Sources: Tim Floyd to Arizona & more dominoes could fall

08-09 Basketball General146

The landscape of the Pac-10 continues to transform as 2009’s coaching carousel continues with this somewhat surprising move – Tim Floyd to Arizona

After unsuccessfully trying to woo Rick Pitino and reportedly going after Mark Few and Jeff Capel, Arizona is set to name Tim Floyd as its new head coach according to reports.

Fox Sports reports that Floyd is still weighing the offer.

Floyd, 55, has spent the last four seasons at USC and is 85-50 in his tenure in Southern California. He led the Trojans to three NCAA tournament appearances — including a Sweet 16 appearance in 2007.

According to a source close to the situation, Floyd — as of Wednesday night — is still deliberating on whether to accept Arizona’s offer.

Floyd’s Trojans won the 2009 Pac-10 Conference Tournament Championship and qualified for the NCAA Tournament by overcoming a 15 point deficit to Arizona State. The Sun Devils and All-American guard James Harden only scored six points in the last eight minutes and ten seconds of the game en route to mustering only 63 points for the day. They scored only four points in the last 7:37, which included only one field goal in the last 7:37. The Trojans took the lead with about 30 seconds to go in the game and continued to ride their momentum into the NCAA Tournament.

I thought USC was able to pull a surprisingly good move in their initial hire of Floyd four years ago, so it will be interesting to see where the Trojans choose to turn. Jobs at Georgia and Memphis also remain open.

As Andy Katz discusses in the above video, Floyd’s move could open the door for the dominoes to fall in a manner that sends Pitt’s Jamie Dixon to USC, opening the Pitt job for Sean Miller. First, such a move would suck for NC State as Sean Miller is clearly emerging as a top candidate for our job in the next couple of years if Coach Lowe were to unfortunately not show some improvement.

Excuse me while I continue to be baffled by these reporters. Katz, like Seth Davis and Greg Doyel and so many others, is usually fast to tout the attributes of former NC State coach, Herb Sendek. In this report he immediately mentions Miller and totally ignores Sendek as a candidate for Pitt. Hell…Miller coached for Sendek, who is also originally from Pittsburgh!

Sendek was (supposedly) the subject of speculation around the Pitt job when Ben Howland left for UCLA. Although the speculation was later proven to be a manufactured and appear to be an opportunistic PR stunt by Camp Fowler/Sendek to make Herb appear desired by other programs, it still baffles me that Herb could be such an amazing coach yet these media-guys who love him so much never even think of him as a potential candidate for any of these jobs where is obviously a natural fit. I wonder why that is?

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08-09 Basketball General

146 Responses to Sources: Tim Floyd to Arizona & more dominoes could fall

  1. Gene 04/02/2009 at 4:09 PM #

    The stuff with Sloan was with Vernon Maxwell and Dwayne Schintzius, wasn’t it?

    I thought was all booster-related.

    Was that when Charlie Pell was the coach down there?

    I did some reading up. The allegation, which Sloan never admitted to, was he paid Vernon Maxwell’s airfair to a summer camp. Maxwell testified to this to a grand jury.

    Charlie Pell apparently coached their football team in 1984 and left under some scandals, which got FU a two year probation. His replacement, Hall, was busted for slipping money under the table to a couple of assistants and maybe a player.

    There was also indictments of betting on games by Florida football players and illegal drug use.

    Sloan and all his assistants, including Monte Towe, were forced to resign in one fell swoop by Florida’s administration, in 1989.

  2. Wulfpack 04/02/2009 at 4:40 PM #

    There was no reason that we couldn’t have hired a coach from Marshall back then and right now there is another Billy Donovan or John Calipari type of coach at a place like Marshall or UMass.

    Though I agree with all your other points, I disagree here. Oh, they’re out there all right. Only time will tell. But there’s somebody, somewhere, laying the groundwork for a hall of fame career at some school that nobody is talking about. Somebody’s turning mudd into gold somewhere. But the sad thing is we don’t stand a chance, because our administration has not a clue. Furthermore, when this “experiment” passes, the administration will be too embarassed/scared to take a chance on anyone. They’ll swing for the fences, miss, head to the bench, and then settle.

  3. whitefang 04/02/2009 at 5:09 PM #

    We’ll Wulf we could always get TOB lucky. Probably won’t but when this experiment passes and provided Fowler is sidelined by the powers, we might find that a pretty good jewel is interested when played the right way. I mean when Amato went down, did any of you expect that a pretty damn good coach with a damn good resume would not only leave Boston College to come down here to a “mid-tier football school”, but sign on at another ACC school no less?
    If any of us had been saying that on this board a few weeks before that happened we would have been called real lunatics I expect.

  4. RagingWolf 04/02/2009 at 5:15 PM #

    This just in,

    After Few, and Capel, Tim Floyd turns down Arizona. Steve Lavin is about to tell the world that he is removing his name from consideration. Arizona has been staying in touch with Steve Kerr for consulting purposes.

    I have a source that tells me that Arizona’s people are chatting with Sidney Lowe’s people.

  5. Bubba 04/02/2009 at 6:50 PM #

    This Arizona coaching search isnt going to well.

  6. MrPlywood 04/02/2009 at 7:05 PM #

    Help us Arizona-Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope.

