April 9, 2024
Andy Enfield left USC for SMU before he could get fired. Enfield who rode an upstart 15 seed Florida Gulf Coast team to the Sweet Sixteen in 2013 to big bucks at USC never could duplicate his earlier success. After a 14-16 season despite having Bronny James on his team Enfield bolted for SMU. Now leaving California for Dallas is a smart move regardless. Enfield is going to a no income tax state to a school with zero expectations of being competitive in the “Atlantic” Coast Conference. Enfield was replaced by Eric Musselman who had been at Arkansas. One must question Musselman’s sanity. Perhaps he would rather live in glitzy Los Angeles than Fayetteville, Arkansas but why? Surely it is preferable to coach before sold out crowds of 20,000 at Arkansas than before a half full arena at USC. But Musselman is a gypsy and probably got bored living in one place for five years. He had modest success at Arkansas reaching the Sweet 16 three times. However, this year Arkansas was only 16-17 overall and 6-12 in the SEC. So perhaps he left before being asked to leave. Musselman is being replaced by the legendary John Calipari who had worn out his welcome in Lexington. The Big Blue Nation is not very happy with UKs failure in the NCAA tournament in recent years. I think that Arkansas will re-energize Calipari who will continue to recruit 5 star players and will have plenty of NIL money with the Walmart family, Jerry Jones and the Tyson chicken folks as backers. Look for Arkansas in the Final Four within the next three years. What is interesting is that Arkansas is supposed to have offered Ole Miss’ Chris Beard and Kansas State’s Jerome Tang the job and was turned down. One must wonder about the sanity of those two. Obviously, Calipari was not the third choice but became available and fell into Arkansas’ lap. Who will replace Calipari? Mitch Barnhardt the UK athletics director knows that he must make a splashy hire. It is not hard to imagine that the next UK coach will have already won a national championship. Some have said to go after UConn’s Dan Hurley. But Hurley is too prickly for UK fans and will instantly grate on southerner sensitivities. Others mentioned are Scott Drew and Jay Wright. Some have mentioned Bruce Pearl -who doesn’t have a championship and would be a controversial hire. But what about Bill Self, Tom Izzo or heavens forbid Rick Pitino? I think Izzo would be a spectacular hire. Although Barnhardt would not dare do it, I think the perfect hire would be Seton Hall’s Shaheen Holloway who may be the best young coach in the country. But given the reaction of Big Blue Nation to the hiring of Tubby Smith from Georgia even after he won them a national championship, Barnhardt will play it safe and hire one of the old guys.
haroldblackphd.com 