The Craig Smith era begins

LOL

I don’t know. I looked at the Bios of his assistants. The two who came with, Eric Peterson is the international recruiter and also works with bigs. The other , Austin Hansen, works with guards. The third assistant is the only African-American and joined him from Valpo. He is also a midwest guy. His Director of Ops, Director of Player Personel and Special Assistant to HC don’t appear to have any longtime connection to Smith. It was reported by Josh Newman that LK’s pool for staff was about $450k with Connor getting about $400 of that. I was surprised the pool was so low.

A salary cap in college athletics would be great. There are thousands of good coaches out there who would coach for the love of it.

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i would also say that they need to cap the proliferation of staff. I know that staff other than the assistants and graduate assistants cannot do any on-field coaching during games or at practice, but they certainly have the ability to work with players in film study, etc.

That number isn’t right

Per public records:

Connor made $450,000 last year

Andy Hill made $248,000

Henry Martinez made $156,000

Donny Daniels made $134,000

Chris Jones $198,000

(Slocum made $224,000 his last year)

Maybe he was just including assistants - which would total $850k. I made an error in my original post and stated that pool was $450 when it was reported to be $850.

I was not serious–but dirty money in the NCAA that would be a first.

The very idea is shocking! :grinning:

I’m pretty sure Ma-ake was saying that we would need dirty money to pull something like that off, and we don’t do that.

Funny. The Pac-12 success has been pulling Utah up in the KenPom rankings.

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It’s been interesting reading USU’s board.

The “he wasn’t very good anyway” posts are my favorite.

They’re all mad, tells me we got someone who people will care about.

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This is not really surprising, but it’s nice to see. Here’s hoping.

The Deseret News has been told that Battin and Allen are not ruling out a return to Utah, if the situation “feels right” with Smith at the helm.

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This information has been posted here in a different format, but it does suggest that Larry left competitive talent in the cupboard, most of which is still available. The group played fairly well against competition that turned out to be pretty good in the Dance. (I admit that one needs to connect a few dots to reach that conclusion.) Anyway, maybe Craig can hang on to the best players in the cupboard. Allen, obviously; and Battin adds a good bench strength.

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Harlan-Smith press conference on Zoom.

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Much more excited about Smith after this presser. At least for me, he nailed the presser.

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That article lists all of the past Bball coaches. I had no idea Ike Armstrong coached basketball, he’s one of the best football coaches we’ve ever had. He must have coached basketball for a year or two while he was also coaching football. Interesting.

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1925-1927

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I would have thought that Timmy Allen entered the portal because he had heard that Smith was getting the job. I thought he may be hung around to see if Alex Jensen took it. Timing is very coincidental. But maybe he would come back.

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So when the news hit he actually hadn’t entered the portal. As of yesterday they said his name still wasn’t there.

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There was general excitement about Alex, and it seemed to be a sure thing. When it fell through, there was a fair amount of discouragement. That’s when the Timmy portal story broke. I think he was sending a message, and I think it was important for Harlan to move quickly at that point. I’m hopeful Smith will be able to convince Timmy that this is a tournament team next season. We were closer to being good this season than we knew.

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I liked the presser.

And I love that USU fans are still in full nuclear meltdown.

It’s obvious they were really invested in Smith as a coach, that bodes well.

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