March 2007 - Posts
You are going to get a very good men's basketball coach within the next week or so.
How do I know this? I don't. But I do know that Iowa is paying Parker Executive Search a healthy sum to help facilitate this process. Dan Parker, the boss of that Atlanta firm, steered Tubby Smith from Kentucky to Minnesota. You may have noticed that no one has confused Minnesota with Kansas or North Carolina when it comes to basketball.
The Bruce Pearl stuff was fluff. The Rick Majerus stuff was Majerus-induced, whether Majerus cops to it or not. This is a big country, and the Big Ten still carries a lot of weight in coaching circles. The person that takes the Iowa job won't necessarily come from a mid-major. He could be in the Big East or SEC or ACC right now. And if he is from a mid-major, that doesn't mean he won't be a terrific coach.
Iowa got from under Steve Alford's contract, and with the prospect of another 3,000 or so tickets per game being snapped up next season just on good feelings alone, Iowa will have money to spend on a coach. I don't doubt it will be a good one. Relax and wait. Next season doesn't start for another seven months, anyway.
Or it's not.
Continue shopping, everyone. If we don't resume our normal lives, the rumor-mongers win.
Personally, I can't fathom Rick Majerus becoming Iowa's new men's basketball coach. But I couldn't fathom Adam Sandler as a movie star, and he became one.
I think this is going to be just like Iowa State's football hire late last year. Names were tossed about, people were ready to give the keys to the ISU football office to Central Michigan's Brian Kelly, and then it was announced. Gene Chizik. A name no one really connected to the opening.
This may be very similar. Or it may be Majerus.
At any rate, continue shopping. We need normalcy in these turbulent times.
that one of Steve Alford's University of Iowa basketball commitments for 2007 said this to the Indianapolis Star Tuesday:
"I knew for about a week it was a good possibility (Alford would go to New Mexico) from him and my AAU coach, who's good friends with him," said Jake Kelly of Carmel, Ind. "But (Alford) called me the day he signed with them and just told me that he wanted me to come with him, and that they needed me and that he thinks they've got a good future there with some of the recruits that he thinks will follow him."
Tuesday night, Kelly told the Gazette's Jim Ecker ``He said he'd like for me to come and that he thinks he's got a good future here.''
Uh, Steve, you can't do that. Not with players who have signed a national letter-of-intent. You knew that, too. At the very least, you tell a kid not to say anything like that to reporters.
It wouldn't be shocking if young Kelly will amend his story sometime soon. You know, something like "Coach Alford never asked me to come to New Mexico." Who knows, maybe Kelly was just confused.
But the words are out there, and the kid would have had no reason to make them up. Just like he had no reason to make up that part about Alford telling him the New Mexico move was a possibility well before Alford told the current Iowa players that he was leaving for the Lobos' job.
I'd be amazed if anything ever came of this NCAA-wise. It's the kind of thing that seems like it can easily be tap-danced around. Plus, why would Iowa want to retain recruits who don't want to be there?
But it seems a little iffy, no?
"I’m not leaving Tennessee," Tennessee Coach Bruce Pearl told the Knoxville News Tuesday.
The story said Iowa officially contacted Tennessee and requested permission to talk to Pearl about its job.
"They made contact with me this morning," Pearl said. "I listened out of respect for their program. I thanked them for their interest."
Some of us saw that coming, didn't we?
I'm reading and hearing a lot of hopes that Iowa will go after Tennessee's Bruce Pearl to fill its men's basketball coaching vacancy.
What, Rick Pitino or Roy Williams weren't available?
You never say never in this racket (never, never, never - OK, sometimes you say it), but it doesn't make sense to me. From Pearl's perspective, that is.
Folks, he has a really good gig at Tennessee. Better the one that would exist at Iowa. In two short years, he's got it rolling. The state, other than Memphis and Vanderbilt fans, love him. He's making serious coin. He's got talent coming back, and he's reeling in more. He's coach of a Sweet 16 team, not a non-NIT team.
Plus, he isn't a job-hopper. He could have left Division II Southern Indiana several times in his nine years there, but to Division I jobs that were more dead ends than stepping stones. So he kept winning in Indiana and waited for a good move. He got it in Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He could have left there after the second of his four years, when he reached the NCAAs. But he was patient. After a Sweet 16 run in Year 4, his profile was better than ever before, and the SEC's Tennessee came calling.
So this is a guy who will leave Tennessee and all he's built there after two years to begin a rebuilding job at Iowa? Stranger things have happened, but I can't see it.
