in the city (and we don’t think he will do a single thing to help Miami recruit college players) will do absolutely nothing in the ACC against the likes of Coach K or Roy Williams actually coaching the players.
5. When we first heard about the strange situation brewing out in Chicago where new DePaul head coach Oliver Purnell is refusing to release recruit Walter Pitchford from his signed national letter of intent we had flashbacks to the Randy Shannon/Robert Marve fiasco down in Miami in 2008 that got ugly very quickly. However, one-time RTC interview subject Adam Zagoria scooped everybody with the news that DePaul had released Pitchford from his signed commitment.

We ran across an interesting article from Fanhouse’s Brett McMurphy over the weekend that delved into the continuing discomfort that many college coaches have over the 1-and-done rule in light of an NBA Draft on Thursday night that will see anywhere from eight to ten freshmen selected among the lucky few.  We understand their complaint.  They want continuity in their programs.  They want to be able to plan ahead without having to wonder each and every offseason who is staying and who is leaving.  Most importantly, they want to be able to hang onto a stud for two or three seasons if it turns out he’s first round material.

The ideal, as proposed by Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, Villanova’s Jay Wright, Notre Dame’s Mike Brey and DePaul’s Oliver Purnell in the article, is that the NBA would adopt the existing MLB model.  If a player is good enough to go preps-to-pros, let him go; if he’s not, then he will not be eligible for the draft again until three (or at worst, two) years later.  Brey in particular echoed the popular cry amongst the coaching fraternity:

Let them go out after high school [to the NBA] if they’re special and see if we can get at least two years out of them [in college].  I think the baseball rule is the best rule given that we are academic institutions. I don’t know if we can get it to [three years in college], but could we at least get it to two years?  And I think two years on a college campus is going to help ’em. He’s going to get an education. But the really special ones, let ’em go after high school. Cut them lose. There’s a handful of them. Let’s at least get two years [before they leave for the NBA]. I’d love to get three years, but I don’t think we can. But let’s at least get two years.

This is the same kind of self-serving thinking (program continuity, fear of re-recruiting players, etc.) by coaches that inspired the NCAA to drastically reduce the amount of time that underclassmen had to “test the waters” this past May.  The result was that 28% more early entries (50) jumped headfirst into the draft pool this year even though there was no corresponding increase in the number of draft spots (60) available.  The problem is that if the NBA adopts a model similar to major league baseball (and there is no sign that Stern and company are even considering it), we’re only trading one set of problems for another.

The Completely Forgettable Jackie Butler

 The coaches are forgetting how it was before the 1-and-done rule was instituted.  From 2003-05 (the last three drafts prior to the rule going into effect), 23 high school seniors entered the NBA Draft directly out of the prep ranks.  Some you may have heard of — Lebron James and Dwight Howard, for example — while others are vague memories in the mind’s distant recesses — like James Lang and Jackie Butler.  Even though they never made it on campus, most of these players were recruited to play college basketball somewhere.  Resources were spent, trips were made, text messages were sent, and letters were delivered.  And yet, even though the majority signed to play for coaches like Izzo, Wright, Brey and Purnell, by spring of their senior years they began to see dollar signs in their eyes and bailed on the notion of playing college basketball.  Consider, by way of a few prominent examples:

• 2003: Travis Outlaw (Mississippi State); Ndubi Ebi (Arizona) 
• 2004: Shaun Livingston (Duke); Josh Smith (Indiana); JR Smith (UNC)
• 2005: Martell Webster (Washington); Gerald Green (Oklahoma State); Louis Williams (Georgia)

Is that what the coaches want to go back to — spending 1-2 years recruiting star players and ultimately getting nothing but a thank-you call out of it as the players move on to NBA riches?  By 2005, an average of eight prep-to-pro players were coming out each season.  That was with no restriction on draft eligibility once you got to college — a fence-sitting player could still leave after one year of college if he chose to do so (see: Carmelo Anthony).  What happens if the coaches get what they want and players are forced into choosing zero years or three years of college under the MLB model?  Our best guess is that roughly the top twenty draft prospects would go into the draft each season and the coaches who recruited, caressed, and whispered sweet-nothings at them would be screaming bloody murder that something else needs to be done to protect their interests.  And that doesn’t even address what would happen to the quality of play of college basketball when the very best players are barely even first-round worthy.     

Of course, none of this debate from the NCAA side matters a whit, because the NBA is going to do only what it thinks will help sell its product in the best possible way.  And from our reading of the tea leaves with David Stern over the past five years, we think that if anything, he wants 1-and-done to become 2-and-done, which will have the corollary effect of giving the coaches more continuity anyway. 

