Matt Norlander (57:34)
All right, let's get to the mid major situations here. Appreciate everyone sticking around near the end here. I want to at least give some love to, to the folks that you know Just the notable ones here. Why not? Before I get to the coaches and new spots at mid majors, let me talk about the one that is leaving a mid major to be the coach in waiting. So Alan Huss is the coach at High Point or was the coach at High Point. He has agreed and is now the associate head coach at Creighton where he previously worked under Greg McDermott. He is going to be the next of the Creighton Blue Jays Whenever McDermott decides to step away. There is no definitive timeline on this, but I was told essentially that Hus, you know, he really, really liked High Point and he was also a candidate at a number of the spots that we've talked about. He wasn't going to leave High Point to indefinitely be the associate head coach slash coach in waiting at Creighton. I think the absolute maximum is three years, but I don't even think that. I think McDermott will be in the next one or two seasons. McDermott's just 60. He's got a really good thing rolling there. But you want to set up the program. Huss is an alum. He played at Creighton. We haven't seen too many situations like this before. But good on McDermott for getting this in line and for Hus for agreeing to do it. That will be. That will be intriguing. Not easy to step away from a job high points like the best job in that league. And Huss was able to, I guess in part help get his guy promoted there to be the, the head coach once he left. But intriguing situation in Omaha. So we have, we haven't. We already know who will be the next coach of the Blue Jays. We just don't know when that will happen. Some other notable ones, Campbell and Columbia have coaches that just won a national championship. Kevin Hovdi is now the coach at Columbia. He was on staff at Florida, previously was an assistant there, by the way, under Kyle Smith and then Campbell. This is good news for the pod. I was hoping GP would be on so we could talk about this a little bit more, but alas, he had the bounce. John Andrezik is a former Florida assistant and now the coach at Campbell. I've been told we're getting Fighting Camel shirts. So for all the years we've done this, this pod, we have not, we have not had any Campbell gear. And I think it's only appropriate that eventually we. We factor that in. So be interesting to see how those guys do. And also Florida, Todd golden having to replace some guys on his staff. I reported this on Tuesday. Jonathan Sapphire who has been with golden for as long as Golden's been a head coach. He was an assistant with them at San Francisco. Both went to Florida. He was the director of analytics and strategy. He's now going to be an assistant. And then Dave Klatsky who is actually. Follow me here. Dave Klatsky is the brother in law of Kevin Hovney. He was the coach at NYU. He won like 85% of his games the past three years. Klatsky and golden have known each other for 10 plus years. Going back to when golden was also an assistant under Kyle Smith at Columbia. And Golden's father and Klatsky's father by coincidence they both went to college together at Emory I think is what it was. So there were some connections there and that's how Golden's filling out his staff. Let's get to other head coaches at the mid major level of note. We have an all time March Madness dude who is now running a college program. Ali Farouk Minesh. You can't be serious with that shot. You can't be serious with that hire though. He was promoted from within after Nico Medved got the Minnesota job which was the obvious move. Farooq Manesh has truly paid his dues. Considered a very, very good coach and now he gets to run his own program. Excited for that also. It's just a good thing for college basketball that an all time March Madness guy is now running a program. It's just, it just, it, it uplifts the sport ever so slightly to have to have those kind of guys. You know, Bryce Drew being another one obviously for a number of years and he is, he is still obviously running things at Grand Canyon there. I like the fact that we have March Madness heroes that go on into the coaching profession and wind up running teams. That's really, really cool thing. Drake. I mentioned before how they've got their three previous coaches all now coaching the Big Ten. So who's running Drake now? Eric Henderson by way of South Dakota State. Go Jackrabbits. He takes over at Drake. I actually think that is a very, very good hire. They've got a, they've got a healthy chance of keeping that thing rolling in the Missouri Valley. And between Drake and then mentioned Creighton before Murray State made a hire. Ryan Miller, it comes in from Creighton. Him leaving allowed Hus to join the staff there. All this stuff kind of gets interconnected overall. So we'll see between Drake, Murray State or anyone else which, which, which teams wound up wind up, you know, being big factors in the Missouri Valley. Moving forward, we had a notable retirement. Fran Dunphy, 76 years old, retired at LaSalle. Dump is just a tremendous human. And Darius Nichols from Radford got that job, but at least wanted to give it, uh, a hat tip to Dumpy, who I've known for a long time. Great guy to talk to and he has. I think I might have mentioned this on the pod some years ago. I almost wrote this story and for whatever reason, just didn't. But whatever, you know, he, he almost never was a coach. He, he was a good player back in his day and, and I might have had something, actually, now that I say this, I might have had something on the site about it like seven, eight, nine years ago. But I love the idea of, you know, the coaches who almost took the other path, like didn't get into coaching. There's a number of them even like right now where that's, where that's the case. Like Magpie, who's now the coach of Fordham, he was in real estate and now, you know, he just made the pivot into, into college coaching. And lo and behold, he goes from UC Riverside to getting the Fordham job this cycle. Fran Dunphy was a bartender back in the 70s and thought he was just gonna. I might be overstating it slightly, but I've had this conversation with him before. He thought he was going to live out his life maybe being a teacher, tending bar, doing all this, and kind of got into coaching on, if not a lark, just kind of semi reluctantly and, and thank God he did because, you know, he's a legend in Philadelphia basketball. He got on, I think he started at, he started at Army. He might have started at army, left coaching and then got into high school teaching, attending bar. And then eventually, you know, he goes to LaSalle. He's an assistant there in the late 70s. He's an assistant at American. He goes to Penn. Congrats to a great career Dump. The game will miss you. But yes, truly, like you talk about a guy in the city of Philadelphia who is a major sports figure, you're bigger than you might even realize. I'm not even just talking