There's some sort of feeling in Hawkeyeland that if you ever lived or worked in Iowa, you automatically want to come back. For some, it's true. For others, things change and you find happiness elsewhere. If Kirk Ferentz departed Iowa tomorrow, you think Wisconsin's Bret Bielema would apply for the job just because it's his alma mater? It's the same deal with Pearl.
Besides, if Pearl keeps doing good things at Tennessee, in another couple years an elite program will come calling. If and when he leaves Knoxville, it will be for a move that clearly is forward, not parallel at best.
Who do you want to become Iowa's next men's basketball coach, and why?
I'm working on a short list of my own, and have it down to 99 finalists. Among those not making the cut were Simon Cowell, Stephen Colbert, Posh Spice, Penn, Teller, Wolfgang Puck, Ozzy Osbourne, Ozzy Osbourne's family, and the Max Weinberg 7.
But seriously, folks, we've got to get this resolved, and pronto. I don't want you to have spend your whole spring dealing with this. So send those suggestions to mike.hlas@gazettecommunications.com, and we'll get you a coach hired.
It appears that Steve Alford is on his way to New Mexico. His replacement as the Iowa men's basketball coach could be one of countless potential candidates. So buying the domain name for fire(fill in the blank).com wouldn't be prudent just yet.
I've never reprinted columns here, but here's my Gazette column for tomorrow, March 21:
There's always been a little paranoia and attempted controlling when it comes to University of Iowa athletics.
It goes back at least as far as Lute Olson. Hayden Fry made it an art form, and it has stayed entrenched in Hawkdom eight years after Fry's retirement. Things may not be much different than at other BCS conference schools, but we pay more attention to the one in our backyard.
When Southern Mississippi or various high schools sprouted logos that look too much like Iowa's Tiger Hawk, the Hawkeyes called their lawyers and many of us snickered. The school's within its rights to protect its property, of course, and we're within our rights to think something is silly.
Thewizofodds.com, a college football site, learned Sunday night that the Iowa athletics department bought domain rights to seven potential Web site addresses a few months ago. The total cost was $674.82. The story quickly spread across Iowa and floated to the Chicago Tribune, ESPN.com, and Jim Rome's ESPN television show.
Why? Because it's good for a laugh. A derisive laugh.
Want to own firekirkferentz.com or garybartamustgo.com or fireliasbluder.com? Forget it. Those belong to the Hawkeyes, as do four other such handles.
The existence of firestevealford.com surely motivated that. The copyright to that site's address was snapped up in 2003. It's one of many firesomebody.coms that have existed in cyberspace the last several years.
That Iowa has done this, obviously, is ludicrous. If someone's going to waste their time and money to put up a fireourcoach.com site, ignoring it would be the only sane policy.
If you're trying to sleep in the Puerto Rican rain forest, will snuffing one of the thousands of chirping frogs make it a quiet night?
You can buy up 10,000 Web addresses, and someone will come up with a 10,001st as embarrassing as any other. The English language has lots of words, I'm told.
Let's say someone wants Ferentz canned. Firekirkferentz.com has been taken. So has kirkferentzmustgo.com. Will the tormented soul give up and read a good book instead?
Not likely. He (it's usually a he in regards to sports-related idiocy) can come up with something like the following:
fireferentz.com
firekirk.com
bootferentz.com
sackferentz.com
pinkslipferentz.com
Once the tormented soul gets his site up and running, he can lure fellow frothing fans, and they can vent to their hearts' content.
Not to knock the folks at firestevealford.com, whoever they are. But they launched their site two contract-extensions ago for Alford. So they haven't enjoyed the ``success'' that the founders of fireronzook.com did in Florida.
Easy as it may be to ridicule anyone who would take the time to create such a site, it's more fun to laugh at a university that would buy up the names of possible sites. I appreciate paranoia as much as anyone, but this thing Iowa did invites criticism a lot more than it muffles it.
If you believe in your product, how you're presenting it, and the people who represent it, you simply let any nattering nabobs of negativity natter away. If you have actual problems, buying up potentially insulting Web addresses isn't on the fix-it list.
Woody Allen once said paranoia is knowing all the facts. What, you're going to be bash me because I brought Woody Allen into this?
And stop following me!
All four No. 1 seeds still alive: Boring.
Five of the six Big Ten teams gone: Typical.
Winthrop eliminated: Heartbreaking.
Southern California advancing under Tim Floyd: Good college coach.
