Dana Altman’s red-eye flight to Eugene, Oregon, about a week ago created an opportunity for Creighton to hire a new men’s basketball coach for the first time in 16 years. When news broke of Altman leaving and Bruce Rasmussen starting to search for a new coach, I fully expected to follow these developments over the course of a week or two. You know how it goes: one rumored name leaks; people freak out in good/bad ways; rumored individual comes out and says “I’m happy where I’m at. Thanks, but no thanks.” Repeat.
Imagine my surprise (and that of so many Creighton hoops fans everywhere) when Ras culminated the whirlwind courting of Iowa State head coach Greg McDermott by offering the former Northern Iowa head coach a 10-year deal seemingly before Altman ever landed on the Left Coast.
Initially, I wasn’t only in the camp surprised he was being mentioned for the job, let alone being hired. I was probably the camp’s counselor, the leading skeptic. Several other die-hard Jays fans expressed to me their displeasure with the direction this coaching “search” had shifted. But why?
If you are a newer CU hoops fan, you probably don’t get it. You almost have to be a long-time Jays fan to understand the skepticism. Some Creighton fans formed their opinion of McDermott after just his first game against CU. Sure, the Jays were 9-2 against McDermott’s UNI teams, but his Panthers upset the Jays in his first game against Altman’s team. In this case, first impressions are everything. And although the Bluejays would lose just one more time to a McDermott-led UNI team, the Creighton-Northern Iowa games were usually even matchups that produced close contests.
But those are probably just the feelings of Jays fans who actually remember CU hoops before the Qwest Center. McDermott left UNI in spring 2006. As fellow WBR contributor Ryan Holmgren noted this past week, “There will not be a single undergraduate student who will have been at Creighton while the Jays have been in the NCAA tournament.” The same can be said for the number of undergrads in the Birdcage who were around when McDermott was with UNI. Zilch. So, why should they be excited about the hire?
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During McDermott’s introductory press conference last week, Ras mentioned that the former UNI and Iowa State coach’s name has always been on the CU Athletic Director’s short list for candidates should Altman bolt for greener (and, in the case of Oregon, neon yellow) pastures at another school. Aside from being interested about what other coaches are on this list (and whether the list is written someplace, or perhaps on a sticky note on Ras’ fridge?), it is of interest to note the unique situation both Ras and McDermott are in now that the later is at the Hilltop.
McDermott’s return to the Valley ushers a bit of history into the league. According to my research, he is only the fourth coach in the modern era of NCAA hoops to return to coach in a league in which he has already coached (but at a different school). This season alone, there were more than 50 coaching changes in Division I basketball. McDermott is the only coach making a move to a conference in which he already helmed another program. It is just not something you see every day.
Sure, big names leave from great programs to other great programs. Bill Self went from Illinois to Kansas after Roy Williams left the Jayhawks for Tobacco Road and North Carolina. But McDermott coming back to the Valley via Creighton after coaching at Northern Iowa? That’s the equivalent of Coach K leaving Duke to coach the Tar Heels (minus the National Championships, the McDonald’s All-Americans, and the innumerable NBA players nurtured as Blue Devils). Or, in a not-so-silly comparison, could you imagine Matt Painter leaving Purdue for Iowa in the Big 10? It just wouldn’t happen, would it? In-conference rivalries and matchups can get pretty heated. Having a coach return to the league to coach another team could be a hornet’s nest waiting to happen.
Let’s take a look at the other three coaches who have made the move to coach at two schools within the same conference:
Rick Pitino (Providence & Louisville)
It almost seems weird to say Pitino coached for two teams in the Big East. In reality, it is almost a generation since this has happened. Pitino took Providence College to the Final Four in 1987. Almost 15 years later in 2001, Pitino took over the helm at Louisville. However, Louisville didn’t become part of the Big East until 2005. So he sort of grandfathered into this situation. Friar fans are probably not as heated about this as they would have been if it had been had Pitino returned to the conference within a few years of taking Providence to the Final Four.