1. It’s not often that you see a BCS-level coach leave his position for a mid-major job (even a very good one), but that’s what will happen today when Iowa State’s Greg McDermott takes over for the departed Dana Altman at Creighton.  McDermott was clearly on thin ice with a 59-68 (18-46 Big 12) record in four seasons in Ames and little prospect for improvement in the near future, so this has every hallmark of a pre-emptive strike.  McDermott of course was at Northern Iowa in the MVC for five years prior to taking the ISU job, and he did very well there, going to three straight NCAA Tournaments from 2004-06.  He said that one of the primary reasons he wanted to take the Creighton job was for an opportunity to coach his son, an incoming freshman who had signed with UNI but will be allowed to move on to Creighton to play for his dad.
2. As for Altman’s move to Oregon, it became official yesterday.  He’ll roughly double his annual salary to $1.8M per year in a seven-year contract that will include some seriously high expectations.  As we said before, though, we expect he’ll do very well there.  Gary Parrish and Jeff Goodman give their takes.
3. Good weekend in the Big 12 for a couple of Texas teams — Baylor picked up UCLA transfer center J’Mison Morgan, a talented but enigmatic player who never seemed to be able to find a role in Westwood; and the Horns got a commitment from highly touted point guard Cory Joseph, the #7 overall player on the Rivals rankings in 2010.
4. Well, DePaul’s Oliver Purnell is off to a rousing start with the Chicago Public League high school coaches.  You know, the ones who control all of the great talent coming out of that city every year.  We’re sure this is all going to work out famously.
5. Love this stuff.  A well-done photo montage from the 2009-10 season from CHJ.  What is your favorite?  Gotta say that the Randy Culpepper dunk attempt is ours, with the second-prize going to the Lebron photo at Kentucky.  Creepiest pic?  The Jon Scheyer one in the Carolina-bluish warmups.  Great stuff — check it out.

Ray Floriani has been to so many NITs he can’t remember them all, but he sent us this feature story on what may have been the final evening for the Grand Old Lady of postseason college basketball a couple of weeks ago. 

NEW YORK CITY- The last one? Hopefully not. Heading to New York on that bright and sunny (finally) afternoon was the realization that this could be the end. The end of the line for the nation’s oldest postseason tournament in college basketball. The final edition as the NCAA gets closer to expansion. Denial was no use as the reality of it all was sinking in and on the minds of fans. Not just the fans of Dayton and North Carolina but the fans of the college game in general.

On the train to New York, we met up with a few Dayton alums from my area. We discuss the game and soon there was an invite to a Dayton pregame reception on the eighteenth floor of the Penn Hotel across from the Garden. The game starts at seven. We’d hit New York at five and considering I plan to check in at MSG about 5:30, it sounded good. At the reception were alumni, friends and students including the band members and cheerleaders. Met a lot of passionately devoted fans, but refused any drinks (there was a game to cover), settling instead for soda.

They Are Not Dayton Alums Yet, Ray...

Off to the Garden where players took the floor about an hour prior to tipoff to stretch, do some light shooting and generally go through their pregame routine. It’s all business on both sides. North Carolina would rather play on the first Monday in April. There is a title at stake here however and the first Thursday instead will suffice. Interesting these two schools are meeting for probably the last NIT championship. Dayton has had a storied history in this tournament with eight previous ‘Final Four’ appearances. Five times the Flyers finished runners-up while twice ascending to the championship. North Carolina has not appeared in the event nearly as much. Their first trip to MSG for the NIT resulted in a 1970 first round loss to Manhattan, coached by Jack Powers later to become  a long time director of the tournament. A year later they captured their only title in the NIT.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wright State’s Brad Brownell was introduced this afternoon as the new head coach at Clemson University, ending a week of swirling rumors among three ACC programs (Boston College and Wake Forest are the others) as to the leadership and future direction of their programs.  Brownell had been reportedly in the mix for the Wake Forest position prior to the Deacs settling on Colorado’s Jeff Bzdelik (a move that is apparently still in negotiations).  Unlike Bzdelik, though, the new Clemson coach has achieved a verifiable and sustained pattern of success throughout his eight-year head coaching career. 

Brownell Becomes the Latest ACC Coach

At UNC-Wilmington from 2002-06, Brownell’s teams were 83-40 (52-20 CAA), including two conference championships and NCAA appearances (both close losses in the first round).  He then followed that up at Wright State with a nearly identical 84-45 record (49-21 Horizon), including a conference championship and another NCAA berth there in 2007.  His last three years at the school have been cast in the long shadow of Horizon League nemesis Butler, but his teams have won at least twelve conference games and twenty overall in each of his seasons at the helm there.  Put simply, the guy has won games wherever he’s coached. 

Brownell’s teams at WSU were among the most patient in the country the last several years, averaging between 60-64 possessions per game (national average = 67).  His teams are defensive-oriented with an emphasis on limiting good looks in the paint and forcing turnovers through sticky halfcourt traps and the denial of entry passes (similar to Butler in this regard).  Some Clemson writers wonder how that will translate to life in the ACC, but with halfcourt basketball now preferred at half the schools in the conference (with Donahue at BC and Bzdelik at Wake joining Tony Bennett at Virginia, Sidney Lowe at NC State and Leonard Hamilton at FSU in the utilizaton of patient basketball), we may be seeing a shift in the hoops culture of this league.  So long as it works, of course.  It makes for an interesting juxtaposition as the top three programs (and coaches) in this league prefer to run at every opportunity — will the ACC start looking more like the Big Ten with games in the 50s?

