It really looks like Associate Head Coach Barry Rohrssen won’t be getting the Seton Hall job. It looks like he’s been passed on the wish list by Ohio University Head Coach Tim O’Shea.
As expected, Seton Hall athletic director Joe Quinlan met with Tim O’Shea of Ohio University at the Final Four in Indianapolis yesterday for the second time, according to a person familiar with the school’s search for a new men’s basketball coach.
O’Shea was a former BC assistant, who has strong ties in the Big East. He is not, however, a guy from or with ties to the NY/NJ area. That would mean the school would still have to find an assistant with strong recruiting ties.
Seton Hall is now hedging on whether it will even get Bobby Gonzalez from Manhattan. It appears other job offers may be coming his way.
Thought of as a front-runner for the Seton Hall job created by Louis Orr’s firing, Gonzalez, 42, a source said, may be in the running for the N.C. State position, vacated yesterday by Herb Sendek, who left for Arizona State. Gonzalez, the source said, was quite impressive in his Wednesday interview with Quinlan.
An interesting point about how ASU handled the start of its coaching search.
Here’s what happens when a rookie athletic director goes about trying to hire a basketball coach: Jamie Dixon gets a raise. Arizona State’s Lisa Love put about $900,000 on the table–a figure Pitt easily could digest–and missed a chance to land Dixon. If Love wanted to hire a coach who had a better job than the one she was offering, she needed to make the money tough to reject, possibly $1.2 million or $1.3 million. Pitt might have choked on that figure, and Dixon might have been forced to say yes to the Sun Devils. If Love didn’t figure he was worth that, or that her school couldn’t afford it, she should not have pursued him.
Considering she is now reportedly paying that much for Herb Sendek, I guess they could afford it. And he’s probably right. At that amount, I think Pitt would have been in a questionable area about whether to match or come close, and if it would be worth it.
Ah well, the important thing was that it worked out for Pitt.
Last year, Chevon Troutman foolishly passed on attending the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament (PIT) for College Seniors hoping to be drafted. Instead he counted on getting an invite to the more prestigious Chicago pre-draft Camp that invites underclassmen as well. He didn’t get the invite. Didn’t get drafted, and is now playing overseas. By comparison, Cinci’s undersized power forward, Jason Maxiell played at the PIT, did very well, got an invite to Chicago and was drafted by the Pistons despite being only about 6’6″.
Carl Krauser isn’t making that mistake. He’s going to the PIT that begins on Wednesday.
This year, Krauser hopes to make an impression at Portsmouth and again be invited to the ensuing showcase camp, whose site has been moved to Orlando, Fla., from Chicago and will be held June 6-10.
Krauser, in Indianapolis for the Final Four, led Pitt this season in scoring (15.0 ppg.) and assists (4.8 apg.) for a second consecutive year and finished his career as the school’s ninth-leading scorer with 1,642 points.
On Friday night, he scored three points for a college all-star team in an 87-83 victory over the Harlem Globetrotters as part of Final Four festivities before 10,921 spectators at Canseco Fieldhouse.
No word on whether Junior Aaron Gray will (presumably) attend the Chicago camp and see where he stands in the NBA draft.