Actually, he probably gets more heat for leaving Kentucky to coach in the NBA and then returning after the failed Boston Celtics experiment to in-state rival Louisville. I could imagine what things would have been like if Altman bolted from Creighton to go coach at Nebraska when that position came open after the Huskers fired Danny Nee in 2000.
Bob Huggins (Cincinnati & West Virginia)
Huggins is another example of being grandfathered into coaching two teams from the same conference. When Huggins coached at Cincinnati, they were part of Conference USA. Right before joining the Big East in 2005, Huggins’ issues off the court gained him an exit from the head coaching position before even playing a game in the Big East. Five years later, Huggins is at his alma mater, and this season he took the Mountaineers to the Final Four. Since joining West Virginia, Huggins has gone 2-2 against his former Bearcats team, but has won the last two meetings.
Mike Montgomery (Stanford & California)
Montgomery’s situation is probably the closest to McDermott’s. Montgomery spent 18 seasons at Stanford; he won 20 or more games in each of his last 10 seasons in Palo Alto and his teams were a constant force in the NCAA Tournament.
Montgomery followed in Pitino’s footsteps and left Stanford to try and lead an NBA team (Golden State Warriors). After failing at that level, Montgomery came back to the college game. He initially took a position back at Stanford as an assistant athletic director. Eight months later as Cal was searching for a coach, they knocked on Montgomery’s door and he went to coach for one of Stanford’s major rivals in the Pac 10. Montgomery has taken the Bears to the Big Dance in both of his seasons in Berkeley. Plus, he is 3-1 against his former team.
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What’s interesting about the McDermott-to-Creighton-via-Northern Iowa scenario is that if it wouldn’t have happened, the Bluejays could have been part of this one-coach-at-two-conference-institutions comparison anyway. Part of the CU fanbase always thought that should Altman leave Creighton, former CU player and assistant coach (and current head coach at Indiana State) Kevin McKenna would be a logical choice for the head post on the Hilltop.
Alas, this did not happen. But it does add to the intriguing story lines now set to play out as McDermott joins the Missouri Valley Conference for the second time.
- McDermott’s a UNI graduate. At Iowa State, his teams played the Panthers as part of the state schools’ required games (his ISU teams went 1-3 against UNI). But now instead of just state bragging rights, he faces the Panthers twice a season in a battle for conference titles in the Valley. His close friend and former assistant Ben Jacobson runs the Panthers now. With Northern Iowa currently the national face of the Valley, and with back-to-back regular season and Arch Madness titles taking up space in the Panthers’ trophy cases, CU-UNI matchups will continue to be some of the conference’s marquee contests.
- Creighton will travel to Des Moines in November 2010 to play Iowa State at the Wells Fargo Arena as part of a multi-team event both schools scheduled while Altman and McDermott were in their previous posts. McDermott will lead the Bluejays against a team that he helped recruit and put together. Expect the building to be packed and the crowed energized.
- Games against Indiana State will be interesting. Regardless of the success McDermott achieves in Omaha, there will always be a contingent of Creighton fans that wants McKenna to be the top Bluejay.
- It might be interesting to think that if Jim Les (Bradley) and Chris Lowery (SIU) don’t make it much longer in the Valley, McDermott could become the Dean of the Valley (albeit an interrupted tenure in that post) based on his previous experience in the MVC. Didn’t see that one coming, did you?
In the end, Creighton’s employment of McDermott seems to be a huge move not just for the Bluejays but for the Valley as a whole. The last week created a little positive buzz for the conference, in that a coach from a “BCS” program left that school to return to a “mid-major” league. Couple this buzz with the mark UNI left on casual college hoops fans during the Panthers’ run through the NCAA Tournament, and the Valley has to be pleased with the past month’s worth of media attention.
Are you on board with this hire? Did you fall prey to the great Media Extravaganza last week? Are you ready for hoops to start again?
