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Thursday, March 22, 2007

Good God, y'all:

(WCCO) Minneapolis WCCO's Mike Max has learned that the University of Minnesota may be close to announcing a new men's basketball coach, and the newest name in the mix is Tubby Smith of Kentucky.

In a meeting Tuesday night between Smith and University of Kentucky officials, a resignation from Smith was expected. Word is that Gophers athletics director Joel Maturi was on a flight Wednesday afternoon to Lexington to meet with Smith.
Confirmed and replicated everywhere. Good? Bad? Who knows? Minnesota is obviously acting fast as hell on this one in an attempt to get this over and done with before Smith seriously considers other options. Probably throwing a bucket of money at him, too. The choice between Smith and Beilein and Lowery and Miller is one of preference: Beilein has been successful recruiting nobodies; Tubby has been more successful -- vastly so -- recruiting the best talent in the country... until the last two years, when the rumor has it that a Smith fed up with AAU coaches burning him time and again cut ties and,not coincidentally, the rankings of players who sign up to play for UK. If you remove Smith's presence at arguably the premiere program in the country, how good of a coach is he? And did Michigan screw up by not throwing their hat in the ring here? I don't know. I'm sure Drew Sharp does and will come out with an article all about how this proves Michigan's irrelevance, but I'd rather not be forced into a decision right now about a guy who has some questions. (Yes, even though I strongly endorsed him earlier in the week.)

Update: Friend of Blog Russ Levine notes that the UK opening suddenly makes Michigan the second best job available, and second in the sense that Ohio State was second in the Not Fiesta Bowl. Potential impact on our coaching search? UK won't stoop to hiring a Miller or Lowery but might cast an eye towards Beilein. You have to think that they'll start with Billy Gillespie and work their way down before considering a guy who hasn't proven he can recruit at the level UK expects.

Who has? Well, what about Thad Matta?

1 Comment:

Anonymous said...

cross Sean Miller off the list of potential coaches too...just signed an extension that has him staying with Xavier til 2016

http://xavier.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=655947