HB Arnett’s
COUGAR SPORTSLINE
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hbarnett@fiber.net and hbarnett@xmission.com
Vol. 28,
Issue 32, March 10, 2008
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MONEY,
MOVES AND MWC CHAMPIONSHIPS
You gotta love
Dave Rose.
In three years at
BYU, he has turned in 20-plus wins each season he has coached the Cougars.
He took BYU to the
NCAA tourney last year and will do the same this season.
With or without
Trent Plaisted next year, it is our opinion that BYU will be an even better
basketball team next season.
Like we said, you
gotta love Dave Rose if you are a Cougar basketball fan.
You also gotta
love Dave Rose if you are an athletic director at a BCS conference school
looking to find a replacement for a coach you are going to fire.
Despite a nice
raise and contract extension offered by BYU earlier this year to Rose, love and
loyalty to a school can only hold up so long before the lure of a big paycheck
and giving your family lifetime security becomes a real issue.
Real
World
At least that is
how it works in the real world of college coaching.
Let's put it this
way, a four year deal at around a million dollars per year is something coaches
can't and very seldom will turn down.
We don't know what
Rose makes now, but you can go to the bank that he isn't going to the bank with
what a lot of coaches are earning.
Let's talk money.
Steve Alford, the
first-year
He found the
golden parachute with UNM when they gave him $975,000 per year.
Alford is a pauper
in the pantheon of big name coaches.
Is is a list of
what the top coaches in the nation make in reverse order.
10. John Calipari,
9.
8.
7. Jim Calhoun,
UConn, $1,500,00
6.
5. Tom Crean,
Marquette, $1,688,487
4.
3.
2.
1. Tubby Smith,
There are plenty
of other coaches who make at least a $1 million or more per year.
Kelvin Sampson was
making $1,100,000 at
Larry Eustachy,
the former
Mark Turgeon at
LSU fired John
Brady before the season was over. They are looking for a new coach and you can
be sure that they will be paying in the $100,000,000 range in salary.
Going
Rate
That is the going
rate in the SEC for basketball coaches. Even Vanderbilt pays Kevin Stallings
$139,643,000 per annum.
You can bet that
there will be some job openings after the season is over and the same thing
will be happening the following year. It is the nature of the business.
You can also bet
that Dave Rose is positioned to be sought after by some schools that have mega
money salaries to offer.
Be Very
Careful What You Wish For
BYU hasn't won a
game in the NCAA Tourney since 1993. Most BYU fans are hoping that will change beginning
this year with this Cougar basketball team.
We need to be
careful what we wish for.
If Dave Rose
somehow can get the Cougars to win a couple of NCAA games, his desirability
could very well match the dollars being offered by schools who want a coach
with a proven record and some NCAA charisma.
We think the big
push for Rose will be next year, but to validate our point, we want to go back
a few seasons.
It wasn't that
long ago that Stan Heath was coaching at
Hogs and
Coaches
Despite getting an
NCAA tourney invite last season, the Hogs in general and Frank Broyles in
particular, weren't happy with Heath.
They canned him
last year and went looking for a proven and big name coach.
They tried to get
John Calipari. He said no. They tried Bill Self and whiffed, Billy Gillespie,
Tim Floyd and Tom Crean were all approached. They all declined.
Dana Altman from
Creighton finally said yes. That lasted a day and then he backed out and
returned to
They eventually
hired John Pelphrey. He was at
Yes
He said yes to
The point we are
trying to make is that while Dave Rose has put BYU back on the map, he has also
put himself on the radar of big name programs that will be looking for a coach
either this year or next.
As mentioned
before, when the money gets really big, you have to look to your family's
financial future.
If
Before we go any
farther, we know that the big money is out there for the taking and we also
know that BYU won't be matching that big money, even with their new
Can't
Compete
The Cougars won't
and can't compete on the open market for high salaries offered by other
schools.
That brings us to
our next point.
If Dave Rose
continues to win, you can expect a big money offer. It will be inevitable.
If Rose ever does
decide that he will leave
It is obvious to
us that the pickings are slim for a Rose replacement.
Rose's No. 1
assistant, Dave Rice, is qualified and will make a good head coach somewhere,
but he is not LDS. That will preclude him from ever being offered the head job
at BYU.
The other two
assistant coaches, John Wardenburg and Terry Nashif would both have to be
considered long shots. Nashif would be an extreme long shot because he doesn't
have much experience.
SUU
Austin Ainge is an
assistant at
Stew Morrill is at
Jeff Judkins is
the head women's coach, but he would be a last gasp choice, in our opinion.
There are some LDS
juco coaches out there and that is where both Rose and Steve Cleveland came
from, but we don't see that happening again except in desperate circumstances.
There are two
things happening from our vantage point.
Rose will get some
big money offers soon.
He will also
continue to have some very good basketball teams.
While money will
be a strong draw, we remember Rose making what we thought was a very brash
statement when he was hired.
He said that his
goal was to get the Cougars to a final four appearance.
At the rate he is
going and with the improvement of his teams every year, that goal may be what
will keep the big money out of the picture for at least a few more years.
