UND92,96

I was very surprised to hear that the difference in pay between the Mankato and Minot jobs is only something like $13k. I would have assumed it was significantly more than that. Anybody think Hedberg might give Mussman a call?

Not to beat a dead horse too much, but my feeling from the start was that Kelley probably had the authority to just exempt the job from most of the UND-specific procedures, and the process from start to finish could have been done in about three weeks.

I'm just curious what people would consider the absolute minimum acceptable season record for 2014-15? I'm not really all that interested in cutting Jones too much slack for a situation largely of his own creation, i.e. losing roughly 80% of the team's scoring, but that's just my opinion. Does he at least need to approach .500, or is something less than that acceptable in a rebuilding season?

Rick Hedberg said today that he hopes to have a replacement named within 10-14 days. I guess Minot State's internal policies must be a bit less restrictive than UND's.

This brings up a pretty interesting question with regard to Keen's contract. Can he simply be re-assigned to a coordinator, or does his contract require that he be head coach? EDIT: Some are saying Keen was still considered an interim coach in 2013. Not sure I've ever heard of somebody being an interim coach for two full seasons before.

He's under contract through 2016-17. He got an extension after the 2012-13 season: http://collegebasketball.ap.org/article/und-extends-contract-mens-basketball-coach

NDSU thought they were getting an up and coming assistant from a big-time program the last time around, too. So yes, there's a lot of risk involved here. I'm just glad that in terms of women's basketball, UND is presently in a position of pretty much knowing what they have, and can give a pay raise based upon merit rather than a leap of faith.

So are you saying that the UxD's were stupid to start their women's basketball coaches in the $110k to $120k range, and then reward them AFTER they succeed? At least Johnston has earned his $180k/year at SDSU by having a long history of success. I could maybe see paying that kind of money for a coach with an actual track record of success as a head coach. But given Dorn's recent track record, and Walseth's lack of head coaching experience, we'll see whether it was a good move or not in the next few years. She's got a lot of work to do.

Exactly. I suspect there's fear of a lawsuit, but between that incident and a couple of terrible hires, there are plenty of non-discriminatory reasons to justify her ouster.

I wonder if Broderick Powell has any interest in getting into college coaching? He's certainly got twin cities ties.

While I agree that Jones is not going to be fired based upon the last two season, he doesn't have a winning record during that timeframe. UND is 33-34 in the past two years.

I'm kind of amazed Dorn is still employed. I'll bet Taylor can't wait until she retires.

You're comparing one game's attendance to a whole season. Not exactly apples to apples. And if UND only pays "crumbs" but still has successful women's basketball and volleyball programs, what's NDSU's excuse?

$150k per year for a program that drew a whopping 721 people per game last year? I wonder if Dorn has complete autonomy to hire and determine salaries, or whether Taylor actually approved this?

While all of what you wrote is true, I think recent history has shown that when former NCC schools have strong groups of juniors and seniors, they can win 20 plus games, and you're not going to do that without winning a few non-conference games on the road, or at least on a neutral court. SDSU won 27 and 25 games in Wolters' junior and senior years. NDSU won 26 this year. UNC won 21 a couple of years ago. Coming into the season, I had hoped UND could win 20 plus, but of course that didn't happen. Obviously it's extremely difficult to know how much of the failure to do so was due to Brekke's absence, and how much was due to other factors. In any event, it's very unfortunate because you only get a large and talented group of upper classmen so often. Who knows when it might happen again for UND.

The Hoffner saga has taken a surprising, and very awkward turn: http://www.footballs...kward-situation

I saw Robbins play in the state class B basketball tournament a few weeks ago, and he definitely looked heavier than 180. I'd say he was probably 210 or so.

Just nine offensive linemen participating in spring ball, too.

While they are in a little different situation given their football attendance, you can only pay an FCS football coach so much before it stops making financial sense, and I believe that number is around $300k to $350k. Basketball, on the other hand, can pay off pretty big if a conference can win a game or two in the tournament. That's how UNI pays Jake $500k, whereas Farley gets a little under $300k. If you look at UNI's overall budget, you'd never think they could afford to pay their coaches that much.

With the Smith hire, I believe this now means both SD division I schools pay their basketball coach more than their football coach. I suspect this is the norm among FCS football playing schools. My guess is that UND and NDSU could move in this direction in the not-too-distant future, too.

This brings up a point I've been wondering about. If USD could sign Smith under these circumstances, does it call into question whether some of the lengthy contract extensions Faison has handed out in recent years were really necessary? I know he was quoted in a Herald article last year saying something to the effect that he was doing this partly as a trade-off for the comparatively low salaries some of the UND coaches have had. But from the school's perspective that doesn't seem like a very smart move. For one thing, I don't think any of the coaches who were relatively underpaid had shown they were worth a lot more, nor were any of them being offered other jobs, at least as far as we know. For another thing, even with a lengthy contract, if the coach succeeds, he/she can still move onto greener pastures, meaning the contract didn't do anything for the school (e.g. Lennon). But if the coach doesn't live up to expectations, the school is still on the hook (e.g. Mussman buyout). Frankly, unless the coach has had a pretty long history of success, I'm not sure I'd ever want to extend a contract more than two years into the future. There's more to lose than to gain IMO.

I think the fear is that while the past two years certainly haven't been horrible, an overall .500 record should not be the standard to which we aspire in the good years, i.e. years with a strong group of upper classmen. And now with having to replace 80% of the scoring, how much of a regression should be expect? My feeling is that if Jones can approach .500 next season, that's pretty good under the circumstances. But if we see something like 8-24 and a finish in the bottom third of the Big Sky, you will almost have to start looking at the overall body of work and question whether he's capable of being better than a .500-type coach.

Looks he's actually under contract through 2016-17: http://collegebasket...asketball-coach With that in mind, maybe he really isn't on the hot seat. Although I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a lot of coaches who potentially last 10-plus years with a career sub-.500 record and no 20-win seasons, regardless of the circumstances.

Here's a factoid that would probably surprise a lot of people--in terms of tenure, Jones was 88th out of 351 division I men's basketball coaches as of June of 2013: http://d1scourse.typepad.com/blog/2013/06/a-look-at-current-division-i-basketball-coaching-tenures-from-1-to-351.html And of course, some departures have occurred since then, including Boots and Huus, meaning he's moved up a few more spots. Not that this has any bearing on anything, other than to prove that college basketball coaches don't typically stay in one place for very long. In that regard, I guess Jones has already beaten the odds.

Nice analysis. Question--who do you see as most likely to step up as the backup post? I am somewhat intrigued by O'Toole, although I've never seen her play. She seems to have some similarities to Evers. Or at least they had similar high school numbers, although O'Toole was playing against better competition in Minnesota 4A.