If advancing his son's, John, career is very important to Mike Montgomery, I think LMU is the right place for Mike at this point in his career.
From NoCal's Mercury News
www.mercextra.com/blogs/collegesports/2008/04/01/mike-montgomery-and-cal-and-indiana-and-lmu-and-every-other-vacancy/Mike Montgomery and Cal (and Indiana and LMU and every other coaching vacancy)
By Jon Wilner
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 12:56 pm in Arizona, Cal, Oregon, Pac 10, Stanford, UCLA, USC, coaching searches.
***Note: Indiana reportedly hired Tom Crean a few hours ago and a few hours after this was posted.
Mike Montgomery hasn’t coached college basketball in four years, yet he’s one of the hottest names in the country — and has been since he was dismissed by the Warriors 18 months ago.
With his name being linked to vacancy after vacancy, Montgomery has spent time as a TV analyst (he’s very good), assisting Stanford athletic director Bob Bowlsby, playing golf and collecting his Warrior paychecks (he was under contract through this spring).
But now he’s nearing the point of no return. My sense is that if he does not take a job now, he won’t ever coach again.
By next spring, he’ll be 62 and out of the business for three years. I’m not sure he’ll have the opportunity or the desire to jump back in.
He has the opportunity now, it would seem, with Loyola Marymount, Cal and Indiana all looking for coaches — all three representing different level of pressure, pay and potential.
But here’s the thing about Montgomery, the one thing I know to be true based on numerous conversations with him and with people who know him:
He hasn’t known, and possibly still doesn’t know as of this minute, what he wants to do.
Montgomery did not emerge from his dismissal from Golden State with a burning desire to jump back into the business, and the past 18 months have been a time to dabble here and there and see what other challenges were available.
So he wasn’t going to take just any coaching job. It had to be what he considered the “right job,” and that never became available.
Part of the reason for that is Montgomery had the perfect job for him: Stanford.
He loves the Xs and Os, the scheming, the chess-match aspect of coaching. He wants no part of the seedy side of college basketball recruiting — pandering to teenagers and their families, AAU coaches and assorted handlers, many of whom have their hands out.
And on The Farm, he never/rarely had to. The players who were interested in Stanford, and could be admitted to Stanford, were generally well-grounded kids from middle-class, two-parent homes.
(Essentially, it’s a self-selecting process: If you’re a good enough student to meet Stanford’s requirements, if you’re dedicated enough to fill out the application and write the essays, then odds are, you’re going to Stanford.)
But to win anywhere else, Montgomery must deal with that seedy aspect of the sport. Sure, he could hire the best recruiter in the world as his top assistant, but at some point in the process, Montgomery would have to get involved.
(If Ben Howland and Roy Williams are in a gym watching a kid play, or talking to his AAU coach, and Montgomery sends an assistant, that kid is going elsewhere.)
So that’s something Montgomery has to work through before he jumps back in, because no place is like Stanford from the recruiting side.
I’ve always felt the jobs he’d be most interested in were Arizona, USC and Oregon, but those aren’t open.
But LMU is, and Cal is, and Indiana is …
Let me take a step back here, in the interest of full disclosure, and say this: While I have spoken to Montgomery numerous times in the past 18 months about potential jobs, including a fairly recent chat, I have not talked to him in the week since Ben Braun was fired.
First off: Loyola Marymount. This is a tough, tough job: You’re way down the ladder in what is usually a one-bid league, the WCC, and LMU will never have the resources Gonzaga does.
It has been a coach-killer job, although LMU has never had a coach like Montgomery.
I cannot imagine any reason Montgomery would take it, save for this: His son, John, who played at LMU and is a young assistant at Furman under Jeff Jackson (the former Stanford recruiting coordinator).
Advancing John’s career is very important to Montgomery, and my guess is that he’d attempt to hire John wherever he landed.
At Loyola Marymount — by the way: the athletic director, Bill Husak, is Todd’s father — that would obviously be no problem.
Who knows, maybe John Montgomery would be in line to become the LMU head coach one day.
Next up: Indiana.
