A few things that I heard this weekend…
• The search is already underway at Troy as AD John Hartwell looks to replace recently retire Don Maestri. I have heard that they are not going to use a search firm on this one – Hartwell is a basketball guy and will look to use some of his connections. He was a HS teammate of current NC State head coach Mark Gottfried, and played at The Citadel with current Tulane head coach Ed Conroy. I’ve also heard that Hartwell wants someone to come in and recruit hard – doesn’t matter if they are a current head coach or assistant coach. I believe this will be a very aggressive search and Hartwell will look to wrap this up quickly.
• Speaking of searches…I mentioned last week that I kept hearing Dennis Felton’s name pop up when talking about the Old Dominion job (http://www.hoopdirt.com/blog/a295a380/daily-dirt-3-4-13/…). The “hot” name this weekend was NC State associate head coach Bobby Lutz. A bunch of people that I talked to seem to think that he will be in the mix at ODU. Lutz has been on staff at NC State for the past two seasons, but has a very good track record as a head coach. He went 218-158 at Charlotte (1999-2010), and is the winningest coach in the school’s history. I have been working on my ODU list, and should be able to publish it by the end of the week.
• This weekend, the Chicago Tribune published a list of possible successors to Bill Carmody IF Northwestern were to make a move (big IF). There are 17 guys on the list (listed in order of “likely to get hired”). It makes for interesting reading, but definitely can’t put much stock into it: http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/college/ct-spt-0310-nor…
I’ve got a feeling with some mid-majors getting knocked out this weekend, there will be a lot of moves in the next few days. Stay tuned…
