New Coach: Candidates and Qualifications

I believe that he understands. It is a university-wide problem. I believe that the unrepaired scoreboard on Titan Field has made that clear to him.

Vowels obviously read Commissioner's post and was pre-disposed to the High Major Assistant this time.

I'm very disappointed that there is no diversity of profile in this final four if this is the case. It explains a lot.

While its possible some of these candidates are being considered, I think someone is leaking this information to TP and it is by far inaccurate.

If Tony Paul is to be believed, the Titans have assembled a reasonably impressive group of finalists, but all from the "high major assistant" ranks. Very little sign that the Titans thought outside the box (although to be fair, maybe they did and the "outside the box" guys just weren't that impressive in interviews).

Pre-WWII, coaches tended to be men who taught elsewhere in the University, or coached multiple sports, such as Titan coaches Royal Campbell and Gus Dorais (basketball and football) and Lloyd Brazil (basketball, baseball, football (assistant)).

Detroit's first and maybe only true "out-of-the-box" hire in the modern (Post-WWII) era was Bob Calihan. I remember looking through old newspapers some years ago, and Calihan's hiring made a significant ripple in sports pages around the country, because he was still an all-star player in the best professional league (the NBL, forerunner of the NBA). Calihan had made 2nd team all-league three straight years when he quit in mid-season to take over the Titans. Imagine today someone like, say, Damien Lillard just quitting mid-season to go back and coach at his alma mater Weber State. Lloyd Brazil, then Titan AD, sold Calihan on a vision of his little ole Catholic alma mater going toe to toe with the biggest names in college hoops.

Calihan never quite got Detroit into the elite of college hoops, but for 20 years it was a pretty good run. We built one of the best arenas in the nation (too good--we've never replaced it), and joined one of the best conferences. We had All-Americans in 10 of Calihan's 21 years, with 3 of them (Ebben, DeBusschere, Haywood) combining for "teamed" honors (as opposed to "mere" Honorable Mention) a total of 6 times, including a 1st team consensus player. We won a lot more than we lost, and though we made just 1 NCAA tournament (when it was much harder to make the tournament), we had 3 NITs and on at least 2 occasions turned down the NCAA for the NIT (in retrospect, "oops!"). We hosted national powers at Calihan and the Motor City Tournament was an event on the college hoops schedule. We beat #1-ranked teams, and in good years were nationally ranked ourselves. Regular success then continued under the hated Jim Harding, the beloved Dick Vitale, and the consummate Smokey Gaines.

Of course, all this was long ago, and one successful "outside-the-box" hire is anything but a conclusive case. But the next closest thing we've had to an outside-the-box hire was Vitale, an unknown assistant from the east coast, and he did pretty well in Detroit.

When Calihan was pushed upstairs after the '69 season, we passed on the outside-the-box hire, Detroit HS coaching-legend Will Robinson. Robinson was eventually hired a couple years later by Illinois State (by that time he was 60 years old) as the first black D-1 head coach. He retired after just 4 years there with a .602 winning percentage and a consensus first team All-American in Doug Collins. Had we hired Robinson, we probably would have kept Spencer Haywood for at least one and possibly two more seasons, recruited the PSL well, and perhaps cemented a place as a national power. Or maybe it wouldn't have changed our long-term trajectory--after all, Harding had pretty good success on the court, and then came Vitale and national rankings and NCAA bids, all squandered in the 1980s. But everything suggest that Robinson would have been quite successful in Detroit, probably more so than he eventually was at Illinois State, where he was pretty darned good with a program just entering D-1.

Otherwise, we've pretty much played it safe with our hires. Internal assistants (Gaines-good; McCarter-bad; Sicko (with 2 yrs at UM in between) almost good, then calamitous); high major assistants (Byrdsong-solid enough in a slow rebuild; Bacari-ouch); or retread D1 head coaches (McCallum-no Smokey, but good; Davis-failed). The one other almost out-of-box hire (besides Vitale) was Watson, just two years as an assistant at UM after a legendary career in the PSL, and he did OK, I guess.

I guess I'm recounting all this because I was thinking about it this a.m. driving to work. Other than Smokey's brief reign, we've really had our greatest successes with our most "out-of-the-box" selections, and probably missed on another good one when we passed on Robinson. This doesn't mean a ton--all of these were long ago (PW was hired over 30 years ago!), and it's a very small sample.

I just wish there were signs that in the current search, we'd been more willing to look beyond the high major assistants whose names regularly crop up when jobs become available. Bronkema, Thomas, Fee, Nazim, whomever--I'm sure there are many more.

Maybe Blount, if he's the choice, will bring some of that energy and dynamism you can get with what is, admittedly a more risky choice (that's a big reason why it's "out-of-the-box.") We'll see.

This is pretty typical PR. Paul is a hound for info so they leave him scraps and he reports on it as if it’s a press release from the school lol.

Look the University needs to keep everything tight lipped because you don't need any interference with pick a coach and/or coming up with a deal. If you start letting the cat out of the bag to early it could blow up in your face or the candidates face. This is one thing that the University is going right.

For tony Paul four picks is probably roomers of coaches trying to get press on them to help sway the University to look at them as a possible candidate. I don't trust to much on this info from tony Paul. If it was new about OU I would believe it more out of his mouth.

But if I was to pick one of these four candidates it would be JR Blount. I think he has the biggest bang or bust capital out of the four.

It might be interesting to get opinions on the 5 best and 5 worst men's basketball coach hires since Bob Calihan (1969).

Five Best: Dick Vitale, Smokey Gaines, Perry Watson, Ray McCallum, Jim Harding.

Five Worst: Brain Alexander, Mike Davis, Ricky Birdsong, Willie McCarter, Don Sicko.