Among the three ACC hires this year, we believe that this one is poised to work out best for all parties involved.  Brownell is familiar with the Carolinas from his decade spent in Wilmington and is also certainly well-versed with how seriously ACC fans take their basketball (especially with respect to Drew Nicholas).  He’s also walking into a situation at Clemson where seven of last year’s top nine Tiger contributors from an NCAA Tournament team should return to the fold (although Devin Booker is reportedly waffling).  Oliver Purnell more than proved that basketball can succeed at this football school, and Brownell may just be the young, dynamic coach to take Clemson to the next level of regular NCAA Tournament runs beyond the first game. 

Forget the Coach K to the New Jersey Nets rumors (seriously, how cool would it be to watch Krzyzewski turn down increasingly ridiculous offers…  $15M: nah.  $25M: no way.  $50M: sure I’ll think about it.  $100M: ok, but only if you throw in something for Collins and Wojo.), the hottest coaching commodity that we’ve seen in a great number of years is none other than Butler’s 33-year old wunderkind, Brad Stevens.  Everyone in college basketball circles would love to be in his position right now, with a limitless number of suitors and a potential preseason top-five team returning in 2010-11.  If you’re Stevens and you decide to leave, you can ask your new employer for the moon; if you’re him and you decide to stay, you can ask your current employer for Venus.  No matter what his final decision will be, he can make demands that few ADs, Barry Collier included, can afford to turn down. 

The Butler Money Man (Indy Star/R. Scheer)

Given that environment, there are currently three open positions with enough name recognition, cash and prestige to lure Stevens away from his home state of Indiana.  Let’s break down each of those situations plus a fourth alternative of staying at Butler for a while longer. 

Oregon.  Oregon has made no bones about its desire to get a big name to replace Ernie Kent this year.  Tom Izzo and Tubby Smith have already reportedly turned down the Ducks and Phil Knight’s mattress stuffed with cash, but both of those guys are old-timers (relatively speaking) who have climbed the mountaintop before.  Stevens is 33 years old and makes a good living at Butler (~$400k annually), but he has two young children and when you’re facing the prospect of generational wealth as he would at UO (~$2-3M), it clouds the somewhat feel-good picture of staying at Butler for the ‘fit.’

• Pluses: Obviously, money and top-rate facilities in the form of the brand-new Matthew Knight Arena (opening Winter 2010-11) and the adjoining practice facility.  A commitment to basketball through Phil Knight’s largesse.  A down Pac-10 will make for an easier ascendency to the top in the next two seasons.  Oregon loves its Ducks — strong statewide support.  Did we mention the money? — five mediocre years there and he’s still sitting on a huge bankroll. 
• Minuses:  In its heart of hearts, Oregon is a football school.  Recruiting to Eugene isn’t easy outside of the Pacific Northwest, and an Indiana guy would probably be out of his element there.  He’s looking at a rebuilding situation next season — the Ducks will not be very good for a while.  Oregon basketball feels more like a stepping-stone appointment rather than a destination one.  It rains an awful lot there.

Can Knight Shovel Enough Dough Stevens' Way?

Wake Forest.  With today’s firing of Dino Gaudio after three seasons and two NCAA trips, it’s clear that Demon Deacon AD Ron Wellman has bigger things in mind.  The school has a small but passionate fanbase that would hire the Easter Bunny if they thought he could beat Duke and Carolina on a regular basis.  Wake has money to spend, but there’s no bottomless pot of (black and) gold of which Wellman can draw from like Oregon.  Still, the ACC is still the most prestigious basketball league in America, and Wake is a prime situation for the right coach.

• Pluses:  Tobacco Road: few places in the country match the commitment and passion of the fans in this part of the country about college basketball.  Stevens would find a similar situation to what he left in Indiana.  There is enough talent in the Carolinas and Atlanta to support another top twenty program in this area on talent alone — Wake could provide the platform for Stevens to make that leap and pay him handsomely for the privilege.  Like Butler, Wake is a small, private university with a commitment to academics, so he wouldn’t be making a huge change in comfort level.
• Minuses:  Tobacco Road: did we mention that three of the last six champions and two Hall of Fame coaches reside about 80 miles down the road in Durham and Chapel Hill?  Many a coach has come to NC State and Wake Forest with high hopes only to learn that harsh reality the hard way.  Getting wins in the ACC won’t be as easy a proposition as it was in the Horizon League.  Butler is a low pressure job, but Wake demands a lot from its coaches — perhaps more than can reasonably be expected.

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