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Good move by Gregg Marshall to spurn Alabama and remain at Wichita State, presumably electing to leave the place only for a truly elite coaching job.
Or maybe he's indeed there for the long haul. Most folks don't comprehend how good a job that is, with the facilities and the support he gets in a basketball hotbed. But the more high-profile jobs he turns down, the more people will start to understand it.
Pat Forde writes on Marshall's big pay bump.
Marshall's contract has been enhanced for the third straight year, this time from $1.75 million to in excess of $3 million per year. Sources told Yahoo Sports that Alabama's expected offer was nearly $4 million per year.
Battle flew to Wichita, Kan., on Monday and met with Marshall. Since then the situation had gotten quiet, as Wichita State went to work fundraising to enhance the compensation for Marshall. Three sources told Yahoo Sports on Wednesday that a family trip to Alabama had been tentatively planned for Friday, but those plans obviously never came to fruition with the announcement that Marshall was staying with the Shockers.
Another great source of wonder, as it relates to prominent coaches at supposedly mid-major jobs, is how long Shaka Smart will remain at VCU. According to the AP, Texas is making a serious run.
Texas athletic director Steve Patterson is scheduled to travel Thursday to meet with Virginia Commonwealth coach Shaka Smart to make an offer to coach the Longhorns, a person with knowledge of the trip told The Associated Press.
Texas hopes to introduce Smart as its new coach as early as Friday, according to the person who requested anonymity because the talks with Smart are considered private.
Patterson has zeroed in on Smart since firing Rick Barnes last weekend after 17 seasons. Smart, 37, has been among the hot candidates for several high-profile jobs since leading VCU to the 2011 Final Four.
Smart's teams have won at least 26 games each of the past six seasons.
After reports of Texas' interest in Smart, a VCU athletic director Ed McLaughlin said, "Nothing is a done deal. He is still our coach."
Barnes' Texas teams won three Big 12 titles and made 16 NCAA Tournament appearances. But Texas hasn't advanced past the first weekend of the tournament since 2008.
Details of Texas' contract offer were not immediately available.
Smart's compensation this year adds up to $1.8 million. If he leaves before May 1, he will owe VCU a $500,000 buyout, and his contract also contains a provision that if he becomes the head coach at another institution, that school would have to play VCU in a home-and-home series, or pay VCU $250,000.
Barnes' salary this past season was $2.62 million.
This Oregon columnist says Smart needs to stay the heck away from Austin.
Smart, 37, has averaged better than 27 victories a season at his current university. He made the 2011 Final Four. A union between a sleeping-giant like Texas and a general like Smart makes complete sense. Right up to the point where you see Patterson lingering in the background, bumbling along.
It ends ugly with Patterson. He gets you before you get him. That's the way he operates. And if Smart is willing to spend the energy and exert a fair amount of attention to managing his athletic director, then by all means, he should accept the job.
But why?
Why leave VCU, where you've already proven you can reach a Final Four? Why leave a university where you're being cast for a bronze statue in exchange for a place who handed the keys to a boob? In Patterson's short time in Texas, he's talked about playing football games in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. He ran off Mack Brown from the football program like a teenager who didn't know how to break up with his girlfriend.
Patterson has now flushed Rick Barnes, who was scooped up by Tennessee. Barnes revealed this week that Patterson told him after his NCAA Tournament loss that he'd be back for another season, then shifted course, demanding that he fire assistants or be gone himself. Also, that tidbit was leaked, in a move that had familiar fingerprints all over it.
A few Thursday links:
-- Geno Auriemma with some strong words criticizing the men's game.
Auriemma prefaced his answer by saying he just had a conversation Tuesday with St. Joseph's men's coach Phil Martelli, a member of the NABC Board of directors and its immediate past president.
"We talked a lot about where the game is and what the future of the game is and obviously it's immensely popular," Auriemma said. "You look at the interest paid on the NCAA Tournament. I don't know that it's as immensely popular during the regular season as it used to be, but obviously the tournament is just at another world when it comes to that.
"Having said that, I think the game is a joke. It really is. I don't coach it. I don't play it, so I don't understand all the ins and outs of it. Forget that I'm a coach, as a spectator, watching it, it's a joke. There's only like 10 teams, you know, out of 25, that actually play the kind of game of basketball that you'd like to watch."
