**EDIT – apparently I can’t even keep up with the changes…..should be 5 head coaches in 4 days – as I was writing this blog, Jesse Agel was not renewed at Brown**

Here we go….four DI head coaches fired in the last four days – Chris Lowery at Southern Illinois was let go on Friday, over the weekend, Jim Baron at URI and Tom Parrotta at Canisius were fired, and today Randy Peele was given the ax at Winthrop. None of these were unexpected, but I do expect some surprises coming in the next few weeks.

Last week I mentioned Southern Indiana head coach Rodney Watson among my Eastern Illinois candidates (http://hoopdirt.com/blog/652e2c4d/eastern-illinois-rumors/…). With Southern Illinois opening on Friday, it sounds like he shoots to the top of the list there. He was an assistant for 21 seasons at Southern Illinois before taking the Southern Indiana job three seasons ago (where he has gone 70-15). According to one of my sources, he still owns a house in the Carbondale area. I also have a funny feeling that in a few days Bruce Weber’s name will be mentioned quite a bit with this job.

Another name to add to the Eastern Illinois list is College of Southern Idaho head coach Steve Gosar. He led his squad to the NJCAA National Championship last season, but more importantly, he was an assistant at Wyoming when current Eastern Illinois AD Barbara Burke was the deputy director of athletics there.

Obviously it’s very early in the URI search. The two names that keep popping up are former URI (and BC) head coach Al Skinner and current Wagner head coach Danny Hurley. These are interesting early names, but I would assume that this will be a very active search and there will be a ton of guys involved. I’ll have a more comprehensive list as I hear more.

Look for Colorado Mesa associate head coach Andy Shantz to be involved with the search at UC-Colorado Springs. Shantz has spent the past 15 seasons at Colorado Mesa where current UC-Colorado Springs AD Stephen Kirkham was the women’s coach (1998-2004) and was recently inducted into college’s the Hall of Fame.