CMJ

I loved JJ as much as anyone, but typically the second go round at a coaching job isn't as good as the first. Getting White as an assistant would be cool, but he seems loyal to Jones.

Ray Harper always seemed like a really good coach. I was surprised he didn't stay at WKU.

My only point was three of our last four coaches were poached, so we're not a graveyard any longer. It wasn't Mac who changed that, it was Jones. Sans Benford we have had a winning program for damn near 20 years.

I think Duke is the only team in the team in the top ten of both adjusted offense and defense.

Three of our last four coaches have been hired away from Power Conference schools. Sure Jones didn't do well at LSU, but he was good for us and he's back to being a solid coach at Texas Southern.

I'm about 40 miles. Could be 45 minutes or 3 hours.

LOL, if the school wants to put me on retainer I'll make the sojourn, but I am actually working today (after putting in an all nighter as we were looking at information from one of our vendors in India until 7am - got less than three hours of sleep before I logged back in at 9:45)

Irvine isn't TOO far away from me, but probably too much of a hassle to camp out there all day given I have no idea when they practice (or when they leave for Indy).

Indianapolis.

I also would rather face Irvine, but only because their lack of familiarity with us. If you recall I mentioned pretty early on that I thought they'd be formidable in the semis.

Biggest game in the History of Western Civilization.

Irvine wins by four. Great game!

UAB controlled the game until around 13-14 minutes left and then Irvine made a charge. The last eight minutes should be good.

It was really cool to see a school that has had so much recent success in the NCAA Tournament embrace the NIT like Loyola-Chicago did. Their arena was lit.

Morris wasn't a hire from within. If you want to keep your current culture and you have a guy on staff who seems to be ready, you go with that man. Someone from the staff knows the opportunities and challenges of being the Mean Green head guy. Few never had head coaching experience before he got the Gonzaga job. Hell, if a Blue Blood thinks they have a guy in house they go with that too. Scheyer had no previous head coaching experience prior to Krzyzewski retiring either.

I was talking about West Virginia. Few got the Gonzaga job after their first run to the Regional Final in 1999 (Monson was their coach back then).

Just two years ago you had two non power league schools in the National Semifinals (FAU and SDSU), with one making the Final on Monday night. This is one year where no mid major Cinderellas made the Sweet 16, but I'm not ready to call it a trend yet. However, the big boys will obviously pounce if it goes even three or so consecutive years.

They have a much more storied history in the sport than we do too.

If WVU is paying him like three times what we did, I doubt the luncheon fiasco had a whole lot to do with this.

Dropping football would be crazy, but as I've said before shifting some more money to basketball would be smart. A few hundred thousand goes way further in hoops than on the gridiron.

My only real surprise is it happened before he made the NCAA Tournament. I figured the first time Hodge did so, he'd be gone. This time it was an NIT semi that got Baker the cover to go with someone he knew already.

Before Mark Few got the head job at Gonzaga, he was an assistant there. His boss was Dan Monson who also began as an assistant at Gonzaga. Monson got his start under Dan Fitzgerald...who is the godfather of Gonzaga basketball. Fitzgerald never had the success that Few, or even Monson, did obviously...but he's the one that really got the ball rolling on their way upward to what we think of now. Hire from within if you have the guy.

Some coaches still wear them, but it's only maybe 10-15 percent.

I think we had a pretty bad FT shooting team early in Mac's tenure, but I feel like we've been pretty solid for several years. People always remember games like tonight where we struggle, but we tend to knock them down.