Bleacher Report - Articles by Alex Gregory

Virginia After WSU: A Difference In Expectations For Bennett?

Alex Gregory — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:19:22 -0400

Forget the southern accents (which really aren't that southern in a state that has become more and more mid-atlantic, like Delaware, than southern, like Tennessee).

The biggest difference new UVA Coach Tony Bennett will find in Virginia is a bit of a difference in basketball expectations.

It's not an overwhelming change, but it's at least one he needs to be aware of.

While Virginia alums may pride themselves on having attended a school where sports are not the main attraction (and they aren't, not by a long shot)...the University did just shell out $1.7 million a year for a new basketball coach.

So even though the UVA fans won't expect the same things they expect year-in and year-out at Kentucky—which just hired a $4 million per year used-car salesman—they do expect a little something-something in return.

And...they always have.

Let's look at the past 50 years of coaches at Virginia and Washington State, to get a glimpse of the coaching expectations where Bennett is coming from and where he is going.

Since 1960, there have been four coaches who won at least as many games as they lost at Virginia; and three coaches fitting that description at Washington State.

So what has happened to the coaches between .500 (mediocre) and .600 (good)?

At one school, they are considered to have done a bang-up job and eventually move to greener pastures. Very bad for fans!

At the other, they seem to get fired. Very bad for the coach.

WASHINGTON STATE
Tony Bennett (.676 in three seasons)—left! For Virginia in 2009.
George Raveling (.551 in 11 seasons)—left! For Iowa in 1983.
Kelvin Sampson (.500 in seven seasons)—left! For Oklahoma in 1994.

VIRGINIA
Terry Holland (.653 in 16 seasons)—retired in 1990.
Jeff Jones (.584 in eight seasons)—fired! In 1998.
Pete Gillen (.559 in seven seasons)—fired! In 2005.
Dave Leitao (.512 in four seasons)—fired! In 2009.

Of seven decent coaches at two schools, only one had a result that you would hope for as a fan.

A coach who does a very good job (I consider a 60-70 percent career winning percentage to be very good at an ACC school like Virginia) and decides to stay at your school for basically his entire coaching career.

As any Virginia fan knows, that man was Terry Holland. (And the same thing happened more recently in football with George Welsh, .609 in 19 seasons before retiring.)

To this day, Coach Holland is beloved in Charlottesville.

So...what does this mean for Bennett?

It means the man has got to be able to deal with some expectations. They aren't overwhelming at Virginia, but they are there.

And if he can meet those expectations, Charlottesville is somewhere he will never want to leave.

But maybe we've just been lucky so far?

It seems a whopping five coaches (three basketball coaches and two football coaches: Dennis Erickson and Mike Price) have left Washington State for other, less remote, jobs in the past 30 years.

Perhaps because it is far less remote, there's never been a coach in either sport who has left the University of Virginia for another school. In fact, I can't seem to find even an Olympic sport where a coach has left UVA for a "greener pasture."

The fact is, the pastures near Charlottesville are pretty darned green. And they usually come filled with horses. But is that enough?

WSU fans, likely out of bitterness, have been claiming up and down, left and right, that "mercenary Tony" will only leave for "the Wisconsin job" as soon as it opens up.

People neglect to mention that Bennett didn't attend Wisconsin-Madison, where he was only ever an assistant coach before taking the same job at Washington State.

He actually played his ball at Wisconsin-Green Bay, a three-hour drive away! So I don't think it's likely that he'll ever leave the ACC to go coach at his alma mater.

Think about it: did Hoosier native John Wooden go back and take the IU job once he started winning at UCLA? Of course not. He already had everything he needed with the Bruins.

And Bennett will always have everything he needs with the Cavaliers.

Charlottesville is perpetually ranked among the very top places to live for a family, Virginia's basketball facilities are among the best in the country, and there are more and better athletes in this region than in the Big Ten or Pac-10.

If Bennett wins here, I think he's going to stay a good long while.

The only thing that could pull a coach away from this place is unrealistic (froth-mouthed-like-a-Kentucky-fan) expectations in Charlottesville.

At this point, I don't think he has anything to be worried about.

I hope he never does.

Five New Coaches To Lead Arizona, Kentucky, Virginia, Georgia, and Alabama

Alex Gregory — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:10:35 -0400

Every March Madness, there is a sub-story to the main plot. And that is the programs who didn't get there and are out to replace their head coaches.

This year, there are some exceptional opportunities awaiting the right people. Two of the best all-time programs are open: Kentucky and Arizona.

