Buzz is my #1 still b/c his teams play aggressive on both ends and he has a relationship with JH...would likely lead to JH staying and that would be one helluva staff!:thumb:

I would doubt jay wright is on the verge of getting fired, so my guess would be ben howland at UCLA. I would NOT be interested in him. He has proved to be almost as bad as BW but with better recruits in a weaker league. No thanks.

There's a BIG difference between the Big East and say the CAA. For instance, Buzz and his team tied for 9th with the eventual national champion last year. You also seem to conveniently exclude the current season where Marquette is #2 in the Big East in Buzz's fourth year.

All 4 of Buzz's seasons will earn him a spot in the dance with 3 wins in 3 years and his latest year being the best which could garner another sweet sixteen or better. What has he proven? He's proven that he could compete at the highest level and make the tourney every year.

That's something forum favorite Shaka Smart can not say at this point.

The only question with Buzz is can he take it to the next level when he's got "the" program in Illinois with our recruiting base. I think he can and would be a very nice choice. If he's interested and IF he ends up being the best candidate available, hopefully we don't hire a lesser candidate just because of his skin color and satisfying some racist agenda.

With the exception of Bill Self, I never said give me a Hall of Fame coach or give me nothing. I simply believe there are other proven, consistant coaches out there that should get serious consideration before we just give the program to the guy who made one final four run and has been a college head coach at a mid major school a whole 3 years. Geesh.

Sometime the sarcasm and flippant nature of some the people on this board blows my mind. It is one of the main reasons why I have been reading this board for almost 5 years now but only have a couple dozen posts to my credit. All it takes is to read a few posts from some of the people on here and I believe you will find a huge percentage of the Illinois fan base that is considered petty and fragile.:tsk:

Those "accomplishments" aren't nearly worth the amount of money it would take to pry him away from Marquette. While his current salary hasn't been publicly disclosed, reports are that he makes north of $2 million per after the new contract he just signed.

I'd take Smart (and his FF run) at $2 million before I'd take Buzz (and his consistent making of the tournament) at 3. He hasn't earned that kind of premium.

While I think we agree more or less about wanting SS as our next head coach I do think that suggesting that if we hire him we hired a lesser candidate because of skin color does both the university and our basketball team a great disservice.

IF we hire SS then I truly believe that MT and the University of Illinois believe that he is their man of the future. Would I be as happy as if say... we hired Jay Wright? No, but will I believe that the U of I hired someone as a gimmick to say the hired an AA coach, absolutely not.

So you'd prefer we go with the cheaper more unproven option. You'd fit well with current Bears management or with the old Tribune Cubs regime.

I'm not suggesting that necessarily. I just hope we don't use skin color at all in determining our next coach. I hope we get the best candidate out there based on what they've done and what they bring to the table.

We're likely axing a pretty good coach and a coaching team with Howard that has recently made huge strides in recruiting. We can't take a step back.

Agreed.

I posted this elsewhere but I kind of like the idea of hiring Romar. Of the three I think he would cost the least (although I haven't looked up anything pertaining to their contracts). I think he would make recruiting in-roads to Chicago the quickest. We would stand a great chance at landing Parker and any other domino that would fall with him. Lastly, he would be a minority candidate which would appease the BOT and CPL coaches.

* Son of a coach
* Played college ball and made (some) noise for his size
* Young - 35-40ish
* Good coaching record
* Coached through Ohio
* Excellent communicator
* Cool, calm and collected (3Cs)

Who are you talking about? I can't tell by your descriptors... I don't hate the sound of them, but it doesn't really excite me either.

Others have clearly stated that Stevens will not leave, so I guess we have the spectrum fully covered. I assume that unless any of the posters are in the Stevens family, these declarative statements have are just guesses like most of make here.

Grant hasn't gotten Alabama to the tourney 2 out of 3 years. As for SS, only 1 CAA team typically makes the Dance. SS getting VCU to 23-5 and 2nd place in the CAA with a younger team than UI is impressive. He's getting a lot more out of his talent than BW is getting out of UI's, and it's much harder to recruit at VCU than UI.

Good points. A lot of us think about SS's potential as a recruiter at UI, but his main strength as a coach may be identifying the type of talent and players he needs to execute his system and win games. Most of our players seem like bad fits for the motion, at least since 2009-10 by contrast.

I get what you're saying, DI. After 6-plus years of his info, I trust this guy implicitly. Having said that, this is one of the rare times he's passed along info that he got from someone he knows in the DIA. His DIA contact certainly could be wrong or guessing or misinformed. Since he passed along the info, I've read in a couple of other places similar rumors about a $2.5M SS claim. That doesn't necessarily validate the rumor but makes me feel a little better that it could be true. I've also read elsewhere that some people claim LR sent feelers to MT expressing interest in the job, which is the opposite of what I was told. At first that seemed odd to me, but maybe LR has realized he won't win big at UW but could at UI if he could land JP and others.

Curiously, he hasn't heard any more news on MT's third-party feelers from his contact for over 2 weeks now. Makes me wonder if someone close to MT leaked something he wasn't supposed to leak and MT doubled down on who he could trust with info. I have no idea. I didn't follow the football hire, so I know little about MT and his work style. Otherwise, almost all his inside info has been from observations he makes from practices and games and from talking to players, coaches and locker room staff.

Buzz would be a terrific choice imo if we could afford him. His buyout alone just seems preposterous, though.

Sonny and Romar
 

Put together the facts that Sonny Parker and Romar are close friends and that Sonny does not fly, I would think Illinois would shoot to the top for Jabari's commitments.

What you have to worry about with Romar after Jabari's 1 year is..

1. Can Romar recruit other high profile recruits from the Chicago area? Especially if JH stays on board, you would have to think the answer is yes.

2. Can he coach? Makes the second round of NCAA 2 of the last 3 years, ranked in AP top 15 for a portion of the season 7 of the last 9 years, and turned the team around fairly quickly after horrendous seasons under Bob Bender. So this leads me to also answer this question yes.

Romar, if interested, would have to be on a very short list and quite possibly the favorite.

The big question in my mind about LR is his teams have not shown a great commitment to D. They score a ton but seem to consistently struggle defensively. You won't win in the B1G if you can't defend well. Perhaps he'd need to hire an assistant known for teaching good D (like Doc Rivers did with Tom Thibodeaux).

Otherwise, if he retained JH, you'd think he'd do well recruiting not only the Chicago and STL areas but areas like the Pacific NW, which is a pretty good recruiting region.

I have questions about is teams' commitment to defense, too. They ball hawk, get steals, and run the break, but they have too many breakdowns in the half-court defense. It's a fair criticism, I think. Lorenzo preaches defense, but it's the weak link in his teams.

But he's smart, a fantastic recruiter, a great motivator, loyal, and very diplomatic. I think he'd adapt to the more defense-oriented B1G, but I also would hope he'd in part counter with a more potent, versatile, up-tempo offensive scheme.

I posted above that I would like to see Romar hired. I think it would be awesome if he came in and was able to keep Jerrance, and made a phone call to Deon Thomas to come be an AC.

I like the sound of this. I've been teased and criticized for speaking highly of him many times on this board. He's a top notch recruiter, a fine coach, a great representative of his program, and one of the most admirable people I've seen in the profession.

He happens to be a committed Christian, and that wins major points with me . . . Full disclosure! :D

Don't go Santorum on us :p

I was talking about Grants time at VCU. As for the 2nd place the record itself is nice but hardly impressive considering how bad overall that conference is.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/bubblewatch

Buyouts have been known to be contrived and elevated by fans who want schools to stay away from their beloved coach.