De Carolis looking for someone with experience and proven track record

By Brooks Hatch
Gazette-Times reporter

Bob De Carolis doesn’t yet know the name of Oregon State’s next men’s basketball coach.

But he knows what he wants and will search far and wide over the next 6-to-8 weeks for the right successor to Jay John, who was dismissed on Sunday after failing to reverse OSU’s failing fortunes in his 51/2 seasons here.

“My preference is to hire a person with head-coaching experience, and a proven track record,” De Carolis said late Sunday night in a conference call with reporters. “We want somebody who will win with integrity and do it honestly, graduate players and make for a great experience for the student-athlete.”

He, senior associate athletic director Todd Stansbury and two or three former players from different eras will comprise the search committee. He had no hiring timeline.

“If we hire someone who isn’t a sitting coach, we have more latitude” to make a quicker hire, De Carolis said. “On a sitting coach, we have to wait until the end of the season to talk to them.

“If we go with somebody not (coaching now) that would preclude someone coaching now so it would have to be an exceptionally strong candidate. In all likelihood, that is a remote scenario.”

Discontent among the fan base grew appreciably during the 2006-07 season and may have reached an all-time high with the slow start this season. The Beavers drew crowds of 4,000, the lowest in more than 40 years against a current conference opponent, for the Jan. 7 and Jan. 9 contests with Stanford and California.

Attendance at nonconference games hovered around 3,000. Apathy was at an all-time high, which also forced De Carolis’ hand.

“You talk to enough people, hear comments and watch body language, and it was obvious there was stuff getting in the way of optimal performance,” he said. “As you watched this thing, at what point in time might they crack and just give up?” if a change isn’t made.

“There wasn’t a (specific) tipping point. You look at the total body of work, and we didn’t see where it was going” in a positive direction.

“The kids showed a lot of spirit, grit and determination” in an 83-74 loss at Washington this past Saturday in John’s last game. “That tells me the potential is there and maybe they needed a clean bill of health, a spark to get them going.”

De Carolis said he may use a search firm to identify potential candidates, make background checks, and make intermediary contact to measure a prospective candidate’s interest.

“A lot of people can surface who you thought might not be remotely interested in your position” using that process, he said.

He said OSU can be flexible and creative with salary. John’s base compensation for the final three years of his contract was $475,000, $525,000 and $575,000.

“It’s a wild card; we have some limits but we’ve shown we can be creative,” he said. “This is an important hire to get this program back to its glory years. We’ll do everything in our power to make the right decision.”

He meet with the team on Sunday.

“They were alert, motivated and listening,” he said.

De Carolis did not mention any specific candidates but the top name on the West Coast is clearly former Stanford mentor Mike Montgomery, who left there after the 2004 season for the Golden State Warriors. They subsequently fired him and he now works as an associate athletic director at Stanford and as a part-time TV commentator.

“I’m sure Monty’s name will come up because it always does,” said John Akers, the editor of Basketball Times magazine and a former sportswriter (1984-2000) at the San Jose Mercury-News who covered Stanford and the Pac-10.

“But Monty doesn’t get any joy out of recruiting, he doesn’t relish that aspect the way (USC coach) Tim Floyd does,” and he’s quite content living in the Bay Area. So it’s highly unlikely he’d be lured out of coaching retirement to take on the massive rebuilding job at OSU.

Akers said OSU might consider Blaine Taylor of Old Dominion, who played and coached for Montgomery at Montana before Montgomery left Missoula for Stanford.

“Blaine was approached a year ago by Utah but he felt at the time his job was as good as what he was being offered. A Pac-10 job might be different.”

Akers said Randy Bennett of St. Mary’s College might be attractive because of his West Coast and Australian recruiting connections. The Gaels have four Aussies on the team, including standout freshman guard Patrick Mills.

“I think (the Australian pipeline) could work as well at Oregon State as it does with St. Mary’s,” Akers said.

OSU must somehow reconnect with recruits who know nothing of the program’s storied past and of legends such as Slats Gill, Ralph Miller, Gary Payton, A.C. Green and the numerous Pac-10 championship teams that thrilled a previous generation of Beavers fans.

“There’s not a high school kid in America who can relate to that era now,” Akers said. “It only takes 3-to-4 years to lose a generation of recruits because if you go sour for 3-to-4 years tradition and history mean nothing.

“(Oregon State) has to create that again, but it can do that, and there are guys out there who can recruit to anywhere and anyplace.”

Akers said OSU’s drawbacks and recent losing history will scare some candidates off, but others will be attracted by the lure of a Pac-10 job and the chance to establish or burnish a reputation.

“Certainly coaches have egos and everyone thinks they can be the one who can defy the odds and be the guy who can bring players to Corvallis,” he said. “There will be people who want to do that.”

OSU got lucky in 1970 when it hired Miller away from Iowa, where he’d tired of the long and harsh winters. It’s possible there could be a similar candidate out there now, said one veteran assistant coach with West Coast ties who asked to remain anonymous so he could speak candidly.

“The ideal guy is someone who has a great record and is tired of a cold-weather place, is out of sorts with his administration and wins no matter where he is,” the source said.

OSU’s new coach must mix and match recruiting strategies because it’s clearly fallen behind the rest of the Pac-10 in general, and behind Oregon, Washington State, Gonzaga and Washington as a destination for Northwest players.

“I just don’t think you can go head-to-head with the top teams in the league, and it seems like (the NW schools) have just leapfrogged (OSU) to where it’s not an equal playing field,” he said. “If you could catch those people, you’re in elite company.”

He cited WSU as a blueprint for OSU to follow. The woebegone Cougars hired former Wisconsin coach Dick Bennett to revive their program in 2003; he had a proven system, gradually improved the program and it took off when son Tony Bennett became head coach in 2006.

He described OSU’s facilities as “mediocre.”

“It’s going to take investment and commitment, way more than they probably want” to turn the ship around, he said. “Not just for the head coach and the assistants. It’s money, period, in a big way.”

The new coach must also change the culture of losing that’s pervaded the program since OSU’s last Pac-10 championship and NCAA berth in 1990.

“My (biggest) feeling was, you can’t have a positive situation with negative parts around you,” said former baseball coach Jack Riley, who took over a losing program in 1973 and guided it to a Northern Division co-championship in 1975. “You have to figure out a way to get rid of the negative, because negative just doesn’t work.

“The next thing is development, recruiting and teaching the players how to win. You always need a (standard) to strive to.

“The other key thing is getting a nucleus of key players who you know have bought into you. I had to weed to get that nucleus of leadership that believed in me.”