Soft Pretzel Logic

Mitchell Rosenzweig writes in:

Stan Heath shown the door by Frank Broyles. Arkansas is really not a factor these days.
Who are you hearing as the candidates?
Thats 2 SEC jobs open -- AR and KY

Still have 2 Big 10(11) openings as well
Michigan and Iowa

And 2 in the Ivy. Harvard and Princeton. I know that gets some play around here

Any buzz on any of these?

Its been quiet on this front, and all we know is that Calipari signed a nice extension at Memphis State.

And Little Ricky is content at Louisville. He must like the Big East road trips to NYC, DC, and Chicago a little more than trips to Starkville, Oxford, and other outposts in SEC-land.

Only real news I see is that Ritchie Mckay (ex New Mex) landed at Liberty. He must be liked by Falwell.

I must admit I don't hear all that much of the national coaching rumors. As for the Ivies, I don't know much there either but I can give you a few names. At Princeton, two names I've heard mentioned in the media are Northwestern assistant Mitch Henderson, Georgetown assistant Rob Burke and -- yes, it's getting around -- maybe even Bill Carmody himself. See this story.

Henderson assists Carmody, and is a former Princeton player from the mid-90's. If any Penn fans have any good stories about him (which I gather are out there), do post them. Burke assists JTIII, which certainly puts him in a good place right now.

But rule out another Hoyas assistant, Kevin Broadus, who will take the job at SUNY-Binghamton after the NCAA Tournament is done. Still, I'm not inclined to think Princeton will go "outside the family" this time.

Having said that, if you -- yes, you -- want to coach Princeton, here's the job listing. The qualifications don't seem too excessive.

As for Harvard, rumors abound that New Hampshire and Drexel coach Bill Herrion is a leading candidate. One of the sources of the rumors is this Basketball U. story, which is behind a paywall. Williams College coach Dave Paulsen is another candidate, and has been in the mix for a number of recent Ivy openings.

Harvard is an interesting job in that it's clearly a premier school in terms of name branding, even though the basketball program has never been successful. Yet unlike Princeton, which also has those qualities, Harvard doesn't have the history and culture of a certain way of doing things that Princeton has. New Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust was a professor at Penn from 1971 to 2005, so I would think she knows full well about how important college sports (and basketball specifically) can be on a campus.

On the big stage, I've yet to read anything that disproves the idea that Tom Izzo and Tom Crean are the top two candidates for Kentucky. I was certainly hoping Calipari would get the job for the sizzle of it, but good for Memphis for keeping him around (as an aside, what does it say that I've never referred to the school as Memphis State?).

As for Pitino, no reason for him to leave the Big East. Kentucky's a marquee job, but at Louisville he gets on national TV all the time and he gets to coach in New York, which you can't really do in the SEC unless you win the NIT. Which wouldn't go over well in Lexington.

I think the firing of Stan Heath is absurd, frankly. You might recall that retiring Arkansas AD Frank Broyles (read this piece from a few weeks back to get an idea of just how powerful he is) said that Heath would lose his job if he didn't make the NCAA Tournament. Well, Heath did it and lost his job anyway. No surprise that former Razorbacks coach Nolan Richardson said Broyles should take the job and see how he does with it.

I have nothing on Michigan, but there's news today that Iowa contacted Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl. Pearl said no thanks, and there's no reason for Pearl to leave Knoxville. He's clearly having a ton of fun and gets to coach at one of the rare schools that treats both basketball and football very well.

Speaking of that, go here and listen to Steve Alford talk about why he left Iowa.