college basketball, just what this, what basketball means to that city. And Dump, with all his time there at Penn, obviously at Temple and then finishing up at LaSalle, I had to note his retirement there. A couple others of note, New Mexico hired Eric Olin to replace Rich Patino. Olin was at UC San Diego. UC San Diego was in his first year of tournament eligibility and was one of the best mid majors in the country and and really gave Michigan a scare in that first round game that that 125 matchup there. So Olin takes over in New Mexico. The interesting about the New Mexico job is Olin's actually a pretty solid hire overall. Unfortunately for New Mexico, it is going to be involved in a Mountain west here that is not like they're the Mountain west is losing some of its best programs to the reform PAC 12 which is coming in 2026. And so now you know, there's just the league is not set up to be as strong with the schools that it will be restructuring with immense basketball moving forward than what it was. I'm interested to see if New Mexico as a result can be a school that can dominate in that league and establish itself as almost an annual participant in the NC Tournament as a result of that will be intriguing. The fan base is incredible. That venue is awesome. There's so much support in Albuquerque for the Lobos, but the conference structure around it is not an ideal situation there and that's ultimately why like Patino really liked coaching there. Just you know, get all these high majors looking at you. You kind of got to go the trivia time that I did not ask GP on the show that I said I would trivia time. Where's Fran McCaffrey now coaching? The answer is Penn. He is he has gone back to to his alma mater and credit to McCaffrey, you know he spent 15 years at Iowa previous to that was at Siena and there's plenty of money but still wants to be involved in the game. So kind of going back to his roots so to speak and given the Ivy a good boost in the process there. We'll see how long he winds up coaching in Penn. But yeah, he wanted to be involved, got it done and that is certainly quite intriguing on that on that front. Just a Couple more here. St. Francis made the tournament this year. We talked about that on the show. Rob Krimmel was the coach there. This is just a bummer. St. Francis is leaving Division 1 and it probably is not going to be the only one. So how about that? Just like we had with Hartford four years ago. Hartford under John Gallagher made the bubble tournament and then as the story went like they got home and I think it was the day after they got home the athletic director and or president of Hartford, like they they bring in Gallagher and they tell him hey we're we're trying. We're going to D3. And there was a huge uproar over it. Ultimately it didn't to any kind of change, even though there was like real resistance at trying to stop that. Hartford is, has Transitioned to Division 3 and now St. Francis, the Red Flash, one of the best monikers in all of D1. Well, it won't be D1 that much longer. They are going to transition to D3 for reasons I detailed. I bring this up because I saw St. Francis win the auto bid out of the NAC. They won at Central Connecticut State back in, in mid March. And Criminal, he's the coach who reluctantly agreed to play it at St. Francis, you know, as a teenager and then built his entire life there. He never left. Well, he did retire. He retired and now that program is transitioning to D3, which is, which is a bummer after such a big season. But because of the financial realities that are impending here, we are just going to have more schools that transition out of D1, which on an individual basis is obviously a downer in the big picture. If you've listened to the show for a while, you're all too aware of the fact that GP and I agree D1 is just too big. Like we can disagree on what size D1 should be. To me, you know, 310, 315 teams is fine. We're at 364. I guess we're now shrinking down to 363. So in the big picture, like losing some D1 teams is probably healthier for the enterprise, but it is unfortunate for the schools as they happen on, on a case by case basis. Two more notable mid major hirings. UNLV has Josh Passner as its coach. And what's it, what's interesting to me about that one is I think that he's got a chance to do well there. I really do. But Pastner had called me, I want to say like the first week of February just to just check in. This is just who Josh is. Very, very nice human being. See how everyone was doing? You know, Josh was doing stuff on ESPN and he did stuff for NBC and Peacock. So he was, he was, was enjoying that life. But he was basically calling to check in and say like I'm, I am eager to kind of get back in. Like I do want to be a head coach again and I wonder if this cycle could be hit. And so we got to talking about jobs that were expected to open and we went through a few of them and then he was like, you know what one I would really like? He's like, do you think UNLV would open? And I said, I do expect it to open. Yes. He's like, man, I really, really would like unlv. I said, okay, well, yeah, that would be an incredible opportunity. I was like, like, do you think you can get. He's like, I don't know. I was like, well, you might, you might have a chance. Like, you know, you've got as good of a track record probably as anyone they might be considering. And lo and behold, this dude winds up getting the UNLV job. So happy for Josh and interested to see again UNLV kind of in that New Mexico kind of situation. And we keep waiting for UNLV to just it's not going to be what it was under Tarko. Not saying that, but we're waiting for it to have year over year, consistency and relevancy. We'll see if pastors that guy. And then VCU is the final one of note. Obviously a very, very good mid major job, one of the best home environments in the entire country. VCU's athletic director was really, I mean really going after Richard Pitino and was hoping to get a yes, ultimately Patino had high major offers. You got to take him if you like the situation there. He did. And so Phil Martelli Jr. Was his 1B to the Patino being 1A. And this is just the nature of what VCU is. It is kind of unlike any other job in the sport in that elite mid major job, incredible home environment, such a great track record of producing great coaches, but because of that has to brace for turnover on a cadence that's almost unlike any other job situation in the country. Now because of that, Ed McLaughlin, the, the athletic director there has a contract situation. Every coach that signs at VCU has to agree to come back and play a road game for their new team at the Siegel Center. Now apparently there's some like scheduling stuff like Mike Rhodes, who's now at Penn State, apparently, like they're having issues getting that done. And if you don't do it like you pay a hefty fine. 500, 000, maybe a million or so. And usually the coaches and schools don't want to do that. We'll see if Penn State gets it done or not. But we will have.