One of the premier jobs in the country, and Montgomery would be a perfect fit in this respect:
Indiana has always prided itself on doing things the right way — graduating players, abiding by NCAA rules. With the Kelvin Sampson fiasco behind them, the Hoosiers want someone on the up-and-up, and when it comes to integrity, academics and NCAA rules, Montgomery is above reproach.
And he could win there — he win big there, which is something that has great appeal to him. If he jumps back in the rat race, he wants the chance to win big.
But I have to wonder about the timing. He’s 61, and Indiana probably is going to get hit with several years of NCAA sanctions. Plus, its best players, Eric Gordon and D.J. White, are headed to the NBA.
It could be three or four years before the sanctions are lifted and the program is stocked with enough talent to challenge for the Big Ten title. Would Montgomery want to wait that long?
Next up, Cal:
I think Sandy Barbour should make the call. I’m not sure Montgomery would take the job, but I have reason to believe he’d take a long, hard look.
Before Braun got fired, I didn’t think there was any way Montgomery would consider Cal. I wrote as much on the Hotline, and I had very good reasons for writing it (reasons that I’m not at liberty to discuss).
But things change, and what changed is this: Braun’s gone.
The job looks one way when Braun is the sitting head coach, another way when he’s not.
There are several issues with the Montgomery-to-Cal scenario over and above interest on Cal’s part — I’m going at this from Montgomery’s perspective.
(Quick aside: If the Bears don’t at least ask Montgomery if he’s interested, you have to wonder … How many years in a row did he beat the snot out of the Bears with a much smaller recruiting pool?
Anyhow, the issues:
* The rivalry: I don’t know this to be true, but my guess is that the Stanford-Cal relationship would not prevent Montgomery from jumping across the Bay.
Yes, he has worked for Stanford for 19 of the past 21 years. But he’s not a Stanford alum, and I know that he has great respect for Cal as an institution.
* The Braun factor: I wrote last week that Montgomery and Braun are friendly. I should have been more specific: They are not personal friends, but they have a friendly professional relationship.
Montgomery is wary of looking like the bad guy in any situation — like he’s the reason a sitting coach gets fired. That was one of his many reservations about Santa Clara last spring. He didn’t like the way the Broncos treated Dick Davey and wanted no part of that situation.
That said, there has not exactly been an uproar within the coaching industry over the Braun dismissal — nothing like the outrage over Davey.
Braun was there for 12 years, missed the NCAAs four times in the past five years, just finished ninth … nobody has stepped forward to say he got a raw deal. Because he didn’t.
So I don’t think that would affect Montgomery’s decision.
* The winning: With the exception of a situation that would involve his son’s future, Montgomery wants a chance to win big.
Can he win big at Cal given the current strength of the Pac-10?
Can he recruit successfully against UCLA, USC, Arizona and Stanford and sign the talent he’d need to win big in Berkeley?
I’m not sure — not sure that he can win big/recruit successfully, not sure that he thinks he can win big/recruit successfully.
There is potential, no doubt: Montgomery would be recruiting to one of the top academic institutions in the world without the admissions requirements he had at Stanford.
There’s a fair amount of talent within two hours of campus, and his name alone would make the Bears competitive with many Southern California recruits.
But I’m not talking about Montgomery winning 18 or 20 games — he could do that at plenty of schools. I’m talking about contending for the league title and the Final Four with access to recruits he could never get at Stanford.
And I wonder if Montgomery thinks he could contend for the league title and the Final Four at Cal.
I mean, the only time the Bears have won big in the post-Newell era, under Todd Bozeman … well, we all know what was happening there at the time.
Granted, the Bears haven’t had a coach of Montgomery’s caliber since Newell himself, but from his 18 years across the Bay, Montgomery probably has a good sense for the strengths and weaknesses of the program.
Finally, Stanford: Quick recap: Trent Johnson’s contract expires next spring. AD Bob Bowlsby has said Johnson would get an extension after the season. It’s now “after the season.”
Until a deal is done, there’s a chance Johnson might not return. That would leave Stanford with a vacancy.
I don’t know if Montgomery would consider taking his old job, especially since it would involve taking over for someone he’s known for 30 years (Johnson). But it cannot be completely discounted until Johnson’s situation is resolved.