Tennessee advancing under Bruce Pearl: Likewise.
Southern Illinois advancing: Not surprising.
Vanderbilt: The new Duke.
Duke: The old Vanderbilt.
Wisconsin: Once ranked No. 1 in the country. We knew it wouldn't be permanent.
Oregon: Ducky.
Butler: Measure the height of the baskets in St. Louis' Edward Jones Dome, Bulldogs. I believe you'll find these are the exact same measurements as in your Hinkle Fieldhouse at Butler. Now go beat Florida.
I was in the Cedar Rapids public library around noon today, using one of the computers. Sitting on one side of me using another computer was a young adult male, filling out a set of NCAA basketball brackets on ESPN's Web site.
Then he filled out another. And another. ESPN lets you submit up to five entries in its contest. First prize is $10,000. That's probably about one-hundredth of one penny for every entry.
The man was going with the chalk, as they say. Nothing but really high seeds in the Final Four, and defending champion Florida to repeat.
I'm thinking your only hope in such a contest is to pick a couple long shots to reach the Final Four and be right. You can pick Ohio State, Florida, Kansas and North Carolina to make it to Atlanta in April, get the champion right, and still not have the total points to finish in the top thousand.
So, after days of resistance, I'm giving you the Final Four and champion that will change your lives.
Midwest: Florida
West: Southern Illinois
East: Texas
South: Memphis
Champion: Florida
With the exception of the Gators, the rest of these picks range from iffy to doubtful. But if you want to win big in these things, you have to take a few chances.
By the way, I've never won an NCAA tourney pool in my life. Which doesn't mean I'm lousy at this. It only means I only learned the secret to success recently. And I have. Now, so have you.
I've heard the outrage of some who can't grasp how Iowa could tie for fourth place in the Big Ten and earn the No. 4 seed in the Big Ten tournament, only to be uninvited to the NIT.
First off, Iowa also tied for sixth in the Big Ten. Second, it was only 17-14. Third, it was 96th in the final RPI rankigns. Fourth, it closed its season with a dismal performance in a 74-55 loss to Purdue at the Big Ten tourney. That was nine days after the Hawkeyes lost to Penn State to snap the Nittany Lions' 13-game losing streak.
Fifth and most important, the NIT changed the way it does business prior to this go-round. It assembled a panel of retired coaches, including Dean Smith and Gene Keady, and evaluated teams much the way the NCAA tournament committee does. That meant no more inviting a Big Ten or Big East or ACC team just because it had a winning record of some sort. It meant that the playing field was level for everyone. Also, the NIT is in its second year of taking every regular-season conference champion that didn't earn an NCAA bid. The ate eight of its 32 slots this year.
If anything, the NIT has done everything it can to be regarded as legitimate, considering the material it gets. It now seeds teams according to their performances, not by who's more likely to draw a crowd at home, or who would bring better television ratings. Good for the NIT.
Fourth-place tie or not, Iowa's overall body of work wasn't as good as NCAA qualifiers Illinois and Purdue, or even perennial underachiver Michigan, which reached the NIT for the umpteenth straight year.
Northern Iowa (84th in the RPI, with an 18-13 record and a win at Iowa) was every bit as deserving of an NIT bid as Iowa.
What this does is save Iowa a road trip to lose to someone like Bradley or Missouri State. If you don't think that would have been the result against a team fired up to beat a Big Ten squad in front of its own fans, you need to watch a tape of that Iowa-Purdue game on a neutral court in Chicago.
"Rebuilding" season or not, when you can't even get into the NIT, you have a void that needs filling. Iowa better schedule itself some attractive nonconference games at home - the Iowa State and UNI games will be on the road - because demand for Hawkeye tickets isn't going to be great.
Oh, it better win a lot more of those nonconference games next season, too. Every game counts, as Iowa is painfully aware of today as it watches 65 other teams head to the NCAAs and 32 to the NIT.
Finishing in a three-way tie for fourth place in the Big Ten doesn't mean jack when your overall record is 17-14.
The funniest and strangest thing I've heard in many moons was hearing that ESPN2 will air an NIT selection show Sunday night.
"Desperate Housewives" shares the same time slot with "Desperate So-So Basketball Teams."
The standard shots of the NCAA tournament selection show won't necessarily apply to the NIT's show. When they show a team celebrating riotously on the NIT show, will it be because it found out it wasn't chosen to be in the field of 32? When they get angry, bitter comments from coaches and players, will it because they weren't slighted by the NIT?
