With all teams done with their seasons but a select few, plus the annual hoops celebration/job fair that is the Final Four coming this weekend, the pace for coaching vacancies to get filled will pick up this week. It certainly did just that Monday.
Four more schools named and/or introduced new coaches on Monday, which in turn has left two more NCAA Division I jobs now open. Three of those hires were at schools that have been perennially tough jobs at the D-I level. And while, much like grading professional team drafts, it’s easy to give everybody an above average grade for their hires, all four schools’ fan bases have legitimate reasons to be happy with their choices.
News broke Sunday about Drake’s hiring of Furman head man Niko Medved as its new head coach, and he was introduced by the school Monday. Medved comes after turning a struggling Paladins program into one of the top teams in a toughening Southern Conference. Iowa and the Missouri Valley Conference is going to be new territory for him, but from watching some Furman games in recent years, we think Bulldog fans will be very happy with the hire. Medved’s teams ran a lot of motion offense and were also excellent and active on defense, much like another school from that state that will be playing in the Final Four on Saturday. Drake has faced an uphill climb in the MVC ever since Keno Davis left after the magical 2007-08 season, but
The search at Quinnipiac was an intriguing one from the time the Bobcats let go Tom Moore, for the fact that Moore had two of the top freshmen in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference this season in Mikey Dixon and Peter Kiss, and also rumors that the school was willing to pay a coach in the range of $800,000, well above the going rate for most MAAC coaches. A search that took some time landed with Baker Dunleavy, the son of longtime NBA veteran and current Tulane coach Mike Dunleavy and the top assistant at Villanova the last four years. Dunleavy’s name and connections with one of the most successful programs in the country should be a draw, but alas, reports yesterday were that Dixon and Kiss both were requesting their releases with intentions to transfer elsewhere. Of course, transferring has been elevated to a full-blown fad in the sport these days, but the players are expected to meet with Dunleavy before making any final decisions, and that’s a smart move.
Youngstown State has long been one of the true outposts in Division I basketball, a school where winning seasons are rare-just five over the last 33 years-and finishing even near the middle of the Horizon League has been a success. The Penguins are known far more for football, but they do seem to have done very well with the hire of Jarrod Calhoun, who comes from Fairmont State (W.Va.), which just played in the NCAA Division II championship game. Calhoun was a success at Fairmont State and as head coach at then-NAIA (now NCAA D-II) Walsh (Ohio), and he also spent time working under Bob Huggins at West Virginia.
Just an hour to the southeast of Youngstown, though, a school whose search had become almost a tragicomedy wound up coming up roses as Duquesne lured Keith Dambrot from Akron. One potential suitor after another seemed to turn down the Dukes until Dambrot, whose Zips teams won at least 20 games each of the last 12 years. He’ll bring instant credibility to a program that has long struggled more than not in the Atlantic 10 and hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament in 40 years. His father Sid also played at Duquesne from 1951-54, where he was a member of one of the school’s NCAA tourney squads in 1952 and an NIT runner-up in 1954. This is a slam-dunk for the Dukes, who get a proven winner who knows the area, already has a connection to the school, and should give the program a jolt quickly.
Side Dishes:
- The CBI championship series tipped off with Coastal Carolina topping Wyoming 91-81 at home in the first game of the best-of-three. The Chanticleers led almost the entire way, building a 10-point lead less than five minutes in and keeping the long-range bombing Cowboys and their 13 three-pointers at arm’s length the rest of the night. Six players scored in double figures for Coastal, which also pounded Wyoming on the glass 46-34. That included 14 points from Elijah Wilson, who it feels like has been at CCU now for about eight years. Game Two will be Wednesday night and the teams will move sites to Laramie.
- From Sunday night, Phil Kasiecki and Ted Sarandis got together for their latest edition of College Basketball Tonight, which you can listen to here. They are joined by Mount St. Mary’s coach Jamion Christian plus Hoopville writer Ray Floriani, who also has some notes on Sunday’s outstanding South Carolina/Florida game from the NCAA Tournament here.
Tonight’s Menu:
- Madison Square Garden just hosted some terrific East Regional games in the NCAA Tournament, and there’s more college basketball on tap tonight with the NIT semifinals. Just like the NCAAs, the NIT also has three teams making their first trips to its semifinals. The first game features upstart Cal State Bakersfield against Georgia Tech (7 p.m. Eastern, ESPN), and while they’ll face a size disadvantage against the Yellow Jackets, the Roadrunners are fearless, and should put on a good show if not wowed by the stage. The second game features TCU against Central Florida (9:30 p.m., ESPN), both first-time NIT semifinalists. It will be fascinating to see if the plucky Horned Frogs can figure out a way to solve UCF’s defense.
Hope all have a great Tuesday.
