Coaching Cantidates: Tubby Smith

It appears right now that Smith is the leader in the clubhouse. His Minnesota Golden Gophers lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament yesterday but at least they were there. I’d expect Craig Littlepage to put in a call to his agent, or Tubby himself, sometime today. Smith definitely has the best history of any of the coaches on this list. His overall record is 429-170 and Smith won the 1998 National Championship, as well as 7 Conference Championships, when he coached the Kentucky Wildcats from 1997-2007. Smith was also the first African-American coach at the University of Georgia where he gave the Bulldogs their first back to back 20+ win seasons in school history in his only two years there. At his current stop in Minnesota, Smith has led the Golden Gophers to two 20 win seasons and signed a top 25 recruiting class for this season.

               The only drawback to Smith is the money it would take to hire such a high profile coach. Smith is currently the highest paid employee in the state of Minnesota at 1.15 million dollars in base salary. While that is not that much for a basketball coach the bonuses for winning a conference championship, making the NCAA tournament, winning the National Championship, etc. are much much higher than coach Leitao’s were. According to an article in The Hook yesterday they are almost ten times as much. One of the driving factors in Leitao’s removal was that the program would lose more money in empty seats and loss of donations than they would have to pay Leitao in a buyout. The decision the athletic department has to make is if they bring in Smith at this high salary, will he be able to fill JPJ and bring in enough revenue to cover it.

                If Tubby Smith is in fact brought in it symbolizes that Craig Littlepage and the rest of the Athletic department thinks that talent-wise this team is very close to having success. Smith is just the final piece of the puzzle, sort of like Phil Jackson was to the Bulls and Lakers. By bringing him in and paying his exorbitant salary the athletic department is putting tremendous pressure on a very young team to grow up and be successful now. While I think that most of them can rise to the occasion and that Smith is the right coach to lead that sort of team I am still not convinced that that is the proper direction to go with the program. While Smith is a very good coach he is also 57 years old and no one knows how much longer he will be coaching. At this point this looks like the right hire but down the road this may come back to bite Virginia. I’d appreciate at least a cup of coffee with Anthony Grant of VCU and Sean Miller of Xavier, and even Jay Wright of Villanova, who took over that program in almost an identical situation and made them into a powerhouse and the darlings of Philadelphia, before they sign on the dotted line with Smith. Virginia’s mistake with the hiring of coach leitao was that the process was too drawn out and they had to scramble to hire someone. The athletic departments desire to not repeat that scenario again may lead to too hasty a decision and end up getting UVA stuck again in a few years.

                Now that’s not to say I don’t want Tubby to come coach here, in fact I would LOVE to see him patrolling the bench, and I assume that when he retires there will be another great coach in waiting to succeed him, I just don’t want UVA to rush into this and end up missing out on an up and coming young coach who could be a great coach for the next 20 years. Just keep your options open Craig and you’ll do fine.

VCU and Minnesota were eliminated last night so expect interviews to start soon for Grant and Smith.

Coach Leitao Resigns

As most of you know Virginia head basketball coach Dave Leitao resigned yesterday bringing to end his 4 years at the helm of the Cavaliers. Leitao had the shortest tenure of any UVA coach since 1930. He resigned following the worst season for UVA basketball in the last 40 years with the Hoos finishing an abysmal 10-18. The athletic department made a tough but necessary decision to move on and will pay Leitao 2.1 million dollars to buy out the remainder of his contract.

                This makes Virginia the first school to fire their head coach this offseason and gives them quite the leg up on the competition in the search for a new head coach. Craig Littlepage will most likely move quickly in order to prevent

 the confusion that surrounded the hiring of Leitao 4 years ago. This process will most likely take a few weeks as some of the potential candidate’s teams are currently playing in the tournament but I would expect to hear news on the matter shortly after the tournament wraps up April 6^th. I have a few names that I think would be good people to at least bring in and interview for the job. I’ll profile some of them further but here is the list I’ve made with a brief description so far.

 

Anthony Grant, Head Coach- Virginia Commonwealth University

                Anthony Grant has been the up and coming coach for 3 years now after his VCU Rams upset Duke in the first round of the NCAA tournament in 2007. Grant’s star point guard Eric Maynor is graduating this season so this seems to be the logical time to move on. With recruiting connections in Virginia already Grant seems to be the most logical choice to become Virginia’s next basketball coach, the problem is that he is also rumored to be the top candidate for the Georgia and Alabama jobs as well.

Marc Iavaroni, Former Head Coach-Memphis Grizzlies

                Iavaroni played basketball here at UVA and was a graduate assistant on the Final Four teams of the early 80s. If Craig Littlepage feels that he wants to restore the tradition of the basketball program Iavaroni feels like an obvious choice. The question is whether or not Iavaroni, who has never coached in college, feels compelled to return to his alma mater.

Sean Miller, Head Coach-Xavier University

                Miller is another young coach that has led his musketeers to the dance once again. The musketeers have won the A-10 the last 2 years in a row and made the elite 8 last season. Miller would definitely be a good coach if Grant is unavailable.

Jim Larranaga, Head Coach-George Mason University

                This is a bit of a stretch but Jim Larranaga was an assistant at UVA from 1979 to 1986. Larranaga would also be the opposite of Coach Leitao when it came to PR as he is extremely open to the students at George Mason and is a true representation of the school. The one drawback is that Larranaga is 59 years old and UVA might want to look to a younger coach. Plus Larranaga seems to like GMU.

Other names include Oklahoma head coach Jeff Capel, Minnesota coach Tubby Smith, Miami Coach Frank Haith, and GW Coach Karl Hobbs.

If I had to put money on it I’d say the race is between Miller and Grant with Iavaroni as a dark horse. The other coaches are already at good schools or like where they are. I’ll be profiling candidates later this week and into next week.