Or will we get some acting? Which, by the way, is called flopping in basketball. Will any coach of a major-university program be able to convince us he's pleased to be in the NIT, and eager to hit the road to play in Peoria? Will any player persuade us that the opportunity to continue a disappointing season is a good thing?
I love it. It's a half-hour devoted to frustration, disappointment, resentment. The winners get enough time and glory. It's high time that the mediocre got their moment, and I'm not talking about contestants of "American Idol."
The NIT selection show will become hotter than the Dallas Mavericks, more sensational than Tom Brady's personal life. Pathos, dark comedy, human struggle -- this show will have it all.
Iowa and Northern Iowa will be in. Or they'll be out. Either way, they'll never be the same. Neither will we.
Thursday play-in games:
Michigan 72, Minnesota 63. Michigan has a glimmer of a hope of reaching the NCAA tourney. Minnesota has a glimmer of a hope of getting to the NCAAs sometime in the next 10 years.
Michigan State 61, Northwestern 42. If the batteries in your remote-control are weak, change them. Because you don't want your TV stuck on this game for more than seven seconds.
Illinois 75, Penn State 62. Illinois has a glimmer of a hope of reaching the NCAA tourney. Penn State hopes to someday return to the Rose Bowl.
Friday quarterfinals:
Ohio State 70, Michigan 60. The 'O' in Oden stands for "O, don't bring that junk in the paint, Michigan."
Purdue 68, Iowa 63. The Boilermakers have their NCAA hopes riding on this game. They're a better team than the one that sleepwalked at Iowa a couple weeks ago.
Michigan State 65, Wisconsin 61. No Brian Butch equals a big hole in the Badgers' middle when these games matter most. These two teams were 1-1 against each other, and this matchup favors the Spartans.
Illinois 68, Indiana 66. This is a coin-flip, so give Illinois the home-court advantage.
Saturday semifinals:
Ohio State 70, Purdue 60. The 'O' in Oden stands for "O, don't even pretend you're at our level, Purdue."
Michigan State 74, Illinois 71 (OT). Two tired teams playing their third game in three days, but Illinois collapses when MSU's Drew Neitzel hits a last-second 3-pointer to win it.
Sunday final:
Ohio State 70, Michigan State 60. The 'O' in Oden stands for "O, we're only six wins from the national championship." But the competition will be better in the Sweet 16 than it was at the Big Ten tourney.
Barring miracle runs at their conference tournaments, Iowa and Iowa State will join Northern Iowa and Drake as NCAA tournament watchers instead of participants.
Two years ago, Iowa, ISU and UNI were all in the NCAAs. Maybe it will happen again some year. Not in 2007. It's not a pleasant deal when the NCAA takes 65 teams, but none of them will be from our state. But we'll survive, because ... well, because it would be stupid if we didn't.
So who represents us? Is it Creighton, which is just across the Iowa border in Omaha and relies on Sioux City's Nate Funk? Is it Wisconsin? Madison is close to eastern Iowa, and the Badgers have Marion's Jason Bohannon.
Maybe it's the Albany Great Danes, if they can win at Vermont Saturday for their second-straight America East Conference title. Junior forward Brent Wilson of Cedar Rapids Prairie is a double-figure scorer for Albany, which almost shocked Connecticut in the first round of last year's NCAAs.
I say it's Winthrop. We can pretend that the Big South Conference champion Eagles are from Winthrop in Buchanan County (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winthrop,_Iowa) instead of Rock Hill, S.C. Since Winthrop is 28-4 and a very chic pick to be this year's George Mason, it's not like we'll be stuck with a Belmont or Davidson that has no hope of advancing out of the first round of the NCAAs.
Yes, we're for Winthrop. We love Craig Bradshaw, the big man from New Zealand. We love Jason Killeen, the backup center from Limerick, Ireland. We identify with Winthrop's assistant athletic director for media relations, since his name is Jack Frost.
We like Winthrop Coach Gregg Marshall. He accepted an offer to coach the College of Charleston last June, but changed his mind after the press conference introducing him as coach and returned to Winthrop. That showed he loves Winthrop as much as we do.
Oh, we pity the poor team from some big-shot conference that has to play us in the first round of the NCAAs. You know, we went to Wisconsin last December and pushed the Badgers to overtime on their own court before losing, 82-79. Then we came home and smashed Limestone, 80-46. We never have trouble regaining focus.
We are Winthrop. We are Iowa's team.