An ACC program with incredible brand new basketball facilities is open: Virginia.

And two SEC schools looking to turn around their reputations as "football schools" are open: Alabama and Georgia.

So who is going where?

This is my attempt to answer these questions for you, dear reader. I have here a clear crystal ball that will tell me exactly how all of this will play out! (If only.)

First, I see a new coach in Arizona. It's a coach you've heard of, a proven winner. It's none other than...Rick Pitino. That's right, the man who just blew out Arizona in the Big Dance is going to come back and coach them next year.

Why would he do this?

For one, Pitino doesn't like to stay in one place too long. He's been in Louisville for eight years, he was at Kentucky for eight years, and he was with the Celtics, the Providence Friars, and the Boston Terriers for shorter tenures.

Also, Pitino wants to retire in the sun. Arizona is as nice a place to retire as any...wouldn't you want to retire there?

Furthermore, Pitino loves rebuilding projects. Arizona needs some rebuilding right about now...and it's an easy place to do it. It's got a great basketball tradition, has a sunny location that recruits love, and it competes in the Pac-10.

So that could leave Louisville with an opening, yet my crystal ball only has information on current openings. Ahem.

Down the road in Lexington, I think the new UK coach will be either John Calipari or Billy Donovan. It's a high-stress job in Kentucky with lots of pressure.

Only a certain personality type can thrive on that type of pressure, and I think Calipari and Donovan (and Pitino) are the only coaches capable of it.

Billy Boy will again be the top target, and the Gators are a little down right now so it might be a good time to jump. But at the end of the day, I think Donovan realizes that he's already accomplished everything at Florida (back to back NCAA Tournament Championships) so what advantage is there in moving to Kentucky?

Just more pressure to cook you with, and I don't think any coach truly wants that.

My crystal ball sees the Cats with John Calipari. While he has accomplished much at Memphis, I think he feels his coaching resume will never be complete without winning in a "real" conference. He thrives in the spotlight and wants to be "big time" like his hero Pitino, so the Kentucky job is a good fit for him.

On to Virginia. This is an ACC program that has really struggled to find its identity since the heady 1980s and early 1990s, when they went to two Final Fours and five Elite Eights.

One little known fact is that for the entire decade of the 80s, Virginia won more ACC games than Duke—and this was the golden decade in which Coach K got established at Duke and won a record 37 games in 1985-86.

But that was then, this is now. Virginia won a regular season ACC Championship in 2007, but that has proved an aberration.

One has to go back to 1995 to find the last time that Virginia was in the Elite Eight, and 1984 to find the last time they were in the Final Four (and no, Ralph Sampson was not on that Final Four team).

Although they haven't been winning games, one thing Virginia has been doing is improving their basketball facilities. Big time. Poorly designed University Hall has been replaced with probably the Taj Mahal of college basketball: John Paul Jones Arena.

There's no corporate name on the arena because Paul Tudor Jones, a UVA alumnus and commodity-trader billionaire (worth $3.3 billion according to Forbes magazine, making him the richest booster in all of college sports) donated the bulk of the palace's $130+ million price tag and named it after his father.

Some say Dave Leitao was dropped at UVA precisely because Jones didn't want a 4-12 ACC team stinking up his father's namesake arena.

UVA doesn't want to offend the man who built them a basketball palace, so my feeling is that they'll go out and pay top dollar for a top coach.

And that coach will be Jeff Capel III, who just skunked Boeheim's team to make the Elite Eight tonight. Oklahoma is paying Capel a paltry $1 million per annum, and Virginia is reportedly willing to pay $2.5 million or more.

Capel has coached at two schools in the state of Virginia (Old Dominion and Virginia Commonwealth) and his father also coached Old Dominion for seven years. Those are strong ties to the area and the fact is that Capel is an ACC guy to the core.

Oklahoma can probably keep up in a bidding war with Virginia, but Capel can't be kept out in the Great Plains for long. UVA has all the resources to build a basketball program around, and Capel has all the tools to make it happen...it's a great fit.

Which brings us to Alabama. This one isn't as hard to predict, they've already made their offer to Anthony Grant, the current coach at Virginia Commonwealth. It's reportedly for $2 million when the man currently makes $700,000.

Unless Donovan leaps to Kentucky and leaves Florida open, Grant's going to be the new coach at Alabama.

That leaves Georgia. There's no news out of Athens, unlike Tuscaloosa. None at all. So what are they doing down there? No one knows.