He's mostly right, you know. But if his premise is that his sport is more watchable ... uh, give me supposedly unwatchable men's basketball any day of the week.
But anyway, let the man continue:
"Every coach will tell you that there are 90 million reasons for it." Auriemma said. "The bottom line is that nobody can score [in men's basketball], and they'll tell you it's because of great defense, great scouting, a lot of teamwork, nonsense, nonsense. College men's basketball is so far behind the times it's unbelievable. I mean women's basketball is behind the times. Men's basketball is even further behind the times."
He wasn't comparing men's basketball to women's basketball. He wasn't comparing men to women. And if you don't think he's worthy of making such a sweeping statement on the national stage, well, you have no idea what a great basketball mind Auriemma has. I've been fortunate in that sense. I've heard him discuss every aspect of the sport for two decades. Wise-ass remarks aside, you never walk away from a discussion with Auriemma dumber. He hasn't been afraid to hammer shortcomings in the women's game, either, even pushing for a lowering of the rims from 10 feet.
And more:
"Every other major sport in the world has taken steps to help people be better on the offensive end of the floor," Auriemma said. "They've moved in the fences in baseball, they lowered the mound. They made the strike zone so you need a straw to put through it. In the NFL you touch a guy it's a penalty. You hit the quarterback, you're out for life. In the NBA, you touch somebody in the perimeter, you whack guys like they used to do when scores were 90-75, they change the rules.
"This is entertainment we're talking about. People have to decide, do I want to pay 25, 30 bucks to go see a college scrum where everybody misses six out of every 10 shots they take? Or do I want to go to a movie? We're fighting for the entertainment dollar here, and I have to tell you it's not entertainment from a fan's standpoint."
(Insert standing ovation gif here)
Oh, and his take on the whole Indiana thing:
"I try to stay out of their personal life unless they want me in it," Auriemma said. "But I've got to tell you, I've always been fascinated by people who care so much about what other people are and what they do in their personal lives. Like how small-minded do you have to be? Life is hard enough as it is, trying to live your own life. What do you care what other people are doing, as long as it doesn't affect you. And if it's true, and hiding behind this religious crap, that's the most cowardly thing I've ever heard of."
"I'm sure those people are nice people out there. I'm sure they don't want the Final Four to be canceled. I'm sure they don't want all this bad publicity. Nobody wants that. So come on, come to your senses, here. Just go on with your life and let everybody else go on with theirs."
-- Dennis Dodd manages to file an interesting column from his Waaambulance, noting that Wisconsin's Nigel Hayes is part of the effort to sue the NCAA.
Hayes is part of that landmark Jeffrey Kessler lawsuit that seeks open market compensation for football and men's basketball players. While playing in the nation's ultimate amateur event, Hayes will be seeking that a future generation be paid.
"I don't think it's ironic, I think it's what this case is about," Kessler told CBSSports.com. "You'll remember a year ago we had the player on UConn [Shabazz Napier]. He would go hungry at night. His school was prohibited from giving him a snack. I think the irony is really a function of the system itself."
Napier's "Hungry Huskies" comments at last year's Final Four crystallized the issue. How could players who were struggling to feed themselves also be an unpaid labor force for a billion-dollar enterprise?
For many, the argument that a free education is enough has lost traction. The only question is whether NCAA reforms can beat the likes of Kessler to a court verdict.
"In my mind it's very hard to find anyone from outside Indianapolis who says the current system is the right system," Kessler said.
Neither player nor lawyer will expand much beyond the implications of the suit. The plaintiffs are the NCAA and the Power 5 conferences (Pac-12, Big 12, SEC, ACC, Big Ten).
-- And in Tallahassee, Jimbo Fisher says his receivers "stunk" in practice.
Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher was displeased with the effort from his wide receivers after Wednesday's practice, while he lauded the progress his defense and offensive line are making this spring.
Fisher said the wide receivers had a "very average day" and struggled with "everything. They got their butts kicked. Didn't catch the ball. Didn't run good routes. Got beat up. Didn't get off release. Didn't get off press. Didn't make catches in the red zone on some good throws.
"Didn't have a good day. Stunk."
LW
