ATLeagle {l Wrote}:Dick:
Who do you think Arizona hires? I also don't understand their sudden Michigan/Carolina push to keep it in the family.
While I will have much to report on 3rd Down Donnie Brown in short order, my insight into the basketball program and Dave Heeke’s thinking is limited as a result of some harsh but fair comments directed at Mr. Albion College during this past year’s Desert Duel.
With that said, I have been told that the feeling is that it’s Lloyd’s job to lose. Stoudamire will get an interview to help raise his profile so that he can hopefully get a better job then Pacific. Basketball people appear to think he has done as well as can be expected at Pacific and they’d like to see him be able to move up to a program that is not at such a horrendous competitive disadvantage with the better teams in its conference. I was told that Heeke was looking at Pope last year, but was not given permission to shit can Miller because of some huge Athletic Department shortfalls caused by the football program utterly imploding under Sumlin and a corresponding fundraising implosion. Of course, now BYU has extended Pope out to 2027 with a big kick up in salary and buyout that Arizona would not be able to overcome, even if Pope was willing to leave Provo for Tucson, which isn’t likely anymore. Of course, the real reason that Heeke is stuck with the Gonzaga assistant as his first option is because Josh Pastner is a scumbag. He was always supposed to eventually return to Tucson—presumably when Sean Miller was ready to retire in a decade or so. That would have put Pastner at 50 years of age or thereabouts—roughly the same age Lute was when he arrived in Tucson. Using booster money to take recruits to strip joints would not be disqualifying for the UofA job in most circumstances—as anyone who watched Chris Mills driving around campus in a red 911 with the vanity plate “Lench Mob” (admittedly, this could have been leftover from his time at Kentucky) or Brian Williams/Bison Dele’s sweet decked out Bronco (admittedly could have been from Maryland) or Matt Othick’s Mercedes (Tarkanian later claimed “Back Door Lute” had outbid him for Othick’s services)—but having a post season ban on your resume after all of Sean Miller’s scumbaggery, took out the future head coach in waiting.
One completely wild ass rumor that is making the rounds is that if Heeke isn’t sold on Lloyd during the interview—which apparently happened this past Friday—that there is some basketball booster pressure to see if Luke Walton, who will certainly be fired by the Kings at the end of the season, has any interest in the job. The feeling in that camp is that Walton had an impossible situation in LA—between the roster being gutted, the front office getting fired, dealing with Magic Johnson’s prima donna act (and Johnson being an incredibly bad executive) and Bron-Bron and the cobbled together 2018-19 roster all getting hurt at the same time and missing the second half of the season. And the Kings will always be the Kings—the only blame there being taking the job in the first place instead of waiting for something better.