COACHING SEARCH STARTING TO GET A LITTLE SCARY

By Jay Lupo/Of The Commercial Staff

It’s 7:09 p.m. on Sunday, and Arkansas still doesn’t have a basketball coach.

That’s a scary thought considering athletic director Frank Broyles fired Stan Heath a week ago.

Once a proud and prestigious program, the Razorbacks have fallen on hard times and never has that been more evident than in the last week.

Since Heath, the fifth-year former Arkansas coach who in back-to-back seasons guided the Razorbacks to 20 wins and an NCAA Tournament first-round loss, got the boot in Fayetteville, several big-name candidates have apparently been contacted and turned down or expressed little interest in the job.

Texas A&M’s Billy Gillispie played Broyles and the administration like a fiddle. Over the last month, conversations between those close to Gillispie and sources close to the Arkansas program took place. It was thought that, if Heath was fired, Gillispie would almost certainly become the next head coach.

But when the inevitable nail finally went into the coffin and Heath was let go, the 47-year-old Aggie coach didn’t return calls from Broyles. A&M athletic director Bill Byrne didn’t, either, until last Thursday.

On that day, after four days of pursuing — or trying to — Gillispie, it was announced that he was being given a raise and would stay in College Station, Texas.

Scrambling to find a coach after what appeared to be a done deal fell through with Gillispie, names like Kansas’ Bill Self and Southern California’s Tim Floyd were thrown around.

Please. Give me one logical reason why Self would leave Kansas for Arkansas. You can’t, because there isn’t one.

Floyd made a little more sense, but not much. Floyd is only making $800,000 in Los Angeles, but guided the Trojans to the “Sweet 16” this year, including a 17-point schooling of Heath’s Hogs in round one, and has one of the nation’s top players in O.J. Mayo coming to town next season.

He’s already building a powerhouse at USC.

Self reiterated three times last week that he wasn’t interested, and Floyd said before the NCAA Tournament that this will be “his last job.”

Simply put, they weren’t coming to Arkansas and it’d be a waste of time to seriously pursue them.

On Saturday, Memphis coach John Calipari’s name came into the mix. It was reported that he’d been offered the job in Atlanta, the site of the Final Four and tonight’s national championship game between Florida and Ohio State, for over $2 million per year.

On Sunday, we learned that wasn’t true. Calipari told CBS Sportline.com’s Gary Parrish that he was “OK” where he was at and that he had “a good job.”

Apparently no offer was made to Calipari, as he didn’t express much interest in the job. It seemed to be more of a timing issue with him.

“Whoever is offered that job would have to be out of their mind to not take it,” Calipari told Parrish. “But it’s just not the right time for me.”

After a week of not having a basketball coach, it doesn’t seem like it’s the right time for anybody.

Now, Arkansas will more than likely be forced to hire an up-and-coming and/or experienced midmajor coach.

The popular name is Creighton’s Dana Altman, but he’s rumored to be heading to Iowa. There are others like Southern Illinois’ Chris Lowery, New Mexico State’s Reggie Theus, Oral Roberts’ Scott Sutton, Winthrop’s Gregg Marshall and Virginia Commonwealth’s Anthony Grant.

But honestly, is that the kind of name the administration had in mind when it fired Heath? I seriously doubt it.

Now the possibility is there that Arkansas fans might have their worst nightmare come true: They might want Heath back.

As an Arkansas graduate and lifelong fan of the Razorbacks, one that witnessed personally the 1994 national championship and 1995 title loss to UCLA, I was nowhere near happy with what Heath had done in his five seasons at Arkansas.

When you sugarcoat it, yeah, he did make it to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments, where his teams made late-season runs to get in and lost in the first round. He won 20 games in back-to-back seasons, too.

But remember, after an 11-point home loss to Tennessee on Feb. 24, the Razorbacks were just 16-12 overall and 5-9 in the SEC. That’s terrible, especially considering several SEC coaches had conceded that this Arkansas team had the most talent in the league besides juggernaut Florida.

The Razorbacks beat Mississippi State and Vanderbilt to close out the season, finishing 7-9 in what was perhaps the weakest SEC West since they joined the league in 1992. Heath’s team had horrific losses on the road at South Carolina, Auburn, Ole Miss and Missouri and suffered bad home losses like Texas Tech (71-56 in Little Rock) and Georgia.

Time and time again after disheartening losses, Heath’s players were quoted with phrases such as these: “They wanted it more than us,”; “We just got outhustled,”; etc...

Well, that’s just not good.

Heath inherited nothing from former coach Nolan Richardson, so his sub-.500 conference record wasn’t that alarming. What was, however, was his 23-25 SEC record over the last three seasons and 7-33 overall SEC road record.

Long story short, I didn’t have a problem with the administration firing Heath. He could recruit, but couldn’t motivate and appeared to be way out of his league on the bench. He was a great guy, and if he coaches again, his new team will be my second favorite.

But I, like many in the Razorback Nation, was tired of Heath being the basketball coach.

That sentiment would’ve been verified had the Hogs hired a Gillispie, Self, Floyd or Calipari. But now, I don’t know.

By the time you read this, Broyles could’ve already announced the new coach. It’s almost likely, too, considering he was back from Atlanta before Saturday’s first national semifinal between Ohio State and Georgetown tipped off. It’s doubtful he’d have left without a coach, or at least a list of guys that wanted to be the coach.

If that’s the case, maybe it will be the big-name coach the university and fanbase desire.

Then again, maybe not.

Maybe the fans will want Heath back, and that, my friends, would be Arkansas’ worst nightmare.

Jay Lupo is a sports writer for The Commercial. His email address is jlupo@pbcommercial.com