Maybe just me, but If I am happy, my family is happy, and I am making 4-5 milsky per year,
another couple of million not very important. Especially with another 3 yrs on my contract!

Can we add Rodney Terry, yet? Or do they not care since football is rolling?

I think Buzz would listen if it were open.

I'll be interested to see if Texas jumps into the fray if they miss the tournament completely.

That's another one I have a hard time imagining wanting to hire Buzz.

lol, we would go insane if tejas missed their tourney, fired their coach and went after Buzz...

that is why we want Texas to be decently good but not terrible to fire their coach...

Buzz has apparently said some things in his past (plus his moves from Marquette to VT then to A&M) that have given some people the impression he is more comfortable at a place that is not a 'Basketball' school.

bobinator said:

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I'll be interested to see if Texas jumps into the fray if they miss the tournament completely.

That's another one I have a hard time imagining wanting to hire Buzz.

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Buzz is a tough chew for a school that can bring in top talent imho.

Pumpkinhead said:

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Buzz has apparently said some things in his past (plus his moves from Marquette to VT then to A&M) that have given some people the impression he is more comfortable at a place that is not a 'Basketball' school.

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I think he's also smart enough to know that his "brick by brick" rebuild strategy isn't going to fly at a higher level program.

I think the question if you're an Indiana or even a Texas is do you think Buzz's level of recruiting at A&M is because it's A&M or is that the kinds of players that Buzz is going to go after even if you give him a bigger NIL budget.

I dunno, I just have a hard time thinking that if I've got $5M to spend per year on a coach AND potentially an elite NIL bag like Indiana supposedly has that Buzz is near the top of my list.

Again though, we need to start thinking of who we would go after if Buzz does jump. I don't think there's a super clear top target or even list of targets unlike the last couple of times.

Will Wade
Bryan Hodgson

I think we can probably group Wade and Chris Beard in together as a group we probably aren't going after even if they're gettable.

I'm wondering if it's time to reconsider the younger Pitino.

do you seriously think Buzz will leave A&M for another program if A&M can match their offering $$$...

that doesn't seem likely a Buzz move but no one truly knows...

Yeah. I do.

I think Buzz looks at basketball secondarily. His primary goal is turning boys into men. I don't think he's ever going to go after "ballers" no matter how much NIL he gets. Character is king with Buzz Williams. Seems like he looks at these things from a long term, what are you leaving behind perspective.

Younger Pitino here would be like the Knoghts at Tech.

bobinator said:

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I think we can probably group Wade and Chris Beard in together as a group we probably aren't going after even if they're gettable.

I'm wondering if it's time to reconsider the younger Pitino.

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What about Mark Turgeon

Quote:

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do you seriously think Buzz will leave A&M for another program if A&M can match their offering $$$...

that doesn't seem likely a Buzz move but no one truly knows...

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Buzz is one of the few coaches in history to take a large PAY CUT to go from a place like Marquette to Va Tech.

You never know what he's gonna do.

Climbing the basketball ladder doesn't seem like it's gonna be it.

bobinator said:

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I think we can probably group Wade and Chris Beard in together as a group we probably aren't going after even if they're gettable.

I'm wondering if it's time to reconsider the younger Pitino.

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I'm really not sold on Richard Pitino. I think his time at Minnesota is a more accurate reflection of his coaching ability than New Mexico. New Mexico is a place that has a massive built in home court advantage that can influence a coach's record by more than just a couple thousandths of a percent. That place is extremely hard to win in for opposing teams. If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend going to a New Mexico home game there. College basketball fans will appreciate it.

I'm not completely sold either, but just trying to think of realistic possibilities if we have an opening. We're almost definitely not going to hire anyone proven, so everyone is going to be some kind of risk.

Do you think we could pry McCasland away from Tech?

No.

bobinator said:

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No.

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Their commitment to NIL?

Because Buzz makes more than he does.

For the record, I'm not arguing that we could. Frankly I think Texas A&M is probably one of the least desirable places to coach basketball in the SEC.

Oh I'm sure we could get him a nice raise. But I don't see why you'd leave Tech for here.

I super disagree that we're one of the least desirable places to coach, but I don't think we're particularly desirable either where we could steal a coach from a peer program that wants to keep theirs.

McCasland is making $4M a year. Buzz is making $4.5M

We're not breaking the bank to go at $5M, and coaches simply don't move for decimal points. There's gotta be something else. We don't have that vs Tech.

In this day and age, what makes a program desirable to a coach, other than the salary and contract perks? Is it NIL support/recruiting budget at the very top?

If you have already seen the Buddy Holly statue and like trees, I could see a move here from Lubbock.
If your thing is skiing in Colorado when not coaching tceh is closer!

20ag07 said:

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McCasland is making $4M a year. Buzz is making $4.5M

We're not breaking the bank to go at $5M, and coaches simply don't move for decimal points. There's gotta be something else. We don't have that vs Tech.

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I wasn't aware he was at $4 million already. I haven't done the research, I just remembered that his original deal wasn't special.

I think there's a lot of things:

1) Current baseline NIL support - Is this a school that already has a big NIL purse for basketball, or is the coach going to have to do some handshaking and upselling to donors to draw and draw that money out, which leads to...

