The Hlog

Bob Bowlsby Hires a Basketball Coach - And the Bay Area Yawns

Stanford Athleticcs Director Bob Bowlsby -- who once worked in this less-cosmopolitan area of the nation -- hired 11-year Duke assistant coach Johnny Dawkins to run his men's basketball program.

San Francisco-area columnists weren't too taken with Bowlsby letting Trent Johnson leave that job to go to LSU when Johnson wanted to stay put, and didn't have a lot of faith in Bowlsby's ability to find a coach who would equal Johnson.

There didn't seem to be enormous ink spilled about the hire in Tuesday's San Francisco/Oakland editions, because the NHL's San Jose Sharks are in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, the San Francisco Giants sent $126 million pitcher Barry Zito to the bullpen, and the Oakland A's opened a series with the Los Angeles Angels for the AL West lead.

Early returns show there isn't great excitement for the Dawkins hire, though. Which may be a good sign for Bowlsby, since Iowa heartily endorsed his hire of Steve Alford a decade or so ago, and felt less warm about it several years later.

Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News was none too overwhelmed with Bowlsby's latest appointment, however. He wrote: "Dawkins, not surprisingly, sounds like he wants to transfer Coach K's philosophies from Cameron Indoor Stadium to Maples Pavilion, and I don't think it works that way.

"Of course, Bowlsby is praying it works that way. He has no other choice. He messed up with Johnson and missed on everybody else, now he's stuck."

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