RPI and
SAGARIN
There has been a
lot of hoopla lately about BYU's nice RPI rating. The latest we saw had the
Cougars with an RPI of 21.
Jeff Sagarin and
his rating system has BYU with a 31. He also has
There are some who
proclaim that a good RPI will get you an invite to the NCAA tourney, but it's a
good Sagarin that gets you a good seed.
We will see this
coming Sunday if that assumption has any validity.
What we do find
interesting are the teams listed ahead of BYU in both rating systems.
In the RPI here
are the teams with better numbers. They include No. 1 Tennessee, North
Carolina, Memphis, Duke, Texas, UCLA, Georgetown, Kansas, Xavier, Vanderbilt,
Louisville, Wisconsin, Drake, Michigan State, Connecticut, Indiana, Stanford,
Butler, Notre Dame, Washington State and No. 31, BYU.
In Sagarin's
latest release he has No. 1 North Carolina, Memphis, UCLA, Kansas, Duke,
Tennessee, Wisconsin, Georgetown, Texas, Xavier, Louisville, Indiana,
Washington State, Stanford, Marquette, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Drake,
Connecticut, Gonzaga, West Virginia, Clemson, USC, Butler, Pittsburgh, Texas
A&M, Purdue, Arizona, Davidson, Saint Mary's and No. 31, BYU.
If the Sagarin
seeding theory holds water, than teams like
We will be
interested to see how it plays out on Sunday when the selections and seeding
are announced.
FLUFF
AND STUFF
Trent Plaisted
will graduate next month from BYU. He will still have another year of
eligibility left and according to Dave Rose at a recent luncheon, he is
planning on Plaisted returning next season.
While Rose may be
expecting Plaisted to return, you can bet that he has been covering his bases
in recruiting in case Plaisted doesn't come back for his senior season.
We fully expect
BYU to sign another player this spring.
BYU used their
last two home games to invite the top 2009 recruits from the state of
The word we get is
that C.J. Wilcox and his family were in the
It looks like the
Cougars have made some progress with Wilcox.
Against
Steve Gervais has
been the football coach at Skyline HS in
He will be one of
the speakers at the BYU coaches’ clinic next week.
Instead of
speaking as the coach at Skyline, he will now be speaking as the new running
back coach for Ty Willingham and the Washington Huskies.
Gervais was hired
by Willingham last week and given the responsibility to recruit the local high
schools in
One of his key
targets for 2010 will be his sophomore quarterback at Skyline this past year.
That would be Jake Heaps, who already has offers from BYU and UW.
Heaps and other
family members will be visiting BYU's campus and spring drills during the same
weekend of the clinic.
BYU's cumulative
Mountain West Conference record the last two years in the two main sports,
football and basketball, is 43-5. That is for the regular season in both
sports. The Cougars are 16-0 in football and 27-5 in basketball.
If you throw
in the MWC basketball tournament for last year, BYU is 45-6.
COUGARS
FINISH REGULAR SEASON WITH TWO MORE WINS
BYU capped off
their MWC title run last week with two more wins.
They clinched the
crown last Wednesday with a home-court victory over the Wyoming Cowboys. The
final was 78-61.
Trent Plaisted had
a big night with 23 points and 11 rebounds.
Saturday saw the
Cougars close out their regular season with a come-from-behind road win against
TCU.
The Cougars held a
10-point lead at the intermission, but TCU battled back to take a lead with
just 10 minutes remaining in the game.
BYU rallied behind
solid defense to get the 61-54 win.
BYU finished with
a 14-2 record in conference play and set a record for the most regular season
victories by a Cougar basketball team with their overall mark of 25-6.
Conference honors
will be announced later today. That will include the all-conference team, Coach
of the Year, Player of the Year and Newcomer of the Year.
We expect Trent Plaisted
and Lee Cummard to both be named first team all conference, but also expect BYU
to get shut out in all of individual honors.
OTHER
SPORTS
The BYU women's
basketball team finished with a 13-15 overall record and a 7-9 mark in MWC
play.
They are the fifth
seed in the MWC tournament and will face
The game is set to
tip off at 2:30 pm
In Men's
Volleyball, BYU swept two matches from No. 5 rated Pepperdine last weekend in
The No. 2 rated
Cougars are now 16-1 on the year and 11-1 in MPSF action.
BYU Baseball saw a
minor upturn in their fortunes last week. After starting the year 2-5, the
Cougars are currently 6-7.
In Softball, BYU
has played some top-ranked teams and their record reflects the competition. The
Cougars are now 12-10 on the year.
TELEVISION
TIMETABLE
The first game is set in
stone. All other games assume BYU continues to win in the MWC Tournament
BYU vs.
CSU or
Thursday, Mar. 13 at
Tipoff: 1:00 pm Mountain
Time
TV: Mtn
BYU vs.
Air Force or
Friday, Mar. 14 at
Tipoff: 7:35 pm Mountain
Time
TV: CSTV
BYU vs.
UNLV, TCU,
Saturday, Mar. 15 at
Tipoff: 5:00 pm Mountain
Time
TV: Versus