  7. 61Packer 04/02/2009 at 7:06 PM #

    Goodnight is worth 3 times more than T. Boone Pickens?

    You’ve GOT to be kidding. Surely you jest…………..

  8. LKNpackfan 04/02/2009 at 7:54 PM #

    Yep.
    Pickens, $3b – Goodnight, $8.7b

  9. 61Packer 04/02/2009 at 8:11 PM #

    LKNpackfan, I’m not at liberty to discuss sources but I just don’t agree with these numbers.

  10. sf59 04/02/2009 at 8:28 PM #

    can anyone confrim that fowler is out????

    thats the rumor

  11. packwatcher 04/02/2009 at 8:32 PM #

    Yeah, I’ve seen that rumor, but I can’t believe it. Does that mean Todd Turner is in need of a job?

  12. buttPACKer 04/02/2009 at 8:40 PM #

    The U of A boards are now saying Sean Miller is going to be the next HC:

    “Sean Miller. Monday. Book it.

    This is from the highest of high sources.

    Also:

    Pastner is the potential associate HC.

    Floyd was onboard until the USC players went to his house late last night to convince him to stay.

    Lots more, but that’s all I’m gona say.

    My first post and last. I’m outta here. “

  13. buttPACKer 04/02/2009 at 8:46 PM #

    one last little gem i picked up:

    “The one scary item: Seth Greenberg is one of the other remaining candidates. Who? Yeah, Seth Greenberg of mighty Virginia Tech. ”

    really.

  14. Wulfpack 04/02/2009 at 8:46 PM #

    So Herby and Sean are going to duke it out in the desert? Interesting. Wonder where the relationship will go from here.
    The quality of the coaching in the Pac 10 is pretty darn good.
    Did you see that Georgia is interviewing Purnell and Haith?

  15. buttPACKer 04/02/2009 at 8:50 PM #

    ok, one more last thing I found re: Sean Miller from Cincinatti.com I thought was encouraging for us:

    “Miller never has said publicly what other jobs might be enticing, though it hardly would be unreasonable if he ever wanted to return to coach at Pittsburgh, his alma mater, or at North Carolina State, where he worked five seasons as an assistant coach.”

  16. buttPACKer 04/02/2009 at 8:55 PM #

    I guess i should have prefaced the “miller to UA” thing with: Everyone on the message board seems rather leary of this, since their search is going about as well as ours did–public rebuffs and rejections included. They also seem to hate their AD, as well, but I think without the seething intensity of a thousand suns, such as we.

  17. wufpup76 04/02/2009 at 9:29 PM #

    I didn’t see anyone comment on it earlier, so Mark Fox (from Nevada) to UGa.

    I know that’s been out for a few hours but wanted to bring it up for potential discussion. I’m a little surprised – I know UGa was trying for more of a name hire, but wound up going the mid-major route again.

    Purnell and Haith were supposedly both potential candidates for that opening … so the ACC hasn’t lost anyone – just yet.

  18. blackdom 04/03/2009 at 11:01 AM #

    No one is talking with Sidney Lowes people

  19. Alpha Wolf 04/03/2009 at 11:50 AM #

    I have heard that UGA’s search firm was hurting them.

  20. packalum44 04/03/2009 at 12:33 PM #

    LKNpackfan: “Yep. Pickens, $3b – Goodnight, $8.7b”

    Thanks for sharing those figures. These numbers come from Forbes I believe. They are estimates. However let me point out that it is easier to estimate Picken’s value because most of his money is liquid, in his hedge fund which has tanked like all of them (except the short sellers whom have made billions).

    Goodnight’s wealth is much harder to estimate. His value is tied up in SAS which is the largest PRIVATE software firm in the world. SAS brings in about 2-3 billion in revenue annually and is growing. However they don’t release financial statements like public companies so no one really knows how to estimate the intrinsic value of the company (discount of future cash flows).

    IF Jim decided to go public (not likely), I honestly believe his “true” net worth is EASILY in the double digits 10-15 billion range and his wealth would be tied to the trading value of his stock, and therefore much more liquid. Or you could estimate his net worth by what other companies would pay for SAS. A year or two ago Microsoft or Oracle made an offer that would have netted Jim 10-12 billion and he laughed at them.

    Extremely proud to tell people he is an alumnus and former professor of NCSU.

  21. packfan1 04/03/2009 at 2:11 PM #

    There are a couple of things I don’t understand about the majority of the opinions here:

    1) We tunred the page on the Herb Sendek era of basketball at NCSU. Why do we want to bring a Sendek desciple (Sen Miller) back into the program? Isn’t that another risky move?

    2) Why does everybody say that Lowe had to rebuild the program? We had been to 5 straight NCAA tournaments before he came. Even though we didn’t have many scholarship players when Lowe got here, we did have players that were good enough to make the tournament under Sendek. And even though Lowe’s style of play is different, a good coach can adjust for the players he has as long as they are decent. And by the way, if they were so bad, why did we have more of Sendek’s players still starting than Lowe’s in his 3rd season as coach? Lowe was supposed to take us to the next level, not rebuild. Even a mediocre coach like Sendek was able to takeover a terrible Arizona St. team and in 3 years take them to the NCAA tournament. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that it’s hard to improve in the ACC with tough competition, I just don’t think we were that bad when Lowe got here.

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