Welcome to The Holy Land of Hoops

After we realigned in 2013, there was a feeling that the Big East would be a spring board for coaches to bolt to Football 5 schools. We saw Marquette lose a coach to VaTech, Butler to Ohio State and Xavier to Louisville. Then we saw coaches opt to stay. Willard and Cooley flirted with VaTech and Michigan and Jay Wright was wooed by UCLA. and anyone else with an opening. All three stayed in the Big East. Now, we are in a phase where we are hiring coaches from Football 5 schools. Anderson’s last gig was at Arkansas and the SEC and now Marquette hires Smart from Texas and the Big XII. These are good signs of a healthy league for sure.

McDermott turned down Ohio St. Buckeyes then stole Holtmann from Butler.

And how many times was Wright pursued by the NBA?

And where is Buzz Williams? Rotting away at a football school. He saw ESPNs Requiem and was stupid enough to believe that BS.

Django wrote:And where is Buzz Williams? Rotting away at a football school. He saw ESPNs Requiem and was stupid enough to believe that BS.

Buzz used the whole "Big East is no longer major" shtick as a public justification for leaving a successful program for a (then) bottom of the barrel ACC program. MU took a gamble on Buzz, and it paid off immensely. However, it found itself giving more and more each year (as Buzz openly interviewed with other schools) and the headaches, and believe me - there were more than a few - were no longer worth the on-court, or off-court, product.

Buzz may very well have believed the whole "Big East is no longer a major conference" speak. But it did not drive him out of Marquette.

Wish Buzz well at A&M, but it won't be his last job. We have read this book a few times before.

Ben Johnson, one of Xavier’s assistants, was named head coach at Minnesota a few days back. A loss to the program no doubt, yet the optics are quite positive when a Big Ten team poaches one of your assistants to fill their head coaching vacancy.