INDIANAPOLIS — Just as millions of basketball fans were tuning in to the first full day of the NCAA tournament on Thursday, Indiana University announced that it had fired its coach, Tom Crean. Just like that — two chunky paragraphs released by a team that wasn’t even in the field — the annual coaching carousel had begun to whirl.
Would former Hoosiers star Steve Alford, now coaching UCLA, want the job? What about Chris Holtman, just up the road at Butler? Or Wichita State’s Gregg Marshall, who had the good fortune (or misfortune) to be in Indianapolis when the Crean news broke?
And if one of them replaced Crean, what would that mean for his job?
Predictably, in the ensuing hours, questions had spread. Coaches at tournament sites across the country were asked to comment on the Indiana opening. By evening, the discussion had reached Canada, where Oklahoma City Thunder coach Billy Donovan — who a decade ago had won consecutive national championships with the Florida Gators — was asked about the Hoosiers job before a game in Toronto.
“I am totally happy here,” Donovan told reporters, doing his best to stop the speculation before it gained traction. “I love it here.”
Every spring, as the coaching carousel starts spinning, fans are reminded that while the NCAA tournament is often contested by players during this time of the year, a college’s reaching it almost always demands a good coach leading the way. Televised games and required media interviews serve both as a catwalk for coaches on the rise and as a shopping mall for colleges looking for their own taste of the big time.
The more experienced coaches know the drill, and most can deftly defuse a tense moment with a humorous anecdote or throwaway line. Louisville’s Rick Pitino, for example, was asked about multiple coaching moves across several days last weekend, in part because four of his former assistants (including one of his sons) were serving as head coaches in the field.
So Pitino talked about the Kevin Keatts, the coach at North Carolina-Wilmington, who over the weekend was hired to replace Mark Gottfried at North Carolina State. And he talked about his son, Richard, who led Minnesota’s Golden Gophers into the tournament, and about Seton Hall’s Kevin Willard and Cincinnati’s Mick Cronin, two other former assistants with teams in the field.
He even talked about his current assistant Mike Balado, who many expect will be the next member of the Pitino coaching tree to branch out on his own.
“Mike Balado right now is at the same level as all the guys I just mentioned, because he came in a very hungry, enthusiastic, hardworking coach,” Pitino said, “and now he’s learned a certain point to take over his own job.” He added, “He’s more than ready.”
Alford quickly tired of the Indiana questions, even as he knew they would last as long as the Bruins were in the tournament. Early on, he employed the Donovan mantra — “I love UCLA; I love Los Angeles” — but by Sunday, he seemed weary of both the questions and the distraction of having to answer them over and over.
“I addressed the Indiana situation maybe Thursday, and I don’t have anything else to say on that,” Alford said Sunday. “This is about our team. I’ve already addressed that matter, and I’m not going to address it anymore.”
Up and coming coaches sometimes walk a finer line, trying to keep their options open for bigger jobs (with better pay) while at the same time not sounding ungrateful or, worse, as if they’re already making plans to move on.
Wichita State’s Marshall, who has repeatedly been linked to higher-profile jobs because of his success with the Shockers (26 wins a year, on average), once again left the window open for a possible move.
“The city of Wichita is a wonderful place to live, and it’s treated my family and a lot of people very, very well,” Marshall said. “We’re very content. But at the same time, we don’t bury our head in the sand. I’ve said that before. We listen.”
Butler’s Chris Holtmann, who led the Bulldogs to two victories over Villanova this season, is also considered a potential Crean replacement. During a postgame news conference at the tournament, he heaped praise on Crean, lamented the loss of anyone’s job and nodded to the obvious reality that losing (or, in Crean’s case, not winning enough) inevitably leads to change.
“We know what we bargain for in this whole deal,” Holtmann said.
Before a first-round game in Sacramento, Iona coach Tim Cluess was asked about a potential coaching shake-up on the Gaels’ bench after the season — a reference to reports that Jared Grasso, Iona’s associate head coach, was in the mix to take over at his alma mater, Quinnipiac. Cluess disarmed the awkward moment with a smile.
“I thought I was being fired and no one told me yet,” Cluess said. “The way things go, you never know.”