Two items for your Wednesday.
First, former Tar Heel Larry Brown and also former coach for half the teams in the NBA as well as Davidson, UCLA and Kansas on the college level is set to become the new head coach at SMU. Why? Because SMU is under the mistaken impression that 2-3 years of a 71 year old coach who never hangs around anywhere longer than six years will somehow clean up the mess left behind by Matt Doherty. In fact let's play a little pattern game my kids do in math. Name the next two items in the pattern(answer at the end of the post)
Matt Doherty-Roy Williams-Matt Doherty-Larry Brown
By all accounts SMU is in complete shambles as a basketball program. I guess no one destroys them like Doherty does which is too bad because it would be nice to see him find some success somewhere.
Meanwhile in Wisconsin, Badgers head coach Bo Ryan has taken all leave of his senses in setting a ridiculous number of restrictions for the release of freshman Jarrod Uthoff. Ryan has said that Utoff may not transfer to any Big Ten or ACC schools and is also barred from Marquette and Iowa St. Ryan's reasoning is he doesn't want to face Uthoff in a future game which is why he is restricting the ACC because of the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.
At this stage, the transfer restrictions set by coaches has gotten completely out of hand. Granted UNC benefited from said ridiculous restrictions with Justin Knox who would have gone to UAB from Alabama to stay closer to home but Crimson Tide coach Anthony Grant would not permit it. In this case Ryan is concerned that he might see Uthoff down the road in an ACC-Big Ten game so he is cutting off the whole conference as an option for the freshman. Marquette is an in-state opponent Wisconsin plays annualy and the reason behind adding Iowa State to the list is unclear unless the Cyclones are on the Badgers' future schedule. At the end of the day the list of schools Uthoff is barred from considering is 25 or roughly one third of the BCS conference schools.
In my humble opinion coaches should not be allowed to dictate where a transfer may go. Each conference should set a rule barring transfers within the league but outside of that a player should get to transfer to the school of his choice.
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The answer to the pattern game above is: Matt Doherty-Ted Owens.
Excluding the one year at Florida Atlantic, Matt Doherty has now twice been replaced by the former Kansas coaches. If Matt Doherty gets hired and fired enough times at some point someone is going to need to raise James Naismith from the dead to keep complete the sequence.