2) Potential NIL support - Maybe this is a school that doesn't have a big purse now, but with the right coach could have resources that are currently untapped for basketball. Maybe I'm a coach that sees that as an opportunity.

3) Facilities - In this new revenue sharing world, it's going to be harder and harder to commit big money to facilities projects. So where is this school? And when we say facilities it's not as much the game arena, it's the player support areas, locker rooms, practice gyms, etc. If they're already behind, it's going to be hard to catch up.

4) Proximity to talent - Especially important if 1 and 2 are lacking. How hard is it to get players here? If my school and school b are offering the same amount in NIL, is there still a chance I get them?

5) Just general administrative support - If I really need something, am I going to get it or am I going to have to fight tooth and nail for every little thing?

There's probably more, and there's always x factors for every coach, but off the top of my head those are the big things. And I think we're in pretty good shape in most of them, but not in such good shape that we're going to pull a coach from a school that's on the same tier we are.

College Station is closer to Waco might be the only edge we'd have over Tech for McCasland.

bobinator said:

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Yeah. I do.

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i wonder if buzz would engage BCG to ask his opinion on whether to leave when the program is built to this point. the grass is not alway greener even if the
school had a long history. but who knows with buzz he is a different breed, in a good way.

Detmersdislocatedshoulder said:

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bobinator said:

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Yeah. I do.

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i wonder if buzz would engage BCG to ask his opinion on whether to leave when the program is built to this point. the grass is not alway greener even if the
school had a long history. but who knows with buzz he is a different breed, in a good way.

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I've seen this thrown around a few times. If Buzz and Gillispie have had a relationship, I'm sure that conversation has happened a lot of times, in different contexts and manifestations over the years.

Y'all are acting like Buzz is the young pup and BCG is the master. Buzz has probably won 150 more NCAA Division I games than BCG. I understand getting an opinion, but I think Buzz knows what he's doing.

Yeah, and to be clear here, I'm not saying I absolutely think Buzz is leaving, but I think it's impossible to guess what actually drives his decision-making and our athletic department needs to be prepared for what we're going to do if he does leave. I don't think this is a situation where we can just say we're gonna match X dollars and he definitely stays.

Given Buzz's history, what jobs are already open and could become open, the fact that he has at least some kind of relationship with Gregg Doyel of the Indy Star who recently wrote this article, etc, we have nobody to blame but ourselves if he leaves and we're completely caught off guard.

I read the article, and Greg Doyel is pumping Buzz's profile and overall coaching journey (well deserved though). My question is if this type of content published in a major Indiana state newspapers (IndyStar) are pushed (or sponsored) by the school interested (IU)? Are they trying to get some sort of "thermometer reading" on a passionate fan base like Indiana to avoid revolt (e.g., Stoops to A&M or Schiano to Tennessee)?

I am off Twitter now, but what is Trev Alberts' (A&M Dir. Athletics) overall involvement with basketball? Last year, he was involved in Women's volleyball, baseball, and football. However, I have not heard much from Alberts regarding basketball.

Are ADs a factor in this decision? Buzz enjoyed a stable journey at Virginia Tech, with the same AD for ~5 years.

It is hard to read anything on Buzz, and sometimes he has some sort of "spurts" in giving insight into what he thinks, like the post-game interview at Mizzou, where he talked about his staff being under-compensated.

IU isn't involved at all, at least not at this point and I highly doubt at all. Doyel absolutely loves Buzz, so I'm sure he just wrote it because that's who he wants. I'd venture there's at least a decent chance he shot Buzz a text or something to see if he minded him putting it out there.

But that doesn't really tell us anything we don't already know. Obviously Buzz would be interested in Indiana, or at least at a bare minimum it's obvious that having it seem like he's interested in Indiana is to his advantage.

What we don't know is Indiana's level of interest in Buzz. I'd still be surprised if he's more than a second or third tier candidate at this point.

Perhaps something to consider is the fact that Buzz keeps insisting that he does not like to be "bothered" with basketball related approaches when he is in the community. In one of his recent interviews, he mentioned that he goes to Snooze Eatery and he talked to the manager about just focusing on his visit as a customer (paraphrasing) or sometimes not liking going to a local church because people approach him with basketball questions or more recently in his radio show talking about receiving a text about a comment he made related about Henry's leadership potential (complaining abcomparing him to Barack Obama).

One of the difficult things for people like Buzz and BCG is the fact that the UK and IU are only focused on basketball, and they are some sort of local celebrity like Calipari. A recent article at the IndyStar talked about this challenge:

"Bloomington's a small, insular place. It's impossible to escape the white-hot spotlight associated with the town's most high-profile position.

Dinner, church, school the job will follow a coach and his family virtually anywhere inside county lines, no matter what. Some people thrive under that sort of attention. Others very simply don't."


So I still have a hard time seeing how well Buzz might fit under that type of spotlight.

I agree that it makes sense that Buzz uses this "potential interest" to his advantage. I hope he can become some Matt Painter for us and stay for another 10 years. Most solid programs (except Clemson) enjoyed long-term stability with their head coach (e.g., Izzo at MSU, Painter at Purdue, Mike K. at Duke, Tony B. at Virginia, Jay Wright at Villanova, etc).