There are perhaps as many on-the-court issues to discuss as Fairfield basketball looks toward 2006-07 as there have been in any off-season in recent memory. But like it or not, the biggest discussion, and probably the most important, is about the guy who will be on the sidelines next year.
All Athletic Director Gene Doris said last Friday after Head Coach Tim O’Toole announced he and his staff would not return next season was that there will be a search committee, and that although he will not be on the committee, he will make the final decision.
There are 334 Division I programs, and every single one of them has at least two paid assistant coaches, all of whom are potential candidates to occupy head coaching vacancies. There are also at least some former head coaches who are out of basketball right now and who would potentially consider coming to Fairfield.
That much is all we know right now. There’s simply no way that Doris or anyone else in the administration is going to do so much as hint at who might be O’Toole’s successor anytime soon, and they shouldn’t. Why? Because it’s impossible, with so many potential candidates and virtually no guarantees, for them to even have more than a vague idea of who they’d like to get the job done. Those ideas can and will come after interviews are conducted, or at the very earliest, when candidates agree to be interviewed in the first place.
But of those candidates, a couple, and only a couple, stand out. The first is Fairfield grad Pete Gillen, who coached during two decades at Providence and Virginia before he was fired from the latter school after the 2004-05 season.
The good news about Gillen: if he were to take the job, he’d be by far the biggest name in the MAAC, and though big names don’t win games, they have the potential to bring in better players, who do win games. It doesn’t hurt his chances of getting the job that he’s an alum, but more importantly, it doesn’t hurt Fairfield’s chances of getting him that he’s an alum.
The bad news about Gillen: first of all, the possibility of him coming back to coach his alma matter has to be considered remote right off the bat. It would be an incredible exception to a firmly cemented rule for a guy who’s coached in the Big East and the ACC to take as big a downgrade as Gillen would take by going to the MAAC. Second, he’s 58 years old, which means two things: Mid-major coaching jobs rarely go to guys who are that old. He would be the oldest coach in the league, and might be content to stay out of coaching instead. Doris said that he and Gillen are friends and speak two or three times a year. So he knows Gillen fell enough to evaluate whether he’d come back to coaching, and said he thinks Gillen might be content staying in broadcasting, as several other former coaches have done.
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Also, one of the things Doris liked about O’Toole when he hired him eight years ago was that he was a young coach who had the potential for upward advancement. At Gillen’s age, Fairfield would likely be the last stop on the tour, and Doris might be better off looking for someone who has something to prove and something to work for.
Gillen’s name has been by far the most talked-about, from the message boards to the talk radio waves, but another name that has surfaced has been that of UConn Associate Head Coach Tom Moore, who is in his 12th season under Head Coach Jim Calhoun after coaching for five years at Worcester State College in Massachusetts.
If this sportswriter was doing the hiring, Moore would be at the Walsh Center for an interview the second UConn’s season is over, which might not be until April 7, the day after the national championship game.
Though he hasn’t been well known until the past two or three years, Moore is now the longest tenured assistant on Calhoun’s staff, and that means something. During those years, the teams Moore has been associated with have been arguably more successful than those of any other program in the country.
Calhoun’s protégés have had less success in the past than those of some other big time coaches, most notably those of Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, a list that includes O’Toole. But that trend could be changing, and it could be changing quickly.
There are five Calhoun disciples coaching Division I teams right now. Three – Glen Miller at Brown, Steve Pikell at Stony Brook, and Howey Dickenmann at Central Connecticut – haven’t made it out of the mid-major ranks, though Pikell just completed his first season at Stony Brook.
But Dave Leitao the last man before Moore to hold the “Associate Head Coach” title, went on to coach at DePaul and then at Virginia, and no former assistant anywhere in the country has fared better than George Washington’s Karl Hobbs, whose team is currently ranked sixth in the country and will have an outside chance to win the national championship.
Moore, a former player at Boston University, has a reputation as a hands-on coach in practice who has played a key role in developing players who later starred in the NBA.
Consider this list of UConn stars, all of whom had talent when they arrived in Storrs, but who benefited from working in practice with Moore, and in some cases, Hobbs: Ray Allen, Richard Hamilton, Khaid El-Amin, Ben Gordon, Emeka Okafor, and Rudy Gay.
Of even greater importance is Moore’s impeccable record as a recruiter. Through his years at UConn, he has made inroads at many of the elite high school programs in the region and throughout the country.
The concern with Moore is that he has been sought after, either officially or unofficially, by a handful of programs whose stature is far greater than Fairfield’s. Last year, he was a leading candidate to replace Steve Lapas at UMass before the Minutemen chose former Eastern Kentucky Head Coach Travis Ford instead. He was offered the job at Stony Brook, but turned it down, paving the way for Pikell to take over.
The question is whether Moore would view Fairfield as a platform on which to enhance his resume or a sidetrack in a career that could be headed to very high places.
It is even conceivable that he will be Calhoun’s successor at UConn. Doris, of course, would have to consider the possibility of Moore, or another coach at his level, taking a more high-profile job, and on he said he is very much aware of the “domino effect” that takes place when coaches such as Moore are turned down from jobs in major conferences.
Doris also said one of the criteria for getting the job may be head coaching experience, though that experience does not necessarily have to be in Division I.
Moore has never been a head coach in Division I, but was the youngest coach in the history of Worcestor State College, where he took the job as a 24-year-old and coached for five seasons before leaving for UConn.
But that, of course, is all in the distance away. There will be interviews and there will be much discussion, but first, there will be a search.
The search, as Doris explained, will be kicked off very soon, when the outside consulting firm is brought in to start making the list.
All indications are that Gillen and Moore will both be on the list, but that is not to say by any means that it is likely either one will be hired.
That the search will take place, and that it will conclude sooner rather than later, is all we know right now.
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