The Chronicle is calling him "the favorite". Speculation at this point IMO.
Carmody out at Northwestern per Goodman. Coach Collins may be a candidate.
LINK
The Chronicle is calling him "the favorite". Speculation at this point IMO.
Here's the money quote from the OP link:
A bit more than speculation, but there is also the "supply side" of the transaction: Would Chris take the job?By Eye on College Basketball staff
March 16, 2013 11:58 am ET
...
The frontrunner to replace Carmody, sources told CBSSports.com, is Duke assistant coach and Illinois native Chris Collins.
sagegrouse
Hmmm... Well, he should be careful, because if he takes the job, our "stalker" Maryland may just make Northwestern their new "bitter rival" when they show up in 2015.
Seriously, I think if Coach Collins wants to be the head coach at Duke one day, this would be a logical stepping-stone. It certainly could hurt our Chicago recruiting pipeline, though.
Just be you. You is enough. - K, 4/5/10, 0:13.8 to play, 60-59 Duke.
You're all jealous hypocrites. - Titus on Laettner
You see those guys? Animals. They're animals. - SIU Coach Chris Lowery, on Duke
The Northwestern job is one of two things: a sleeping giant who has never been awake OR a coaches graveyard.
The Wildcats have never made the NCAA Tournament and have only been ranked by the AP Poll for a total of 12 weeks.
Eleven of those weeks took place in 1969 and prior.
Bill Carmody had the most success the Wildcats had seen in years and his record over 13 years was just 191-204 (69-148 in B1G play) with 4 NIT bids.
The best he did in the B1G was 8-8 in 2004 to tie for 5th.
The best a Hall of Fame coach the likes of Tex Winter could do in 5 years was 44-87 (25-61 in Big Ten play).
While researching this I came accross infomation I did not previously know:
Jim Calhoun was, at one point, the top candidate for the Northwestern job in April 1986.
This was while he was still at Northeastern and before he built UConn into what it became.
Calhoun turned down the job because, according to the article I found, "his idea of improvement was grander than Northwestern's" and "he aspires to higher goals than finishing in the middle of a conference."
NU opted to go with former Duke head coach Bill Foster instead.
Foster spent 7 years at NU and went 54-141 (13-113 in Big Ten play) -- yes, that's right, 100! games under .500 in 7 seasons of conference play.
The Northwestern AD's comments about Calhoun after he turned them down are laughable in hindsight:
"It's obvious Jim was intimidated by the quality of programs and coaches in the Big Ten," Doug Single said.
"If that's the way he feels he's obviously not ready to coach in the Big Ten."
Article link (but it's pay archive): http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-3759270.html
Chicago Sun-Times April 3, 1986 Dan Pompei - NU's Single turns pitch to Foster
If Chris takes the Northwestern job, I suppose we could bring in Johnny Dawkins as an independent contractor to conduct interviews at half time and other ancillary tasks.
As much as I'd hate to see Chris and his undeniable love and passion for the program leave the family, Northwestern would provide for a perfect scenario to prepare Chris for the difficult balance of basketball and rigorous academic excellence that is expected of a coach at Duke. It worked out superbly for Johnny at Stanford.
If Collins does leave, I wonder if that would open the door for Chris Carrawell to rejoin the staff? Since it would without a doubt be a former Duke player or coach replacing Chris on the staff, who are the other prime candidates for when that time comes? Laettner? Hurley? Paulus?
The only person I can think of who might be happy about Carmody getting fired is Pat Haden.
The NU job is about as no-win of a proposition as you can get. Lousy gym, lousy fan support, lousy co-eds, and admission standards aren't "relaxed" anywhere near to the extent that they are for other schools.
We did recently win a bowl game for the first time in 65 years, so that's one item off my bucket list. I fear the second NU-related one, NCAA tourney appearance, won't happen until the field is expanded to 128.
Supposedly, there is a story about Tommy Amaker turning down the Northwestern job in 1993.
The reason?
He brought two redacted high school transcripts with him.
He showed them to the NU administration and asked if those two players would be admitted.
NU told Amaker that neither would be granted admission to NU -- those two players were Laettner & Hurley.
Amaker turned the job down because he knew that Northwestern could never succeed with those admission restrictions.
Nothing has changed at NU with regard to admissions and that is why they have never accomplished anything in basketball.
Bill Carmody could be considered a miracle-worker with those resources.
Unless Chris Collins can convince them to adapt, he should stay away from Northwestern.
Calhoun at NW would have been a real mismatch.
NW's problem is wanting to be Ivy like in academics and not making enough of a concession to be Big 10 in athletics.
The head bball coaching job is very tough. However succeed and other bigger doors should open. Will be interesting to watch.
SoCal
That's the thing that confuses me-- why do they do it (concede) in football, but not in basketball? They were horrible for decades (maybe longer than Duke was) in football (although admittedly, against tougher competition), and then suddenly, they seemed like they decided they were tired of getting stomped-- why did they decide that they cared about football (after not caring for so long), and yet they have still never decided to care about basketball? It takes so many fewer special admits (maybe as few as 1-2/year) to make a basketball competitive, while football takes 20-30 special admits-- surely basketball will not damage their standards nearly as much as football concessions would/have.
Neither Laettner nor Hurley has done anything to position themselves to be a coach-- Laettner lives in a dreamland where he thinks somebody is going to eventually name him an NBA coach-- he is completely delusional, both about his career possibilities and his financial situation. I don't think Hurley (surprisingly, given his dad) has any desire to get into coaching. Paulus is clearly the most likely to join the staff, of the ones you mention.
Does your comment about Dawkins pre-suppose that he is going to be fired at Stanford? Because the latest news suggests that he has already been given (at least) a one year reprieve from the firing squad.