I've read the rumors that the Dawgs are interested in Jeff Capel III but if Virginia is interested as well, there is no way that Georgia wins that battle.

Tubby Smith is a possibility. He started in Athens before he coached Kentucky, and I always got the impression he wished he had stayed there. I'd be surprised if Georgia doesn't put out some kind of enormous offer to Tubby before looking elsewhere.

But they will eventually have to look elsewhere, and your guess is as good as mine as to who they end up with. I'm going to go with Brian Gregory of Dayton, because he's built up a great record there and he deserves to move up to a major conference.

And now for one whose name is associated with nearly all of the above jobs but isn't going anywhere: Jay Wright.

Has no one told you that he is married to a former Villanova cheerleader?

When you are making the Big Dance every single year and playing in the Big East, there isn't much motivation to go anywhere else.

When you're from the Philadelphia area and you coach at Villanova, there isn't motivation to go anywhere else.

The Crystal Ball says Jay Wright is at Villanova to stay.

OU Coach Jeff Capel Spotted Wearing Virginia Orange-and-Blue

Alex Gregory — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:55:03 -0400

Jeff Capel III is the primary target to be the new men's basketball coach at Virginia. There, I said it.

Now this may be nothing but blind conjecture at this point, but I'm reading the tea leaves and this is the impression that I get...Capel is Virginia's top target, and they are going to make a run at bringing him back home to the ACC, and they are willing to spend a bit more for Capel than Oklahoma has been paying Capel up to now.

What we do know, so far, is that Virginia hasn't moved very fast in conducting its coaching search since Dave Leitao signed out on March 16. Tubby Smith was the main target in 2005, and Tubby was interested, but Virginia wasn't willing to pay up for a coach of his stature at that time.

There was rampant speculation that Tubby would again be the top target in 2009, but his Minnesota season has been over for a week and not a peep out of Charlottesville or Minneapolis.

Conventional wisdom now is that UVA has its sights focused on a coach whose season has not yet ended.

At this point, there are three coaches still "dancing" who regularly appear in Virginia rumors. Jeff Capel, Sean Miller, and Jay Wright. Arguments can be made for each of these excellent coaches, but Capel is the only one with both strong ties to Virginia and strong ties to the ACC.

Capel's father, Jeff Capel II, was the coach at Old Dominion in Norfolk, Virginia for a number of years. Capel III himself was an assistant at both Old Dominion and Virginia Commonwealth before becoming the head coach at VCU.

Altogether, Capel had been a coach in Virginia for seven years before coaching Oklahoma for the past three.

And the Capel coaching record is stellar. He has never had a losing season (knock on wood) in the seven years he has been a head coach. He has taken both VCU and Oklahoma to the NCAA Tournament. He is one win shy of 30 (!) victories for this year's squad at OU. And he has accomplished all this despite having just turned 34 years old in February.

Now, the question posed by Oklahoma fans is, why would Capel even consider leaving OU for Virginia? Call me biased, but I have a number of reasons for you.

A) First there's the second-fiddle status that basketball has at Oklahoma. While basketball has certainly had more success at OU than at where the SEC openings are this year (Georgia, Alabama) it will always be the No. 2 sport at its own school.

It was second-fiddle for the entire winning reign of Billy Tubbs, and it will be second-fiddle for as long as Capel or anyone else is coaching basketball.

Virginia is not a football school, and while not even quite a top basketball school, the opportunity is there for the right coach to make it an amazing basketball program and the "center of the show" in Virginia.

B) The heart of this opportunity is the new basketball facilities in John Paul Jones Arena. The Lloyd Noble Center is fine, but JPJ is truly a basketball paradise. Even the practice courts are nicer than some other ACC schools' game gyms.

While this might not impress someone who spent his playing career in rickety old Cameron Indoor, Capel can certainly appreciate the recruiting possibilities of such a college basketball palace.

C) Capel has coached in the state of Virginia at two different schools so far. As an assistant at Old Dominion and Virginia Commonwealth, and then as the head man at VCU. The third time is the charm, and Virginia wants him back!

D) Capel is an ACC guy at heart. When he decided to go into coaching, the Big XII probably wasn't where he saw himself leaving his mark. It's the ACC where he might have thought he'd always end up...it's where, in a perfect world, he'd choose to build up his own program.

The time is now, for both Virginia and Capel. The man is a proven winner at this point, and Virginia has all the facilities and infrastructure in place to be one of the great basketball schools...it just needs a coach to come in and start a consistent winning tradition. It needs Jeff Capel.