It is a time for speculating, rumor-mongers and listening to Myles Brand, the president of the NCAA. It is also a time to hear out coaches and to pick greedily from the ever-growing NCAA tournament grapevine. That is what Final Four Thursday is and so …
Pandora’s box
Davidson’s run this spring was a charming tale, much like George Mason’s back in 2006. But every silver lining has its cloud. That was proved true again when we asked Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim about Brand’s statement that in “the last two years we’ve seen 18 percent coaching turnover in Division I.”
“It’s a little deceptive because some coaches are leaving to get a better job. They’re not getting fired,” Boeheim said. “But with the coaches who are getting fired, one of the first things they say is, ‘You didn’t make the tournament in four years.’ That’s an issue. The tournament is an issue.
“This never was an issue 20 years ago. But once smaller schools started breaking through because of the balance and everything, now every school thinks it should be in the tournament. Whether that’s realistic or not, I don’t know. But if you’re not in the tournament [for a while], chances are if you’ve been at a school for very long, you’re going to get fired.
“That’s always been there [at the bigger schools]. Now it’s everywhere. That’s where the change is. No question it’s probably the main issue in coaching today. You didn’t make the tournament.”
Exclusive or inclusive
The last two springs, Boeheim has used this Thursday to push for expanding the tournament field beyond 65 teams. It’s not going to happen any time soon, which he realizes. There are just too many contracts and logistics involved.
So this spring Boeheim limited himself to declaiming, “I think the how gets in the way of what should be. … People wouldn’t admit to this, but … I don’t think there’s that much opposition down deep to have a little bit of expansion. … It just makes sense that after all these years, with so many good teams, we should have something like that. It’s just how do you do it.”
There are 117 major college football teams and last season 56 of them (47.5 percent) went to bowl games. There are 328 Division I men’s basketball teams and 65 of them (19.8 percent) made the NCAA tournament. Discuss.
Izzo on Crean
Here is what Michigan State coach Tom Izzo had to say about the move of Tom Crean, his former assistant, to Indiana.
“I hate it,” Izzo said, because he’ll have to coach against him. “But I love it for him. I think it’s a great situation for him. It’s arguably one of those premier programs.
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“He has done a good job at Marquette. You can always do a better job. But it was the right move, I really think it was. I told him that [in conversations before he took it].
“It was not an easy decision for him. Any time you have been somewhere for a while and he had a pretty good team coming back. … Let’s face it, he’s going into a tough situation. But if you look at the big picture, it was a no-brainer.”
Siena to Marquette
Word on the street is Marquette is looking at Siena coach Fran McCaffrey as a possible replacement for Crean.
This season, his third with the Saints, McCaffrey guided them to the tournament, where they upset No. 4 seed Vanderbilt in the opening round. His previous stop was UNC-Greensboro, which he also took to the tournament, and before that he spent 11 years as an assistant at Notre Dame, where he recruited NBA first-round draft choices Troy Murphy and Pat Garrity.
Quotable
It is appropriate, then, that we end with this observation from Boeheim: “Sometimes when you bring in a new coach, it works wonders. But for every time that works, it gets worse sometimes. It’s a coin flip, it really is, when you bring in a new coach. You can be as smart as you want, hire who looks like the best guy possible and there’s a good, 50 percent chance the guy will not be successful. That’s just the way it is.”
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