I do hope Dixon stays with Pitt. If he doesn’t, though, I hope the Pitt administration is paying attention to the way Missouri has handled its search as a way not to do it.
Gary Link and Jon Sundvold apparently will have no further say in who will be Missouri’s new head men’s basketball coach.
Mike Alden, MU’s athletic director, has told Link and senior associate Mario Moccia that neither they nor Sundvold will be part of meetings between Alden, UMC deputy chancellor Mike Middleton and consultant Bob Beaudine aimed at selecting the man who will replace Quin Snyder.
The search committee’s job was apparently to simply put a list of candidates together. Sort of.
“I guess the definition of our committee was the same as last time,” Sundvold said, “a screening committee that put the list together, and then Mike can go make that decision.”
When MU hired Snyder, then an assistant out of Duke, Sundvold was one of the search committee members that favored hiring Bill Self, now the Kansas head coach. Alden hired Snyder.
This time, Link and Sundvold favored hiring, or at least interviewing, Bob Huggins. So too, Sundvold indicated, did Moccia. That position became moot when Alden and UMC chancellor Brady Deaton said that neither Huggins nor former Utah coach Rick Majerus would be interviewed at MU.
The reason, Sundvold was told by Deaton, was that Deaton and Alden weren’t comfortable with past NCAA or off-court problems associated with both those veteran coaches.
Now take a look at the list of candidates.
In no particular order of preference, it is believed to now include at least John Calipari of Memphis, John Beilein of West Virginia, Jaime Dixon of Pitt, Anderson, Alford, Creighton’s Dana Altman, Kelvin Sampson of Oklahoma and possibly even Kevin Stallings of Vanderbilt.
Yes, John Calipari has a sterling reputation, and Kelvin Sampson’s Oklahoma squad is now facing probation for their recruiting violations.
Andy Katz at ESPN.com had reported earlier that Iowa’s Steve Alford was still a possibility along with Mike Anderson (UAB), Dana Altman and John Beilein on the short list. This despite Alford’s press release yesterday professing his happiness at Iowa.
Cinci interim head coach, Andy Kennedy, or Murray State head coach, Mick Cronin will likely be given the head job at Ole Miss.
Meanwhile, Cinci, still playing in the NIT, has been given permission from George Washington to interview Karl Hobbs.
If Dixon were to leave Pitt, my guess is they would take another run at Wake Forest’s Skip Prosser. I don’t think Chancellor Nordenberg has forgotten him, and would like to try again. Just a hunch.
