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Post by Axman on Mar 6, 2012 7:53:14 GMT -5
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Post by Kyle Feller on Mar 6, 2012 10:52:57 GMT -5
Oh boy.......Jim Nantz and Bill Raferty both have IU in their Final Fours.
Not even I agree with that.
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Post by huisrealgood on Mar 6, 2012 11:51:34 GMT -5
Illinois' future coach Shaka Smart punched his ticket into the Dance last night with an almost totally different VCU squad than the one that went to the Final Four last year. That's a good sign!
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Post by rubalamp on Mar 7, 2012 7:53:19 GMT -5
I have never seen any indications that Shaka Smart has even considered leaving, let alone his infatuation with Illinois...is this just wishful thinking on your part, or do you have a source for this?
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Post by maxpower on Mar 7, 2012 9:48:30 GMT -5
Wishful thinking as far as I know......
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Post by huisrealgood on Mar 7, 2012 11:36:44 GMT -5
You never know what a guy is thinking, but Smart has been mentioned by just about every prominent college basketball writer as the primary target for the job. Smart & Lorenzo Romar are the two that most Illinois boards have locked in on as the two most would like to take over.
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Post by rubalamp on Mar 7, 2012 17:59:05 GMT -5
What other jobs may become available? I wouldn't automatically think that IL is going to be the best destination for the most in demand coach...
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Post by maxpower on Mar 7, 2012 18:11:02 GMT -5
What other jobs may become available? I wouldn't automatically think that IL is going to be the best destination for the most in demand coach... Shaka is from Chicago, so the Illini have that going for them. He has spent a few years at Akron, Clemson and Florida, which shows he might not have any deep ties to those conferences. His showing no interest in NC State and turning down a trip to College Park is interesting - either he wasn't looking or those jobs weren't good enough to get him out of VCU. Either one of those is bad for Illinois in my opinion. The other angle is that he does not want to return to the ACC, which of course would be good for Illinois. As far as Romar goes, other than a few years at St. Louis, he has spent his entire career on the west coast. He played at Washington and I think it would be a stretch to think he would come to Champaign. If you followed the football coach search, it is pretty clear why these two names keep coming up. The administration at Illinois will be under a lot of pressure to hire an African-American for this position should it come open.
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Post by huisrealgood on Mar 7, 2012 23:28:16 GMT -5
What other jobs may become available? I wouldn't automatically think that IL is going to be the best destination for the most in demand coach... Shaka is from Chicago, so the Illini have that going for them. He has spent a few years at Akron, Clemson and Florida, which shows he might not have any deep ties to those conferences. His showing no interest in NC State and turning down a trip to College Park is interesting - either he wasn't looking or those jobs weren't good enough to get him out of VCU. Either one of those is bad for Illinois in my opinion. The other angle is that he does not want to return to the ACC, which of course would be good for Illinois. As far as Romar goes, other than a few years at St. Louis, he has spent his entire career on the west coast. He played at Washington and I think it would be a stretch to think he would come to Champaign. If you followed the football coach search, it is pretty clear why these two names keep coming up. The administration at Illinois will be under a lot of pressure to hire an African-American for this position should it come open. Oh Maxy... talking to me like I haven't followed both of these hires feverishly. Of course that's why those two names have come up, just like Stan Heath of USF and Reggie Theus among others. The Board of Trustees want a minority coach and from all indications they would have had one for football in Kevin Sumlin had the Texas A&M gig not opened up. Now, let me fill in the details for you. Smart is not from Chicago. He's actually from Wisconsin. He was born in Madison and then attended a small liberal arts college in Ohio. So he's a midwestern guy. He has a small connection to current Illinois AD Mike Thomas because Thomas was the AD at Akron when Smart was an assistant there. The draw here is that Smart can get back closer to family and coach in the B1G Ten which is what he grew up around. Also the high school talent in the state of Illinois in the 2013, '14, and '15 classes are as talented and deep as they've been in a while. There's plenty of talent to draw from to get back on top pretty quickly. Is that a big enough draw? We shall see. It must mean something that Katz, Gottlieb, Goodman, etc. keep mentioning him in conjunction with the job. As for Romar, his main connection is the relationship that he has with Sonny Parker who is the dad of Jabari Parker, the #1 recruit in next year's class. They were teammates with the Warriors back in the day and supposedly have remained friends over the years. You'd have to think that Jabari would much rather go 2 hours south to play for Romar in Champaign than across the country to Seattle. The obvious draw for Romar is that he has the best player in the country playing for him during his 2nd year on the job. That means a pretty quick turnaround and Jabari would bring some other talented players with him that would stick around longer than a year. Now it's not too much of a stretch to think he'd be interested in coming to Champaign. That said, he is a UW grad and may be trying to milk more $$ out of them. I honestly believe it's fairly similar to the Matt Painter to Mizzou stuff last off-season. He was far closer to leaving than many of you Hoosiers think. Rub, as far as Illinois not being the top job to open up... I think the only others that could open up this offseason that would trump it would be UCLA and possibly UConn, but many insiders don't feel Calhoun is ready to quit just yet. So Illinois will likely be the 2nd best destination behind UCLA and I believe they'd be looking in different pools, but that's just me.
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Post by Kyle Feller on Mar 8, 2012 10:35:39 GMT -5
Board of Trustees wanting a minority coach is what landed Sampson in IU's lap. Either way, Illinois isn't an NCAA tournament team so take this to the Illini thread.
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Post by hero67 on Mar 16, 2012 7:43:32 GMT -5
There is a real MCC/Taylor University flavor to the Ohio University - Michigan game today as two of the coaches in the game will have played at Taylor. John Groce is the head coach at Ohio University and Jeff Meyer is an Assistant at Michigan. John had been an assistant at North Carolina State, Butler, Xavier, and Ohio State before going to Ohio University four years ago. Jeff Meyer was the head coach at Liberty University, and assistant at Missouri, Butler, and Indiana University before going to Michigan. There is a neat story about the two of them on the Taylor website.
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Post by Kyle Feller on Mar 16, 2012 8:41:06 GMT -5
I'll be watching. Nice win for Indiana last night.....what makes it sweeter is how just about every single talking head was picking NMSU over Indiana for any number of reasons. Not big enough, not fast enough, Etc. Now I get to spend 48 hours listening to the same people tell us how VCU will press Indiana out of the tournament.
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Post by tubballfan on Mar 16, 2012 10:58:32 GMT -5
If both teams play like they did yesterday, IU wins by 20. VCU looked extremely sloppy and made a lot of mental mistakes. IU isn't the most athletic team or the fastest team, but they play smart basketball, and that will win games over an undisciplined team, no matter how athletic. However, I haven't seen enough of VCU to know if that's normal of them. I would assume their coach will be all over them today in practice to not do the same mistakes. Wichita State is a much different team than IU, so I'll be interested to see how they play against them.
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Post by huisrealgood on Mar 16, 2012 18:19:12 GMT -5
MIZ-OUT!!!! Love it!!!
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Post by Kyle Feller on Mar 16, 2012 18:20:07 GMT -5
What time does Illinois play tonight HIRG?
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